Heinrich Marschner was the leading German operatic composer between Weber and the rise of Wagner, but he also wrote prolifically for chamber forces. His Piano Trios No. 2 and No. 6 share similar qualities: both are in a minor key, they are rich in agitated melodies, and are full of inventive interplay between the three instruments. In contrast to the earlier light-hearted Trio No. 1 (available on 8.574612), No. 2 is a darker, more tension-filled work, albeit with Mendelssohnian grace. No. 6 also embodies elements of mid-19th-century Romanticism conveyed in music that ranges from the turbulent to the spectral.

For the second recording in their three-volume series, 20th- Century Vantage Points, the award-winning Telegraph String Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) releases Edge of the Storm - a thoughtfully curated program of string quartets by Grazyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg, written during and in the aftermath of WWII, spanning a decade from 1941 to 1951. Each composer lived a unique wartime life that unmistakably influenced their equally unique quartet masterworks of the period.

The ethereal quality of the Celtic harp fosters a sense of contemplation and healing, with a timbre that almost bridges the gap between earthly and heavenly worlds. On SONG OF THE STARS, harpist Rita Constanzi performs a program of Celtic folks pieces and melodies, showcasing the enduring, timeless quality of the instrument. This poignant music holds a special place in Contanzi's heart, as each night she performed for a dear friend in palliative care, lulling her to sleep with the calming, dreamlike sound she masterfully evokes.

For this, the fifth instalment of his Shostakovich symphony cycle, John Storgards turns to some of the earliest of the composer's orchestral output, works which Shostakovich largely wrote during his student years. The orchestral scherzo was a favourite task set by composition tutors of the time: the relatively simple form still demands that the student produce contrasting material for the outer and central sections, and manage the transitions effectively. Unsurprisingly, the form looms large in the early works of Shostakovich, as well as Stravinsky, Bartok, and many others. The two examples recorded here show the young composer's ability and style, although not yet perhaps a distinct compositional voice. They do both share links with the later First Symphony, however, which was composed as a graduation test in composition from the Petrograd Conservatoire. Shostakovich spent two years working on it, but the Symphony he eventually produced was an instant success, marking him out as a Boy Wonder among Soviet composers. Written four years later, the Third Symphony evidences not only the rapid development of Shostakovich as a composer, but the equally rapid change in the world he inhabited. He passed the newly required examination in Marxist ideology in December 1926, and managed to extend his registration as a postgraduate student at Leningrad Conservatoire until early 1930. He submitted the symphony with the explanation that it 'expresses the festive spirit of peaceful construction'. At this early stage of the first of Stalin's Five-Year Plans, he already demonstrated his realisation that political spin would be crucial to his creative survival.

In 2009, a large collection of guitar music from the Gitarristische Vereinigung Munchen ('Munich Guitar Society') was rediscovered in an attic in Munich. The collection included many significant works for guitar that have been hidden from view for decades. Many of these works are by neglected composers whose names are deserving of exploration and revival. Wilhelm Schmoelzl's Introduction und Variationen exists on the threshold between Classicism and Romanticism, while Adam Darr's perfectly realised Sonata is notable for it's striking use of Alpine folk music. The programme concludes with Carl Kamberger's witty and surprising Grand Fantasy, with it's multitude of quoted themes and unconventional techniques.

Three works by three women composers from three different countries, each piece with it's own original idiom, are performed here by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra under the direction of it's dynamic conductor and artistic director Malin Broman. Three works that assuredly deserve a wider audience! The Sea Sketches by Welsh composer Grace Williams open the programme. Inspired by the beaches of Glamorganshire and by it's seascape, this five-movement work seems in constant motion and evolution. One can practically taste the salt spray and feel the power of the waves. The second work is Grazyna Bacewicz's Fourth String Quartet, played here in an arrangement for string orchestra. Bacewicz was an important figure on the Polish music scene in the mid-20th century, and her quartet is an approachable work - something that has undoubtedly contributed to making it her best-known composition - with influences of folk music and passages which, according to Malin Broman, can only be described as heavenly. Vienna-born Johanna Muller-Hermann's String Quartet, also in an arrangement for string orchestra, concludes the programme. Exciting, beautiful and powerful, this work with it's post-romantic language is a testimony to the golden age of Vienna, when the music of Mahler, Strauss and her teacher Zemlinsky reigned supreme.

Florence Price had an abiding love of literature, setting poets affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance as well as Byron and Robert Frost, among others. Her largest choral work is Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, which sets a poem published in 1914 imagining Lincoln surveying the modern world with dismay. It's chorale-like passages and fugal finale, allied to her use of spirituals, gives the cantata a thoughtful, sometimes introspective grandeur. Song of Hope, which uses Price's own text, is an emotionally intense supplication that also draws on spirituals. Charming smaller settings devoted to the natural world, and two sacred numbers, complete the album.

