The collection of toccatas Apparatus musico-organisticus, published in 1690, immediately established Georg Muffat as one of the greatest organists of his century. A veritable reference in the organ repertoire, appreciated for it's stylistic diversity, this work testifies to Muffat's ambition to blend European styles while exploring the expressive possibilities of the Baroque organ. Bernard Foccroulle deploys a range of emotions that underline the breadth and harmonic richness of the toccatas, performed on an organ emblematic of the French style that suits them so well, to which is added the delicate Sonata a violino solo, executed with brio by Marie Rouquie.

A guided journey through a series of incantations Throughout human history the flute has been closely associated with mystical ritual and states of meditation and reflection. This is as true of Sufism, the Hindu deity Krishna as well as the Japanese shakuhachi - whose origins are shrouded in Buddhist mystery - and the many biblical references of the flute. Often it has been seen as symbolising either the breath or the heart of God. In addition to these profound spiritual associations of the flute, it has also been linked to celebrations of nature through countless folkloric tales from around the world. Every piece on this disc is in some way linked to ideas of mystical spaces and places - each an incantation. Our guide (il nostro Guido) on this disc is the flautist Roberto Fabbriciani - whose work I have held in the highest regard for many years. I am very proud indeed to be able to count him as a dear friend and collaborator. He provided me with my first international commission (this has already) passed/passing a performance of which you can hear on this disc. This is the first portrait disc of my work to be commercially released and I am delighted that this comes about as a fruit of my continued friendship with maestro Fabbriciani.

The first in a new cycle of Dvor�k symphony recordings, Dvor�k: Symphonies 5 & 6 is the second release from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and it's Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Jaime Mart�n, on the MSO's own record label. Recorded in 2023 at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, these performances-under Concertmasters Dale Barltrop (Symphony No.5) and Tair Khisambeev (Symphony No.6)-were artistic highlights of the MSO's second season under Mart�n's baton. The artwork approach to the MSO's Dvor�k cycle profiles iconic scenes from across Melbourne and the state of Victoria, beginning with the Twelve Apostles of the Great Ocean Road, a day trip from Hamer Hall.

Ken Micallef of JazzTimes noted, "Guitarist Nate Radley has the one thing that all musicians would kill for: He makes you want to listen." This his fourth leader album will be again the proof of the above statement as Radley formed the quartet with his favorite rhythm section to premiere all his intriguing original compositions written for this session.

Volume 18 of BRIDGE'S Paul Lansky series is a percussion spectacular, featuring the American mallet virtuoso, Gwendolyn Dease. The wide-ranging program includes a percussion solo, a percussion and violin duo, a percussion quartet, and a concerto for percussion and wind ensemble, all by the celebrated American composer Paul Lansky in honor of his 80th birthday. Assisting Ms. Dease are percussionists Ji Hye Jung, Jisu Jung, and Ayano Kataoka; violinist Yvonne Lam; and the Michigan State University Wind Symphony, Kevin Sedatole, conductor.

Gavin Higgins' music is bursting with authenticity. Everything he writes speaks in some way of where he comes from, of the land, of the community, of the family which formed him. He grew up in a working class former mining community in the Forest of Dean, a borderland between England and Wales with it's own dialect, a liminal place where Welsh songs and stories as well as English are in the air. It's a place where brass band music is the chief legacy of the coal mines, the last of which closed a decade before Gavin was born and where the forest, with it's sounds, it's colours and it's stories was a constant presence. Gavin has spoken evocatively - and perhaps romantically - about the music of the forest which surrounded him: sounds of foxes and deer mingled with brass bands, church choirs and occasional illegal raves. Nature and music, he says, are powerfully linked in his mind. Almost as soon as he could speak, Gavin was given a cornet to blow and grew up playing in the brass band conducted by his grandfather and populated by most of his family. A scholarship to specialist music school in Manchester and subsequent study at the Royal Northern College of Music meant that he moved on to the orchestral French horn. Now, as a composer chiefly working in the orchestral and opera world, Gavin still writes for brass bands and has even put his two musical traditions on the stage together in an award winning Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra. But the pieces on this disc which feature the French horn - Horn Concerto and Fanfare, Air and Flourish - mark the first time that he has highlighted his own instrument in the solo slot. As ever, it was a personal connection which sparked the idea of the Horn Concerto - an approach from the horn virtuoso Ben Goldscheider, made in the full knowledge that this would reunite Gavin with his younger self.

