Vincenzo Maltempo's considerable catalogue of recordings for Piano Classics includes a much-admired set of the two concertos by Brahms. According to Fanfare, 'Maltempo... plays with commanding technique, grand gestural sweep throughout, and real tonal bloom.' For this second volume of the composer's solo output for the piano, Maltempo has devised a compelling journey for the listener, from the noble and often heroic profile of the Ballades Op. 10 to the late and distilled collections Opp. 116-119, taking in en route the Variations on an Original Theme Op. 21 No. 1 and the eight Klavierstücke Op. 76. In his performances, Maltempo brings out this stylistic evolution of both piano-writing and harmony, enabling us to appreciate for ourselves the degree to which Brahms continually challenged himself to enrich and experiment with his style, as well as ruthlessly exercising on himself the red pen and the sharp ear which made him so shrewd a critic of fellow composers. The scholar Denis Matthews identified three phases, or styles, in Brahms, not necessarily equating to the conventional division of early, middle, and late: the architectural, contrapuntal, and lyrical. On the surface, beyond a more intense chromaticism and openness to dissonance, there is relatively little to separate the Ballades from the late works. Much the least-often heard piece in this collection is the Variations Op. 21, and the teasing ingenuity of Brahms's treatment of his theme - initially quiet and introspective - is based on a rigorous exploration of contrapuntal possibilities. The Variations date from a period immediately after his fateful meeting with Robert and Clara Schumann in Dusseldorf, when he found himself stretched to live up to the Schumanns' extravagant praise of him as the pre-eminent successor to Beethoven. They and others were captivated by the composer's own mastery of his instrument as a performer, too, and the Op. 21 Variations show Brahms moving on from the extrovert keyboard lionism of works such as the First Concerto while still using the variation principle to celebrate virtuosity as both a composer and a pianist.

This second volume of Johannes Brahms: Complete Works for Viola continues Mikhail Zemtsov's deeply personal exploration of Brahms's late chamber masterpieces, heard through the warm, human voice of the viola. Centered on works originally inspired by clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, this album reimagines the Trio Op. 114, Quintet Op. 115, Zwei Gesänge Op. 91, and the Scherzo from the FAE Sonata from a new sonic perspective-one that reveals an intimate, unified string sonority and an expressive depth uniquely suited to the viola. Particularly striking is Brahms's instinctive use of the viola's lowest register, drawing the listener immediately into a world of introspection, tenderness, and inward poetry. More than a scholarly project, this recording is a heartfelt artistic statement, born from Zemtsov's conviction that the viola holds a special affinity with Brahms's musical language. By pairing the instrument with kindred voices-strings, piano, and the human voice-the album invites listeners to rediscover these iconic works as profoundly vocal, homogenous, and emotionally resonant creations. As the second chapter (Volume 2) in a complete cycle commemorating Brahms's legacy, this release offers not just an alternative version of familiar masterpieces, but a compelling re-illumination of their inner soul.

The inspiring new album Shapes of Water by renowned pianist Carmen Stefanescu takes listeners on a captivating musical journey. Following her successful debut album with Prospero Classical, The Voice of Piano, the pianist has recorded pieces based on the theme of water for her new release. Water has always fascinated artists as a theme and symbol - it stands for purity and renewal, but also for mystery, movement and the transience of time. In her new album Shapes of Water, pianist Carmen Stefanescu transports her audience into a world of sound in which water itself becomes music: it trickles, glitters, flows - and always comes to rest.

Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was a German-born composer whose work bridged the worlds of classical music, cabaret, and theater. Renowned for his collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht, Weill became a defining voice of the Weimar Republic, crafting a musical language that fused biting social commentary with popular idioms such as jazz, tango, and dance-band rhythms. His songs are remarkable for their wit, directness, and deep humanity - qualities that make them as relevant today as they were in the politically charged 1920s and 1930s. Weill's complete songs for voice and piano reveal the breadth of his artistic vision. Early works show his roots in late-Romanticism and his training under Ferruccio Busoni. However, it was through his partnership with Brecht that Weill found his distinctive style. His Songs blend satirical text with deceptively simple melodies, creating unforgettable portraits of urban life and moral ambiguity. Similarly, Mahagonny-Songspiel (1927), Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930) and Die Dreigroschenoper offer songs of ironic beauty that expose the corruption and absurdity of modern society. After emigrating to the United States in 1935, Weill reinvented himself once again, writing in English and embracing Broadway while retaining his sharp social awareness. American songs such as "September Song" (Knickerbocker Holiday, 1938), "Speak Low" (One Touch of Venus, 1943), display a haunting lyricism and emotional clarity that transcend genre. Collectively, Weill's songs for voice and piano form a rich and multifaceted body of work -at once sophisticated and accessible, European and American, classical and popular- embodying the restless creativity of one of the twentieth century's most original musical voices. Greek soprano Eleni Lydia Stamellou was Prize Winner at the Ferruccio Tagliavini Competition in Austria, with Dame Joan Sutherland as the president of the jury. She subsequently attended masterclasses given by Teresa Berganza, Edda Moser and Christa Ludwig. She sang in opera productions with MusicAeterna conducted by Teodor Currentzis. Her specialization is Renaissance/Baroque and Contemporary Music. She sang in productions of Berio and Hersant. Her excellent piano partner is Alexandra Listova.

Lovisa Jennervall - vocals Manne Skafvenstedt - piano, synthesizers August Eriksson - double bass, electric bass Edvin Glante - drums, percussion

A companion and friend of Dmitri Shostakovich. 1919-1996. "The unique magic of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's music is not easy to describe. Closely interwoven with his biography, which bore the painful marks of the upheavals of the 20th century, his compositions emerged as a musical reflection of his life. And yet, they resist clear-cut interpretations: Weinberg's music is too complex and ambiguous, as technically demanding as it is fascinating. At times, contradictions become audible-for instance, when Weinberg, in his darkest hours, finds a musical language that expresses lightness and joy. Such is the case in his Concertino Op. 42, composed in the summer of 1948, when the ever-growing antisemitism of the Stalinist regime, clearly palpable since the end of the war, began to affect Weinberg's life directly. At the same time, in the spring of 1948, the music scene came under the grip of government censorship as part of a propaganda campaign. At it's center stood Weinberg's close friend Dmitri Shostakovich... In March 1948, in an attempt to deflect suspicion, Weinberg wrote one of the obligatory and painful self-denunciations, acknowledging his "mistakes" and pledging to adapt his style to official expectations. As if to underscore these statements, he composed his Sinfonietta No. 1 Op. 41 around the same time-a work that stands out in Weinberg's oeuvre for it's straightforwardness and simplicity. Yet only a few months later, in June 1948, Weinberg composed the Concertino, Op. 42. Unlike the Sinfonietta, however, this composition can by no means be called a strategic work of political calculation..." (Excerpt from the liner notes by Verena Mogl)

Stradivarius is pleased to present Première by Julija Sadaunykaité, Lithuanian pianist and winner of the Grand Prix at the Malta Valletta International Piano Competition. This album, marking Julija Sadaunykaité's recording debut, takes listeners on an intimate journey into the musical world of this pianist, celebrated for her expressive depth and refined artistry. A listening journey through different creative worlds unfolds through celebrated pages of piano literature, with the performer intent on delving into the depths of the scores and capturing their extraordinary compositional textures. The album opens with Maurice Ravel's Miroirs No. 5: La vallée des cloches, the last movement of the Miroirs cycle, a five-movement suite for piano composed between 1904 and 1905. The opening piece, which Ravel dedicated to the French pianist and composer Maurice Delage, is followed by Olivier Messiaen's Première communion de la Vierge from Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, one of the most famous works for solo piano in the contemporary repertoire, and Robert Schumann's Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 11, composed between 1833 and 1836 and dedicated to Clara Wieck. This intense journey into the musical world of Julija Sadaunykaité concludes with Sonata No. 1 by Australian composer Carl Vine, born in 1954. According to the first printed edition, the work was composed for the Sydney Dance Company and is characterized by energetic rhythms, unusual harmonic shifts, abrupt tempo changes, dynamic contrasts, and rich textures, all of which allow performers to fully explore their technical and emotional range.