Ei paesi di lingua tedesca, la musica per flauto solo ha una lunghissima tradizione, che ha il suo capostipite nella celeberrima Partita in La minore BWV 1013 di Johann Sebastian Bach, capolavoro inarrivabile e, in un certo senso, mai pi� eguagliato. All'epoca in cui Bach scriveva la sua Partita in La minore, intorno al 1720, il flauto traversiere (che gli inglesi all'epoca chiamavano anche German Flute) era praticamente all'inizio della sua travolgente carriera, che ne avrebbe fatto, nel volgere di poco tempo, uno degli strumenti pi� popolari al mondo. Era fatto quasi esclusivamente di legno, ed era uno strumento molto diverso da quello odierno, costruito in metallo prezioso (argento o, meglio ancora, oro), Relativamente facile da suonare, il flauto traverso si e arricchito nel tempo di una copiosa letteratura e ha avuto i suoi eccellenti virtuosi che ne hanno incrementato la popolarit� (nel secondo Novecento, per citare solo alcuni dei pi� noti, Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway e, in Italia, Severino Gazzelloni) e hanno direttamente o indirettamente sollecitato gli autori a scrivere per loro. La letteratura per flauto e effettivamente sterminata. Il nostro album ci offre una scelta di sei composizioni per flauto solo, scritte da cinque autori diversi, appartenenti in larga maggioranza all'area musicale di lingua tedesca; la sola eccezione e costituita dall'olandese Rudolf Escher, mentre Willy Burkhard era svizzero-tedesco. Gli altri tre, Karg-Elert, Paul Hindemith e Gunter Raphael, erano tedeschi.

Around the same time that Michael Korstick caused a sensation with the first and, to date, only recording of all Beethoven piano concertos (555 447-2), these recordings were also made. They shed light on the life of the "Titan" from the opposing perspectives of fashionable accessories and clever miniatures. These two aspects interweave in reverse chronological order: the Variations in C Minor from 1806 serve as the prelude, while the 24 variations on Righini's�Venni Amore�from 1791 conclude the portrait. In between, musical snapshots of the Bagatelles Op. 33 (1802) and Op. 119 (1822) frame the variations on an original theme, Op. 76 (1809), which would later become the�Turkish March.�In every piece, from the smallest vignette to the most intricate keyboard trick, the boundless imagination of one who set out to instill fear is at work.

This album comprises seven solo, chamber, and orchestral pieces composed over almost forty years. It does not include any compositions for Japanese instruments or for early instruments which are well-represented in other albums by David Loeb. All of the pieces were written specifically for the performers who have played them here.

On August 15, 1684, the Sun King's war against Emperor Leopold I and King Charles II of Spain reached a temporary end. Louis XIV had secured the advantage, and so several influential gentlemen sought to delight His Majesty with extravagant tributes. One of them was the Marquis de Seignelay, who spent the staggering sum of 100, 000 livres on illuminations, lavish banquets, and a concert at his Ch�teau de Sceaux on a summer evening. In doing so, he sparked a sensation that echoed for years: the Idylle sur la Paix (Idyll on Peace), featuring music by the court composer Lully and poetry by the court poet Racine. The Duke of Richelieu (the great-nephew of the legendary Cardinal) could only remain in second place. He, too, had planned a grand f�te at his estate, with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the unveiling of an equestrian statue of the king. But the devil lurked in the details, and the F�te never came to pass. Now, 340 years later, the Boston Early Music Festival brings this long-lost vision to life.

Born just months before his father's early death, Franz Xaver Mozart represented the great hope of his mother, Constanze, who envisioned the continuation of the musical lineage in the younger of her two surviving sons. She, therefore, ensured that he received a first-class education, and he strove with all his might to prove himself worthy of the trust placed in him. He became a distinguished and recognized pianist, while over the years he created a small but refined body of work dominated by intimate ensembles ranging from lieder to chamber music. His character, as revealed through his compositions, is not unlike that of his father: behind the classically elegant and occasionally humorous language lies a quiet, touching melancholy, which in his piano quartet presses stormily into the world of the Romantics.

Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After her recording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS-2282) and a recital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS-2492), both critically acclaimed, she brings us another solo project, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds it's raison d'�tre in today's very turbulent times. Park offers us different perspectives on the topic of exile with works composed between the 1920s and 1950s, by great composers who left their country as a result of political circumstances as well as by others who went into their own inner exile. Two pieces by composers who left their native lands for artistic reasons, Enescu and Ysaye, frame three substantial and very contrasting works by composers forced into exile, either because their existence was threatened or because of a feeling of alienation within their respective countries. The works of Bartok and Ben-Haim show composers who, in their longing for their homelands, succeeded not only in emphasising the value of their culture even more strongly, but also in anchoring it within the environment into which they had entered. Zimmermann's sonata, with it's unique expressive language, evokes the concerns of a young composer in the devastated Germany of the post-war period.

In the eighteenth century, a special genre of instrumental ensemble playing developed in church music: works were written for a wind instrument and obbligato organ. The geographical center of this genre was the kingdom of Saxony along with Thuringia. The majority of these works specify oboe as the wind instrument, less frequently horn or even trumpet, flute, or bassoon. Besides a few compositions in a free style, these were predominantly chorale preludes in which the wind instrument played the cantus firmus (the chorale melody), and the organ, usually in trio textures, performed elaborate, often very virtuoso figurations.

The music of Alan Hovhaness, one of America's most prolific composers, enchants with his signature synthesis of East and West. Influenced by his Armenian heritage and a fascination with nature and spirituality Hovhaness sought to create music "for all people, music which is beautiful and healing." This collection of works featuring the violin includes several premiere recordings. Concerto No. 2, one of a series of ten concertos for various instruments, requires the soloist and ensemble to play using distinctive effects including tone clusters, melisma, and playing without strict measure. Evocations of Armenian liturgy contrasted with dizzying Scottish jigs can be heard in the Violin Sonata.