Joseph Haydn's The Creation - a musical masterpiece that was celebrated from the very beginning. For Simon Rattle there is no question that Haydn's Creation contains everything. The whole world. It looks both towards the past and far into the future of everything music can be. It is balance and revolution at the same time - a true work of the Enlightenment. "Magnificent choruses, graceful melodies, the finest polyphony, all firmly anchored in an optimistic view of humanity - anyone who doesn't automatically feel better after hearing it really needs help, " says Simon Rattle with a wink. "The Creation is healthy in a very honest way, " he adds. But health also includes a good dose of humour, and Haydn provides it, even in a setting as sacred as the Creation story. At the same time, a work radiating light also casts a few shadows on our own present. What has remained of the spirit of the Enlightenment? And what have we done with "this world, so great, so wonderful"? To mark his inauguration as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle chose Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation. After two concerts on September 21 and 22, 2023 in Munich's Herkulessaal, the work was performed on September 24 in the historic basilica of Ottobeuren in Upper Swabia, together with the three outstanding soloists Lucy Crowe, Benjamin Bruns and Christian Gerhaher. The Munich recording of the inaugural concerts is now being released on 2 CDs by BR-KLASSIK. With this late work, Joseph Haydn celebrated his greatest triumph: The acclaim he received for his oratorio The Creation placed all his previous successes firmly in the shade. He was already very famous as a symphonic composer, his string quartets had won him the adoration of countless nobles and amateur musicians, and his late masses had secured the unwavering approval of his Esterhazy prince. However, at it's first performance in 1798, "The Creation" caught the spirit of the age - and continues to do so today. The work unites Haydn's orchestral finesse with powerful choruses, combining the vivid account of the creation story with subtle musical interpretation and making it a musical manifesto, as it were, of the Age of Enlightenment. In this regard, the oratorio has enjoyed an unbroken performance tradition, and continues to pose a challenge to every world-class ensemble today. In 1946, one year after the end of the war, Haydn's masterpiece was the first oratorio ever to be performed in the basilica in Ottobeuren - at that time still in the organ loft. The 1986 performance by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein remains legendary to this day.

The most comprehensive set on record of the sonatas by a pivotal figure in the English Classical piano school, including several first recordings. Johann Baptiste Cramer (1771-1858) was identified by the influential pedagogue Edward Dannreuther as 'one of the fathers of the church of pianoforte playing'. Born in Germany, he moved as a child to London with his family - his father Wilhelm was a violinist and conductor - and took lessons with a notable emigre of a previous generation, Muzio Clementi. Cramer came to follow in his teacher's footsteps, as both a pianist and a publisher. At one stage, his books of studies were scarcely less popular than the examples of Carl Czerny. He spent a good deal of time on the Continent, including in Vienna, where he won the friendship and admiration of Beethoven. In turn, Cramer became the English publisher of the composer's Fifth Piano Concerto, and was probably responsible for it's lasting nickname as the 'Emperor'. Cramer's own music is scantily represented on record by a few albums of studies, a concerto here and a sonata there. But as Simone Pierini demonstrates, Cramer's sonatas exhibit impressive variety, chronicling both his development as a composer and the technical evolution of the piano in the late-Classical and early-Romantic eras. He composed as many as 200 sonatas between 1790 and 1830, and Pierini presents a representative selection. They belong to the world of Clementi and Dussek but also Beethoven and Chopin in their elegant minuets, their minor-mode expressions of pathos and their virtuosic flourishes written to show off the skill but also the musicianship of any executant. Anyone with an interest in early-Romantic piano music will find Cramer's sonatas a delightful discovery. No stranger to the Brilliant Classics catalogue, Simone Pierini plays them on three fortepianos of the period, by Conrad Graf, Joseph Hasselman and Matthias Muller. He also contributes a full and illuminating booklet essay on Cramer's life and work. '[Pierini] plays with tremendous energy and conviction... A major addition to the catalogue.' Fanfare (de Montgeroult, 96247) 'His playing offers crisp clarity of texture and ornament... this is an interesting composer well worth adding to the fellowship of clavecinistes.' Gramophone (Le Bret, 96930).