Ireneo Fuser was born in Carbonera (Treviso) on 12 November 1902. In 1925, he graduated in organ at the Liceo musicale «Benedetto Marcello» in Venice under the tuition of Oreste Ravanello and later specialized in Rome with Fernando Germani. In 1927, he graduated in piano at the Conservatory in Parma and, in 1935, in composition at the Conservatory in Florence. In 1928, he won the competition to succeed Ulisse Matthey as organist at the Sanctuary of Loreto, a position he did not hold, however. He undertook a brilliant concert career that was marked by a broad repertoire, refined recording skills, great virtuosity, and musical sensitivity that made him one of the most important Italian organists of his generation. From the 1940s onwards, he has given organ recitals for Swiss radio and RAI in live or recorded Sunday programmes in Rome and Turin, which have been on the broadcast schedules for more than twenty years. At the same time, he carried out teaching activities first at the Licei musicali in Venice and Pescara and then in Bologna, where he was established in 1939 as an organ teacher at the Institute that three years later would become the Conservatorio «G. B. Martini». A firm believer in the phonic excellence of the ancient Italian organ, he shaped his activity with the noble aim of enhancing the glorious period of Italian musical art of the past; among his countless musicological works, the anthology «Classici italiani dell'organo» (1955) is still considered a reference work today.

Lamenting Earth, the latest release from GRAMMY® Award-winning tenor Nicholas Phan, in collaboration with The Jasper Quartet and his long-time performing partner pianist Myra Huang, explores humanity's interaction with nature as expressed through composers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Franz Schubert's songs evoke images of water, stillness, and solitude as mirrors of human emotion. Vaughan Williams's On Wenlock Edge, drawing on A. E. Housman's poetry, places the individual within vast cycles of time and landscape - hills, wind, and earth - which persist beyond human joy and grief alike. Ives's Housatonic at Stockbridge memories, hymns, and the river blend together into a shimmering meditation on transcendence, where nature becomes a spiritual threshold rather than a backdrop. 21st century responses include Patrick Castillo's Skyline Palimpsest, an homage to New York City, once his hometown, that reflects on how nature's effects may shape the future of the metropolis. The title track by Canadian-born composer Vivian Fung, pairs American writer Claire Wahmanholm's poem "O" - which has been described as a lament, an elegy, and a clarion call to action - with Gen Z-ers urgent written responses to climate change. Nicholas Phan's burnished tone and passion for vocal chamber music bring vivid beauty to the range of repertoire that shares a central theme. Lamenting Earth is released to coincide with World Earth Day (22 April 2026).

For his solo recording debut, Ivan Moshchuk explores the bond between Medtner and Rachmaninoff. Their distinct piano cycles-Forgotten Melodies and Études-Tableaux-were conceived on the threshold of a violent epoch. Grounded in noble sensibilities, the sets reveal a portal to the idea of the Vergessene Weisen: the ideals of a veiled world. Here, the music becomes a lens for memory as a path that endures despite the relentless march of time.

The versatile French conductor and violinist Remy Ballot, following his recent chamber music recordings, now presents a milestone in music history for solo violin: the Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Op. 27, by the Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye. Ysaye composed these sonatas for six outstanding violinists who were at the peak of their artistry in the 1920s. They form a kind of visionary synthesis of the achievements of Bach and Paganini and the spectrum of Romantic violin music and the French schools from Franck to Debussy. Together with his wife Iris Ballot, the second CD of the album features the Sonata for Two Violins, a work that remains widely underrated to this day, uniting within itself the full abundance of all musical currents present at the time (1915) during a period of transition.

Francesco Palmieri has gathered in this album pieces that are special to him, with which he has sustained an intimate, lasting relationship - one might even say, of friendship. This is testified also by his fruitful collaboration with some of the composers presented here. The collection's title, Sans dire, taken from one of the works, evokes the familiarity that sometimes arises between friends; or, at times, between a performer and, through their instrument, a piece of music. As the composer himself notes: "Sans dire is a confidential, wordless conversation between intertwined souls, taking place around the body of the guitar - the instrument that, more than any other, reminds me of the tone of friendship and of those intimate connections that render words effective even when only hinted at." The program presents works for guitar or e-guitar, in some cases with added electronics. Composers include Luciano Berio (the famous Sequenzia), Salvatore Sciarrino, Marco Momi, Fausto Romitelli, and Pierluigi Billone. A fascinating journey through a sometimes hallucinating soundscape of unheard-of colours, timbres, and soundscapes. Francesco Palmieri (b. 1996) is a Berlin-based classical and electric guitarist whose work intertwines with contemporary music. He has performed at major festivals and concert halls, including Festival d'Automne, ManiFeste, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Ruhrtriennale, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Staatsoper Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Bregenzer Festspiele, ZeitRäume Basel, Musikfestival Bern, Festival di Nuova Consonanza, and Milano Musica.

