Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, first published in 2011 in Hebrew, and in 2014 in English, is justifiably one of the most celebrated books of our time. With its audacious subtitle, the book attempts to explain and explore why our particular species has thrived while most others have perished, and how we are set apart from all others due to our ability and desire to understand and give meaning to things that do not necessarily exist – such as the shared myths of language, money, religion, love, political boundaries, and a host of things not truly tangible but with which we have developed a shared understanding. What I have attempted is a humble musical response to human signposts, concepts, myths, or ideas that we as a species have carried with us, developing along the way these past couple hundred thousand or so years – breadcrumbs on the path of humanity. I imagined the modern piano as a sort of meta-instrument, present at the dawns of humankind, the cognitive and agricultural revolutions, and some of the most notable inflection points of our troubled and triumphant history. The piece begins not on the piano, but at the piano, with a single human breath, as I imagine the first music to have been, somewhere near the dawn of our species. If it is, like most, intended to die off one day, I imagine the very last music to sound more or less the same.

Following his recordings dedicated to Beethoven's piano concertos (BIS-2281) and Franz Liszt's Transcendental etudes (BIS-2681), the gold medal winner at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang, now brings these two composers together on this new recording with two summits of 19th-century piano literature: Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata and Liszt's Sonata in B minor. The Piano Sonata No. 29, the 'Hammerklavier', is the longest, richest and perhaps the most masterful of Beethoven's 32 sonatas. In it, he pushes the instrument and the performer to their limits, and even beyond. It's immense complexity, the utter diversity of it's movements and it's daring structural conception give the sonata an unrivalled place in Beethoven's �uvre. It was very rarely played during Beethoven's lifetime, and Franz Liszt contributed to it's discovery with a concert performance in Paris that has since gone down in history. No stranger to the description 'unperformable', Liszt also wanted to write 'the' piano sonata that would reconcile his own approach to pianism with Beethoven's legacy. His Sonata in B minor, a monumental work that transforms the piano into a virtual orchestra, is a landmark work that sums up Liszt's genius.

Eva Zalenga, winner of the German Music Competition, makes her GENUIN debut with an album featuring colorful and striking music for soprano and diverse instrumental ensembles. Highlights include a world premiere recording of Ignaz Lachner's work, a rare find by Darius Milhaud, and renowned repertoire such as Schubert's "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" and songs by Rebecca Clarke and Pauline Viardot. Eva Zalenga's "fine, light, and lyrical" soprano brings fresh interpretations to these works. Another standout is the revised version of Isabelle Aboulker's "Je t'aime", developed directly with the composer.

In an age of resurgent conflict and frenetic demands on our attention, Angel of Peace offers a slice of tranquillity in many forms courtesy of luminous, purifying music traversing six centuries. This album centres on the power and beauty of poetry in music, bringing together the exquisite simplicity of the songs of 12th-century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen with John Taverner's joyous large scale antiphons composed some 400 years later. Leap forward to more recent times and we hear new settings by Will Todd and Anna Clyne of words by Cardinal Newman and Rainer Maria Rilke. Commissioned for solo violin with choir, both works heighten the intensity of the poetry through the fascinating musical dialogue between strings and voice. Arvo Part, marking his 90th birthday, brings us full circle with his serene clarity. These timeless voices resonate with our deepest need for stillness and with each work we hope to share a moment of peace and connection through the timeless language of music.

Trio Gaspard continues it's acclaimed series of Haydn Trios with this programme of middle and later quartets, designed to be played (and enjoyed) as a standalone programme. As with the previous volumes, the trio include the world premier recording of a piece commissioned to compliment the Haydn's work - in this instance, Trance, by Sally Beamish. The performers note: we should like to highlight just a few examples of the ways in which the inventiveness of his musical materials continues to astound us. The Trio in B flat major for example, opens with a striking combination of opposites: a legato falling scale beginning from what was the highest note on Haydn's piano (F) and a rising arpeggio in short staccato notes climbing up from the bass. After two bars the elements swap places, the staccato arpeggio rising up in the right hand of the piano, while the legato elements continue in the bass. Together, these four bars form a perfectly balanced opening phrase. The character of this beginning feels completely natural and beguilingly elegant, yet it already contains all the main elements out of which Haydn goes on expertly to craft the rest of the movement. In the second movement of this trio, the song-like theme at the beginning is presented with an accompanying bass line. However, Haydn instructs the pianist to play both lines with 'the left hand alone' - a seeming finger-twister which actually lies surprisingly comfortably in the hand. It is an audacious idea and pianistically unique in Haydn's keyboard music.

Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt's latest project, Woven, is a fascinating album that fuses more traditional aspects of 21st-century jazz with the myriad possibilities of electronic synthesized sound. This collection of mostly original compositions showcases Pelt's instrumental artistry together with his commitment to composing works that explore new dimensions in jazz. Each track on Woven is meticulously crafted, perfectly balancing innovation with communicative emotional depth. The full range of contemporary jazz can be found here, from neo-bop, hard-driving rhythms to touchingly intimate balladic utterances. But Pelt's trumpet can also weave through electronic textures, creating a sonic landscape where the group's kaleidoscopic tone colors become a fundamental part of the melodic content. Joined by an impressive ensemble of musicians, Pelt and his collaborators create a fluid interplay of acoustic and electronic sounds, displaying their skill in integrating bold, contemporary elements while simultaneously underlining the very essence of jazz.

Derek Scott, born in Birmingham in 1950, has a long history of engagement with the British music hall and other forms of light entertainment, as both historian and performer. Many of his own compositions attest to this interest in popular styles, with his craftsmanship and natural feeling for a good tune producing music of immediate appeal. One of his two recent Dance Suites takes it's cue from ska, the twist and other enthusiasms from the early 1960s, and the other from older dance favourites. Time was when works like Arthur Benjamin's Jamaican Rumba and Percy Faith's arrangement of Alfven's Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 could be heard on every domestic radio and record-player; these good-natured Dance Suites recapture some of that lost innocence and it's relaxed energy - but his Serenade, another recent composition, touches gently on deeper feelings.

The recent 'discovery' of the music of Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) belies the fact that in the early years of the 20th century she was immensely popular, touring both Europe and the US as a pianist, exclusively in her own music. Changing fashions brought an abrupt end to this fame, but in the first thirty years of recording, over 80 discs of her piano music alone were released. Her own discs from 1901, presented complete here, are some of the earliest by a classical pianist. Many of her most popular pieces were recorded multiple times, but this set presents chronologically at least one version of every work recorded on 78s and introduces as many different pianists as practical.

Le temps des lilas is an ode to Romanticism, a love song and a nostalgic reflection on the bittersweet beauty of lost happiness. Dedicated to the music of Ernest Chausson, this album oscillates between passion and melancholy, wonder and nostalgia. The Concert Op. 21, a masterly work on the borderline between chamber music and orchestra, is carried by Pierre Fouchenneret's magnetic violin and David Violi's colorful piano. I Giardini also deliver a previously unpublished version of Poeme Op. 25, reworked for violin, piano and string quartet. The album closes with Pauline Buet's equally sensitive retelling of Chausson and Barbara's 'Temps des/du lilas', using cello in the former and singing voice in the latter. Barbara's song and Chausson's melody stand as a simple, timeless tribute to the magic of past moments and the fragility of human existence. Le temps des lilas is I Giardini's first full-length album for PENTATONE, following an already rich discography: Nuits (which has been awarded the prestigious Diapason d'Or), Bleu, Shaw and Faure, an EP released with PENTATONE in 2024.

A collection of anthems of (former) socialist countries. Some of them changed the anthem after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact with the result that they changed the political system.

Love is the common thread running through this first recorded recital by soprano Vannina Santoni; it's also an opportunity to look back over her fifteen-year career, through her leading roles, alongside her favourite musicians. With the help of the Orchestre National de Lille and Quebecois conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni, she places her sensual voice at the service of famous operatic arias featuring the amorous heroines of Gounod, Massenet, Puccini ('O mio babbino caro'), Catalini ('Ne andro' from La Wally) and Verdi (Desdemona's poignant 'Ave Maria' from Otello). The programme also includes a rare but sublime aria from Franco Alfano's Tolstoy-inspired opera Risurrezione (1904), as well as the magnificent 'Saint-Sulpice' duet from Massenet's Manon, with tenor Julien Dran. Finally, Vannina Santoni pays homage to her Corsican roots with a new orchestration of the lullaby 'O Ciucciarella' that Corsican mothers have sung to their children for generations.