This CD by The Counterpoints, entitled Italophilia: Discovering the Italian style in Handel's London, investigates the Italian musical influences on English baroque music in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.�Already in 1683, Henry Purcell (1659-1695) had written in the foreword of his Sonatas of three Parts that he had 'faithfully endeavour'd a just imitation of the most fam'd Italian Masters'. In later years, the impact of these Italian Masters would only increase, reaching it's apogee in the work of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). This CD contextualizes Handel's work with composers he influenced and was influenced by, both in England and Italy.

Among the most interesting personalities needing to be rediscovered in the musical world of late-nineteenth- century Italy, a very distinctive one is undoubtedly the Piedmontese composer Pietro Eugenio Luigi Hugues (Casale Monferrato, 27 October 1836 - 5 March 1913). The available information about Hugues is no longer as scanty as it used to be. Thanks to the data obtained by archive researches, Hugues has been revealed as an unexpected figure: he was not only a renowned flutist, organist and composer, but also an important geographer, a university professor, and one of the main supporters of the study of geography in Italian schools. His life shows surprising similarities with that of a contemporary of his, the flutist-composer-chemist Aleksandr Borodin (1833-1887). So this recording is quite precious. In the first place, because of it's monographic character (it is the first disc entirely devoted to Luigi Hugues); secondly, for the exclusive performance of original works such as Sonata in C major op. 119, Studio da Concerto in D minor op. 3, Sonata Romantica op. 57, Capriccio "Le Silfidi" op. 29 no. 2, Sonata Fantastica op. 100, "Dans le Bois" op. 67 and, lastly, Sonata in Fa Op. 95: a masterly selection among the best original works of Hugues's vast production of flute pieces (which is even more vast after the recent discoveries). These works are essential for understanding the deep soul, the truest nature of this composer.

Armonico Consort present their next instalment of works by Franceso Scarlatti, this time his only surviving oratorio 'Il Daniele nel Lago de'Leoni' or Daniel in the Lions' Den. Scarlatti's Daniele conforms in all general aspects to the typical Sicilian oratorio of the late-seventeenth century, which was itself closely modelled on Roman practice: four or five singers inhabit character roles, without a separate narrator, together with a chorus often consisting of the soloists singing in ensemble.

Nicolo Paganini's 24 Caprices are considered to be his masterpiece, with a perfect blend of stunning virtuosity and inexhaustible creativeness. As with all of Paganini's works these Caprices follow on from traditional models, but they are unique in transcending technical virtuosity with a freedom of creative expression that achieved huge popularity, whether in it's original form for solo violin or in transcriptions and arrangements. In this unique performance, mandolin virtuoso Dor Amran plays the Caprices with breathtaking technical skill, superb musicality and a vibrant sense of instrumental colour.

A mystic realm tinged with the scent of foreign spices, bewitching music, vivid color and sensual delights... Orientalism sparked a new wave of romanticism in Western art in the 19th century, which had a profound influence on artists. At the time, The Arabian Nights had long been popular in Russia, in a French translation by Antoine Galland that indulged the Francophile passion for all things Arabic. For Rimsky-Korsakov who had a life-long fascination with fairytales especially those from the exotic setting of the mythical Orient,"Scheherazade"was an ideal theme. Born into a family of Russian naval officers, music and the sea became his passion since childhood and he graduated from the Naval Academy of St. Petersburg to become a naval officer himself. While pursuing his musical studies, he embarked on numerous ocean voyages, visiting Brazil, America, Europe etc The Oriental Ballet Suite "Thousand and One Nights" was originally conceived as an orchestral work, first published for piano solo in 1927, and then arranged for orchestra by the composer himself. It gained popularity immediately after it's release and was broadcast on several radio stations.

Pianobasso's low-key and stripped-down arrangements of classical pieces has brought them international success with many listeners all over the world. This time they have chosen to go a little outside their established concept and instead record Christmas music consisting of Christmas carols and art music with a Christmas theme. The album is called Tranquillo - Sacred Christmas and will be released on November 22. Pianobasso is a duo that consists of pianist and arranger Thomas Gustavsson and double bassist Andreas Gustafson. On their previous albums, they perform well-known classical choral and orchestral works with their own arrangements and a personal expression, which means that they do not always follow the usual norms for this genre.

This album features five superb contemporary works for flute, viola, and piano, all in beautiful performances.