In May 2026 Metier Records is proud to present Michael Hersch's monumental chamber work Zwischen Leben und Tod (Between Life and Death) performed by violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved and pianist Roderick Chadwick, marking the label debut of one of the most gifted composers of his generation. Hersch's music has been described by The New York Times as "viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music.claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity". In January this year he was selected as the inaugural recipient of the John Hopkins University Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Zwischen Leben und Tod is a startling yet moving 22-movement cycle for violin and piano written in inspiration of paintings by the surrealist German artist, writer and filmmaker Peter Weiss, each movement corresponding to a particular image. It's duration of 100 minutes makes it one of the longest works for violin and piano. Peter Weiss was best known as a playwright of searing and often disturbing stage dramas, including Marat/Sade which features the assassination of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in an asylum-set play by the Marquis de Sade. Weiss's little-known paintings and drawings share many of the same characteristics, featuring loneliness, violence and grief (themes of asylums, war, prisons, cannibalism) but also deeply meditative imagery (a string quartet, a garden concert, a boy in the grounds of a country house). Hersch found Weiss's spectrum of colour and motion, of proportion and spacing, particularly musical, and Zwischen Leben und Tod makes a deep and visceral engagement with these same explorations. The result is a complex, rich and multi-layered work featuring extremes of tempi, dynamics and technique making enormous physical demands on the performers, while being hugely rewarding. Much of the music is disturbing and raw, but the overall effect is affecting, offering the listener moments of solace. In David Hackbridge Johnson's fabulous booklet notes he says "The little modal chord figures, the open strings that plaintively grate over them, the wisps of folk song, the lullaby figures - all these are a welcome balm to sooth the sores of an atrocity exhibition. What tenderness amid the haunted landscapes!.. Despite these scenes of peril, after over 90 minutes between living and dying in Hersch and Weiss's world, a curiously cathartic sense is achieved; a procession of bleak images in sound that somehow resist despair."  Violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved has known and collaborated closely with Michael Hersch for over twenty years, and this is their first recording together. His performance here alongside that of pianist Roderick Chadwick is hugely expressive, displaying extraordinary virtuosity. Michael Hersch is professor of composition at the Peabody Institute and is a composer of "uncompromising brilliance" (The Washington Post). His output includes opera, theatre, chamber, vocal and orchestral works, performed across Europe and the US, including UK premieres at the Aldeburgh Festival and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He is the recipient of many prizes and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition, both the Berlin Prize and Rome Prize, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the President's Frontier Award from the John Hopkins University.

With this album, we enter into the court of the Swedish Queen Christina (1626-1689), who distinguished herself with her passions for the arts and sciences, but also through her exceedingly extravagant court life. A few years before her spectacular abdication and return to Catholicism (1654), she had employed an Italian opera ensemble including the Roman singer Domenico Albrici and his 21-year-old son Vincenzo. The latter had already made a name for himself at home and, within a few years in Sweden, composed many excellent vocal works. Together with several instrumental pieces, these survive in the famous Düben collection at Uppsala University. From around three dozen titles, Manfred Cordes has selected a beautifully melodious anthology, which has become an unmistakable hallmark of Weser Renaissance.

L'infinito is Giacomo Leopardi's famous and emblematic poem. The choice of this poem as the sole textual material for the composition of this set of vocal pieces was dictated as much by the evident musicality of Leopardi's verses as by the immense dreamlike openness of his imagination. The musicality of this language, the tonic accents specific to Italian, of course, but also the rhythm provided by the particular scansion of these fifteen verses. The multiplicity and diversity of the themes addressed by Leopardi, in only 15 verses, offer the composer a range of perspectives, paths to follow, and characters to explore, such that the challenge required diversity in the vocal treatment as well (since this is only a question of song, without instrumental intervention). This also justified the formal division into several pieces, each treating an aspect of the poem, sometimes fragmented, in a particular mode of vocal expression. After exploring registers ranging from simple declamation to the greatest vocal virtuosity, from the extremely low to the very high, from one single voice to several, the work concludes with nothing but the singers' respiration (breathing) recorded in an anechoic chamber the body's own rustling, now voiceless, expressing itself solely through breath. This music was originally written for the choreographic performance entitled 'Sanguine,' choreographed by Nadine Hernu. P.M.

