Leaps & Bounds: The Music of Lance Hulme presents a compelling survey of Dr. Lance Hulme's oeuvre, showcasing his intellectual rigor, inventive compositional techniques, and engagement with diverse cultural and historical contexts. The album features works that exemplify Hulme's mastery of structure and colour. Sirens' Song, a symphonic triptych inspired by Homer's Odyssey, integrates 19th- and early 20th-century orchestral techniques with modern thematic exploration. Wildcat, originally commissioned by the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, reflects a vivid sonic depiction of kinetic energy and joy, drawing on personal and cultural narratives. Hulme's JethroZen juxtaposes the rock-inspired flute idiom of Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) with the meditative timbres of the Japanese Shakuhachi, bridging Eastern and Western musical traditions. Folk idioms and tonal frameworks are reimagined in Appalachian Advent, while Sax Attractor employs mathematical attractor sets as a metaphor for musical cohesion, yielding a meticulously structured saxophone sonata. Setting the Diamond offers an innovative engagement with medieval chant, integrating Hildegard von Bingen's hymnody with electronic and acoustic counterpoint to create a nuanced dialogue between past and present. Hulme's works balance intellectual depth with emotional immediacy. An Eternal Flame, dedicated to the people of Ukraine, demonstrates his ability to embed profound human narratives within intricate compositional frameworks. Slapdash Redux, with it's virtuosic interplay and rhythmic ingenuity, exemplifies his fascination with spontaneous energy and contrapuntal complexity. This album is an essential addition to the repertoire of contemporary classical music, inviting scholars, performers, and listeners to explore the intersections of tradition, innovation, and cultural dialogue in Hulme's work. Leaps & Bounds offers a vivid portrait of a composer who traverses disciplinary boundaries with intellectual acuity and artistic finesse.

The English composer John Gardner (1917-2011) played the organ from an early age; his first work to be published was for the organ, and he wrote for the instrument throughout his long life. His music, whether secular or sacred, is characterised by a rhythmic vivacity and technical command informed by his fondness for jazz, Renaissance and Baroque procedures and classical counterpoint - and the spirit of dance is often close to hand. It's quirky and distinctive personality is a mirror of the man: Gardner's gruff, slightly formal manner barely hid a mischievous sense of humour, flashes of which can be glimpsed even in his more serious works. Above all, his musical language is honest and emotionally direct, as he was.

This project was conceived to provide the choir with new contemporary music which would be singable, appropriate to various seasons of the church year, and, above all, be highly usable as part of the choir's daily offerings of music in Christ Church Cathedral. Funding was generously provided by the Friends of Christ Church Cathedral, and it was elected to adopt a hybrid approach to commissioning.

Since it's beginnings, the Le Beau Ensemble has specialised in the works of the composer of the same name, Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927). Le Beau left behind more than 65 opus-numbered compositions in almost all genres: songs, choral music, piano pieces, chamber music, symphonic works, a piano concerto, two oratorios and the fairy tale opera 'The Enchanted Caliph'. This debut album combines important song compositions and cycles with chamber music and the central work, the piano quintet, op. 28.

Ludvig Norman (1831-1885) was a composer of great importance in Swedish musical life. On this album the Stockholm-based Japanese pianist Kiyo Wada presents, along with Ludvig Norman Strings, two of his major chamber music works: the piano quartet and the piano sextet. As a bonus you get the piano suite "Lifvets �ldrar" (The Stages of Life). The piano sextet and the piano suite are world premiere CD recordings, not to be missed!

Longtime Duke University string quartet-in-residence, the Ciompi Quartet releases "A Duke Moment" featuring three works written for them by Duke composers, Stephen Jaffe, Anthony M. Kelley, and Scott Lindroth. The three works draw some of their inspiration from different sources related to the Duke experience, including the North Carolina countryside and various athletic pursuits.

Can we go back a hundred years in time? Pianist Florian Noack's new album pushes back the gates of time to rediscover the lifeblood of the Roaring Twenties, which saw twentieth-century music trace a path between partying and war. During the 1920s, Berlin and Paris were awash with jazz, Dada and cabaret, rocked by the liberating music come from America. The arts truly roared between the two world wars, trying to forget the first and stifle their anxieties over the inevitable second. This is the bold journey through time offered by Florian Noack, a musical odyssey through his own transcriptions of Fats Waller, Gershwin and Kurt Weill, voluble and refined arrangements that alternate with original gems by Francis Poulenc, Erwin Schulhoff and Clement Doucet. An album filled with charm and virtuoso acrobatics that finds the poetry of those years of upheaval in the joy and radiance of their music.

This release features Ravel's works alongside pieces from composers who inspired him, including Chabrier, Haydn, Borodine, Couperin, and more. Marina Baranova seamlessly blends classical and neoclassical elements, creating a unique musical language that is distinctly her own. Each track invites you to appreciate the dialogue between these great composers, showcasing Baranova's exceptional talent and interpretative skills.

Oboist Celine Moinet has already released three albums on Berlin Classics with music by Bach, Schumann and French composers. Now she returns with an album, where she pairs Mozart's Adagio for English Horn K580a and Oboe Quartet with world premiere recordings of the works by Luigi Gatti: Quartet in F major and C major. The Italian composer settled down in Salzburg in 1782, when he was already an acquaintence to the Mozart family. Worth discovering are Gatti's chamber works, created during his later years as a retiree after the secularisation and dissolution of the Salzburg prince-archbishopric in 1803. These works reveal him as a skilled and inventive master of form, as well as an experimenter in instrumentation. The F major quartet, in particular, presents considerable virtuoso challenges, including passages that push the oboe's range even higher than Mozart's quartet, reaching up to high G (g'). This daring extension of the oboe's tonal possibilities marks Gatti as an innovator and serves as a testament to his creative spirit.

Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) approached the piano with a sense of expressive freedom, avoiding the conventions of pure virtuosity and preferring a more intimate and reflective language. His piano pieces range from lyrical miniatures to more complex works, in which influences can be recognized from Italian early music to the modernity of Debussy, Casella, Stravinsky and Scriabin. Alessandro Riccardi has programmed a sequence of pieces written during the 1900s and 1910s. They evoke a creative laboratory, where harmonic experimentation and the search for new expressive forms intertwine with a deep respect for the past. From 1905, the 6 Morceaux represent the first expression of Malipiero's compositional personality, where modal influences intersect with late 19th-century trends. Published in 1910, the Tre danze antiche represent Malipiero the assiduous antiquarian, the reviver and transcriber of his 17th-century forebears such as Monteverdi and Gabrieli. The quartet of Preludi autunnali were composed in Venice in September 1914 and foreshadow a period of 'perpetual tragedy' in the composer's music caused by the outbreak of World War I. As Malipiero wrote in 1952: "Their melancholy is perhaps the effect of the war just begun and not yet felt." Those effects are further amplified in Maschere che passano from 1918, a 10-minute quintet of oblique sketches, presenting high contrasts: mysterious, violent, distant, Malipiero at his most late-Debussyan. In 1920 he then wrote a heartfelt homage to Debussy, followed by 'Three Homages', which undercut the solemnity of their title by being dedicated successively to a parrot, an elephant and 'an idiot'. Throughout the album, marking Alessandro Riccardi's debut on Piano Classics, the piano becomes an instrument for personal introspection and sonic exploration, while maintaining a strong connection to Italian tradition and, at the same time, looking into the future. - Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer whose piano works reflect his unique approach to musical expression, blending tradition and modernity. Known for rejecting the rigid structures of classical forms, Malipiero sought to evoke pure emotion and a sense of mystery in his music, often drawing on Italian folk traditions and Renaissance polyphony. His piano compositions are characterized by their lyrical qualities, rich textures, and distinctive harmonic language. - Malipiero's piano output includes several collections, each showing his innovative yet deeply Italian aesthetic. Among his notable works are the Preludi autunnali (Autumnal Preludes), a series of poetic and introspective pieces imbued with melancholic beauty. These works often feature modal harmonies and unexpected shifts in tonality, reflecting his quest to free music from the constraints of conventional Romanticism. - Other works on this new recording are the Maschere que passano, Omaggi, Six Morceaux, and 3 Danze Antiche. These pieces are deeply atmospheric, blending delicate, impressionistic passages with moments of stark drama. Malipiero's piano music often eschews virtuosic display in favor of expressive depth, demanding a nuanced and sensitive touch from the performer. - Alessandro Riccardi is one of the most remarkable young pianists of his generation. His CDs with works by Scriabin and Liszt received several 5-star reviews in the international press.

With Wu Wei, Ingolf Burkhardt and Florian Weber, three outstanding musical personalities have come together in the Silk Jazz trio. Their music is created freely - no agreements, no notes, just pure listening and interaction. Over 90 tracks of freely improvised music were created during the recording session. With Into the unknown, the trio succeeds in developing a musical narrative from the sheer endless material that conveys the naturalness of playing together as well as the adventurousness and enthusiasm to search for and find new colours.

This album features three first-rate, greatly underperformed, Italian Sonatas for Violin and Piano. Respighi, Martucci, and Rota are all three wonderful composers, and it shows clearly in these works. Italian artists Fabrizio Falasca and Antonio Pompa-Baldi infuse these three great works with the life they deserve.

With her new album SiGNALE (Signals), released on the GENUIN label, organist Kerstin Petersen performs rarely played and newly composed repertoire by Japanese and European women composers. Together with Ada Namani (gong), Lin Chen, and narrator Cornelius Gebert, she creates refined soundscapes that seamlessly blend virtuosity with meditation and trance, opening fascinating listening spaces for contemporary music. This album features the world premiere recordings of works by Alyssa Aska, Siegrid Ernst, Ana Szilagyi, Rikako Watanabe, and Ruth Wiesenfeld. A unique journey into extraordinary soundscapes!

- Coming from a family of musicians, guitarist and composer Bruno Battisti D'Amario (Rome, 1937) received his artistic training at the Conservatorio Musicale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied under Maestros Benedetto Di Ponio and Mario Gangi. - In 1960, he met Ennio Morricone, who involved him in many collaborations as lead guitarist (classical and electric) in the soundtracks of his films. He also took composition lessons from him, thus creating a solid working relationship that lasted more than 20 years. He has collaborated with composers such as Nino Rota, Armando Trovajoli, Luis Bacalov, Nicola Piovani and others. - D'Amario knows the guitar perfectly, exploring all it's timbres and colours, creating fantastic soundscapes, sophisticated harmonies and flowing melodies. - Guitarist Adriano Sebastiani is a pupil and now close friend of D'Ammario, his playing shows deep knowledge and close affection for the idiom of this wonderfully original music. Riccardo Bini joins him in the works for guitar duo.

Hornist Felix Klieser presents two concertos for Horn and Orchestra by Kurt Atterberg and Rolf Martinsson. After the big success of his Mozart Horn Concertos album with the Camerata Salzburg, he is now accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrucken and English conductor Jamie Phillips, who is leading the recording. The Horn concerto "Soundscape" by Rolf Martinsson was comissioned for Felix Klieser and is the composers third solo concerto for brass instruments and premiered in 2022 in Saarbrucken.