SOMM recordings is delighted to release Frankly Speaking with Leopold Stokowski, which gives rare insight into the legendary maestro through live recordings of a performance, a rehearsal, and an interview. The CD features Stokowski conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soprano Gloria Lane in a performance of El amor brujo by Manuel de Falla at the Royal Albert Hall on 15 September 1964; a rehearsal of El amor brujo and Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the War Memorial Opera House on 19 December 1952; and a Frankly Speaking BBC Home Service interview with Stokowski answering questions put to him by John Bowen, Reginald Jacques, and George Scott at the BBC Studios in London on 25 August 1959. Leopold Stokowski's unorthodox seating arrangements, his flexibility regarding free individual string bowings, his emphasis on vibrato and tone, and his idiosyncratic baton-less conducting technique, were some of the practical elements that defined his popularity and his uniquely lush sound-coupled with allowing himself free reign to alter details of the musical text in his performances. Yet there remains a highly elusive element in the art of a great conductor. The rehearsal presented on this release provides a glimpse into Stokowski's creative process. One the one hand, he was fastidiously detailed and precisely demanding to the point of being draconian, but he also admired and encouraged an element of spontaneity, and even improvisation, within the framework of his extreme insistence on precision. The performance of El amor brujo-one of Stokowski's favourite compositions-was recorded at a BBC Promenade concert, and provides a stellar example of the effect that he was able to achieve through his singular and charismatic approach to making music. The extended interview, heard here for the first time since it's original radio broadcast in 1959, illustrates the brilliant repartee, levity, and charm of which this extraordinary musician was capable. Through the breadth of his public success-including his appearance in the film Fantasia and, even more significantly, his recordings as the Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which he led from 1912 to 1936-Leopold Stokowski reached a more wide-ranging audience than was typical for classical music in his day, and did much to debunk the perception that classical music is "elitist." Together, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra racked up international sales figures that were unprecedented for orchestral discs, attracted a far-reaching following, and captivated an audience that ranged from classical music newcomers to some of his most celebrated fellow musicians.

Aequora? aequor aequoris neuter noun? [AEQUUS] a smooth or level surface, expanse, surface; a level stretch of ground, plain; inmensumne noctis aequor confecimus? have we made it across the vast plain of night? the surface of the sea especially as considered as calm and flat, a part of the sea; per aperta volans aequora soaring over open sea; the waters of a river, lake, sea; tibi rident aequari ponti the waters of the sea laugh up at you. Gajic and Carrettin have performed under the moniker "Mystery Sonata" when performing new work and non-classical music styles. AEQUORA is the first album recorded under the name Mystery Sonata and reflects the duo's commitment to performing contemporary music alongside their work with ancient music, historical instruments, improvisation, and electric instrument collaborations with contemporary and aerial dance.

The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink's death in October 2021. BRKLASSIK now presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past years. This recording of Dvorak's Seventh Symphony documents a concert given in March 1981 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The "Scherzo capriccioso" is a studio recording, also from March 1981. Following the success of Antonin Dvorak's first visit to London in 1884, the London Philharmonic Society asked him to return the following year and to compose a new symphony for the occasion. It was an honourable request - after all, the London Philharmonic Society had commissioned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony six decades earlier! When Dvorak began sketching out the symphony on December 13, 1884, he was well aware of the high expectations involved - both his own and those of others. Most music critics and Dvorak biographers, however, have struggled with the interpretation of this exceptional piece. For example, it has been interpreted "politically" against the background of the growing German-Czech tensions of those years. But the existential power of the D minor Symphony - it's anger, it's expansive pessimism, i.e. it's confessional character - may also derive from the biography and personality of it's composer, which were probably far more complex, painful and problematic than any "Bohemian idyll" we might assume. Even in Dvorak's Eighth Symphony, which is considered to be more cheerful, and in his last symphony, "From the New World", one can still detect a more or less latent tendency towards tragic longing. The world premiere of the Seventh Symphony took place on April 22, 1885 in London, with the composer conducting. It became one of Dvorak's greatest successes. Dvorak's Scherzo capriccioso of 1883 is certainly more than just a filler on this CD. The fact that it is more dramatic and passionate than it's playful title suggests is probably due to the fact that it was written at a time of crisis in the composer's life. The work is an elaborate composition of convincing craftsmanship

The music on this album comes from a unique and extraordinary period of our history, between the 13th and 14th centuries, which saw the rise of Comuni and Signorie in central-northern Italy: in the years of truce after the end of struggles between the Empire and the Papacy, Italian national sentiment flared up in great spiritual, artistic, political and social fervor. In this fertile environment, a new musical art flourished, the Ars Nova. In contrast to the liturgical polyphony of the Ars Antiqua (12th-13th centuries), which from the first experiments with organa culminated in the highly refined practice of the School of Notre Dame, the term Ars Nova designates the development of secular polyphonic music from the 13th century in France and since the 14th century in Italy. The idea of dedicating an album to the theme of love in Italian music of the 14th century might seem a bit overused, given how rich and varied is the discography in this regard. But the reflection on love undeniably continues to be central in our lives, just as it was for the men and women of seven hundred years ago, whose voices in "Ch'amor mi prese" we interpret and we infuse with new life ad meaning. There are elements of human nature whose essence does not change over the centuries. The feeling of love is one of these: it is expressed through new forms and different codes, but it's most intimate essence is not affected by the passage of time. It does not matter whether the object of love, or it's ispiration, is human or divine: it produces in those who feel it that inexplicable and overwhelming bewilderment that poets, writers, composers, philosophers and mystics in every time and place have felt to express in words or music.