Peter Beets' latest recording announces itself with unbridled authority: a vivid, hard-swinging statement, powered by a first-rate horn section anchored by three standout American voices of the new jazz vanguard, and propelled by a rhythm section of luminaries including Reuben Rogers and Willie Jones III-artists whose résumés include collaborations with legends such as Herbie Hancock, Dianne Reeves, and Roy Hargrove. Under Beets' assured direction, his New York Sextet shapes each work with commanding finesse. In reimagining a canon of Spanish compositions, Beets refracts Spain's musical heritage through a fresh and strikingly modern jazz lens. The album surges with vitality, it's swing taut and irresistible. While echoes of the flamenco idiom surface throughout, they are situated within a broader, architecturally ambitious musical landscape built upon works by Spain's most esteemed composers-Albéniz, de Falla, and Granados. These enduring and powerfully expressive pieces hold their own beside the legacies of Chopin, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky-composers whose works Beets has similarly reimagined in his inimitable style-yet remain unmistakably and proudly Spanish. Beets and his ensemble weave these traditions into a seamless dialogue with uncompromising, straight-ahead jazz, executed at the highest artistic level. The result is a singular fusion of virtuosity, cultural depth, and ensemble brilliance. Once again, pure Peter Beets.

Clarinettist Peter Cigleris is adding another gem to the SOMM catalogue less than a year after the release of his Clarinet Concertos (with symphonic band) [SOMMCD 0705, October 2025], which featured two world-premiere recordings and was roundly praised by Gramophone's Guy Rickards: "Cigleris is possessed of a beautifully mellifluous tone. A hugely varied, enjoyable programme, then, superbly played and recorded; enjoy!" For this release, Cigleris again offers concertante works, and again two first-ever recordings, but here the tutti forces, rather than winds, are the luminous strings of the London Mozart Players led by John Andrews. The trio of composers is British, and along with Gerald Finzi, whose Clarinet Concerto is justly beloved, come two others keenly deserving of the light this recording sheds on their music. The three works, all composed in the late 40s, are bound together by the common thread of the eminent English clarinettist Frederick Thurston (1901-1953). Denis ApIvor (1916-2004), born in Ireland to Welsh parents, was a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford and then at Hereford Cathedral, where he also studied clarinet, piano and organ. As a teenaged medical student he heard the English premiere of Wozzeck under Sir Adrian Boult and his musical inspiration was renewed, leading to private composition lessons with Patrick Hadley and Alan Rawsthorne. While there is a later version of his Concertante for clarinet orchestrated for an ensemble featuring full strings, harp and celesta, Peter Cigleris opens this album with ApIvor's original chamber version for piano and two percussionists (one on timpani). This early work was conceived during the composer's wartime posting to India, and the premiere (with Frederick Thurston) was given in London after two years of peace, a repeat performance going out live on the BBC Third Programme on 27 January 1948. This recording, the work's first, shows an already impressive thread of musical argument and masterly writing from a 30-year old ApIvor, who would reach the peak of his success some eight years later with his score for the Royal Ballet's Lorca-inspired Blood Wedding. Many who know the name Freda Swain (1902-1985) will think of pedagogical piano solos and be surprised to learn of the Portsmouth native's catalogue of 450 or so serious works including large-scale operatic, orchestral and concertante music as well as varied chamber pieces, all regrettably neglected for too long. Presented here in it's premiere recording, Swain's "Lumine naturi" Concertino for Clarinet is an expressive work in language that draws on tonality yet is highly individual and sweepingly melodic. The genre-title's Italian diminutive belies concerto-worthy length (24 mins) and thematic substance. Each movement bears an epigraph by Algernon Blackwood evoking an ultra-vivid natural scene, hence the Latin epithet: "By the Light of Nature". Though Swain never published the work, it is likely that the tutti of string orchestra anchored by a lone horn accompanies a clarinet part intended for Frederick Thurston, a frequent collaborator and the dedicatee of her Rhapsody for clarinet and piano. Thurston did play the premiere of Gerald Finzi's (1901-1956) Concerto for Clarinet and Strings at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival on 9 September 1949, and the masterpiece has deservedly become the composer's most frequently heard concert work.

The theme of the album "The Lovers" by the Duo Edlbauer Kuzo (Andrea Edlbauer, saxophone and Oksana Kuzo, piano) revolves around love, lovers, and the relationships between people-the states in which we live together and alone. The music transports listeners into various emotional moods and allows them to experience a diversity of feelings and forms of expression. This album features a combination of works already cherished by connoisseurs of the saxophone-piano repertoire, such as Robert Muczynski's sonata or Astor Piazzolla's "Grand Tango" in an arrangement for saxophone and piano, as well as completely new pieces composed for the duo. These new works are characterized by a musical language that touches immediately and captures listeners' hearts, such as "The Moment You Lost Your Love" by the young Austrian composer Viola Hammer, the atmospheric music "Monody" by Austria-based composer Theodor Burkali, and the passionate, temperamental, and multifaceted title work "The Lovers" by American composer Steve Bryant. Also featured are the Three Bagatelles for Piano by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov and the Cantilena by Theodor Burkali.

Baseball, Bach, a disused railway line and the misuse of music in Iraqi prisons might be unexpected inspirations behind the work of a composer who is an Oxford professor by day. But the piano music of Martyn Harry - born in Crawley, West Sussex, in 1964 - proves to be a wild, kaleidoscopic mix of just such unlikely influences: Satie, Sorabji, American minimalism, Prokofiev, Silvestrov and more, all intended to exercise the technique of his good friend, the fireball pianist Jonathan Powell, whose early death in December 2025 shocked the musical world. There is a gleeful, almost manic quality to much of this music that found a counterpart in the unflagging energy of Powell's playing. A song-cycle setting six early Anna Akhmatova poems likewise taps into the tension she found in intimacy, releasing a surprising degree of passion.

In early summer 1929, after returning home from Germany, the Austrian Composer Ernst Krenek embarked on a twenty-day journey through the Austrian Alps, accompanied by his parents and his second wife, Berta. They covered the longer distances between the 14 stops by bus and train, from which they undertook their hikes and excursions. Their route took them from Vienna to Upper Styria, the Salzkammergut region, Carinthia, and East Tyrol, then back to Vienna via Lower Austria. On this journey, Krenek is not just a composer traveling, but rather a poet, stage designer, and philosopher tracing the spirit of the times in his homeland. Just a few days after returning to Vienna, he set to work and, while the impressions of the trip were still fresh, created the music and text for the song cycle almost simultaneously. The Austrian tenor Alexander Kaimbacher and Anna Sushon on piano present the resulting entertaining, often humorous "Reisebuch aus den osterreichischen Alpen" (Travel Book from the Austrian Alps).

Nine works - nine musical microcosms: this CD brings together contemporary monologues for trombone, composed by an international group of renowned composers. Between expressive sound theater, inner dialogues, and ecstatic outbursts, an impressive soundscape unfolds, showcasing the trombone in all it's facets - poetic, radical, virtuosic.

Extending the Range is the result of several years of collaboration between Allmanna Sangen and the Malva Quartet. Our two ensembles are driven by a shared desire to explore new music and to promote music by female composers. Both aspects are reflected in this album of music for choir and string quartet, written by some of the most exciting Swedish and American composers of our time.

With it's new Dvorak recording, the Merel Quartet presents a vivid and insightful portrait of a composer who remains one of music's great humanists. Antonin Dvorak's chamber works combine direct melodic appeal, harmonic ingenuity, and an unmistakable warmth that speaks across generations. This album brings together key works from his late creative period, complemented by two rare gems in compelling arrangements for string quartet. Mary Ellen Woodside and Edouard Matzener (violins), Alessandro D'Amico, and Rafael Rosenfeld have long been central figures in the Swiss and international chamber music landscape. Their Dvooak interpretations are marked by refined timbre, structural insight, and an ensemble cohesion grounded in deep musical rapport.

Daniel Seminara's Fantasticus is a musical journey through different eras, aesthetics and languages. From the improvisational inventions of the seventeenth century to the experiments of the late twentieth century, each selected piece reflects a common impulse: the desire to explore, to amaze, to go beyond the limits of tradition and to give voice, through the guitar and the lute, to music that is born each time as if it were the first. The repertoire spans from works by Kapsberger, Galilei and Piccinini over Sor and Poulenc to Petrassi and D'Angelo, always with the ideas of 'Stylus Phantasticus' in mind.

Chopin sans Chopin is Adam Golka's highly personal tribute to Frederic Chopin, featuring works inspired by Chopin instead of music by the master himself. The album includes a plethora of international composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including choices inspired by Golka's Polish-American background and unique family history. The album includes a world premiere recording of the 1894 Mazurka in E minor by Natalia Janotha (1856-1932). This is Golka's fourth solo album on FHR.