The 'American dream' is the thread that connects these three works. Amy Beach was born in New Hampshire in 1867 and composed more than three hundred works, including a monumental suite for two pianos inspired by the Romantic tradition and based on ancient Irish melodies. Nadine Dana Suesse nicknamed the "Gershwin Girl" was born in Kansas City in 1909. She played her own compositions on the radio from the age of thirteen and composed hit songs, notably for Bing Crosby. She refused the attractions of Hollywood and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Her works disappeared from the repertory after her death, although the Berlinskaya Ancelle duo are keen to revive her music with this 1943 concerto, described as "romantic, but mixed with modern harmonies and chords straight from jazz". Victor Babin was born in Moscow in 1908 and emigrated to the United States with his wife Viktoria Vronskaya in 1937. Their piano duo was very successful there: they gave the first performance of Babin's virtuosic Second Concerto under the direction of George SzelI in Cleveland in 1957.

In 2014, the Museum Kleines Klingental in Basel presented the exhibition "Hans Huber and Basel's musical life around 1900". In 2015, the exhibition provided the impetus for the founding of the concert series "Basel composes" at the Museum Kleines Klingental. The idea was to create a platform for chamber music by composers who were born, lived or worked in Basel. Since then, numerous ensembles have performed works by well-known, unknown and forgotten composers from Basel. At the centre of this anniversary recording are compositions by Hans Huber, which were the starting point of the concert series, played by Andrea Wiesli, who has been particularly committed to promoting Basel's musical culture in the Klingental with the Trio Fontane. On the occasion of the exhibition, a concert series was organised as part of the accompanying programme with music by Hans Huber, by composers who influenced his music or were his pupils and friends. To realise this chamber music series, the Museum Kleines Klingental, advised by the pianist Andrea Wiesli, decided to acquire a historical Bluthner grand piano from around 1875. The Museum Kleines Klingental is located in the founding building of the Klingental Dominican convent dating from 1274. In 1929, the Cantonal Monument Preservation Office moved into the former convent. It founded the Museum Kleines Klingental in 1939. The large refectory, the former convent kitchen, the small refectory as well as the "Schaffnei" and the roof truss from the construction period of 1274 are particularly impressive.

On it's new CD from BR-KLASSIK, the Bavarian Radio Chorus, directed by Howard Arman, presents Christmas music from Italy. With his Lauda per la nativita del Signore, Ottorino Respighi modernised the medieval nativity play of the same name by the religious lyricist Jacopone da Todi. He had already explored art forms of the past in adaptations of early music, re-creations and free works based on Gregorian chants. In this piece, he assigned the medieval verses to three soloists - the angel, the Virgin Mary, and the shepherd - as well as a chamber choir. Accompanied by selected woodwind instruments reminiscent of the music of Italian shepherds, and by four-handed piano and triangle, the miracle of Christmas is brought to life in a simple yet impressive way. Francesco Paolo Frontini is remembered less for his compositions than for his many collections of Sicilian folk songs. From his Canti religiosi del popolo siciliano (Religious Songs of the Sicilian People, published in 1938), a collection of 22 songs for voice and piano underlaid with Sicilian dialect verses and their Italian translations, Howard Arman selected eight songs and arranged them for choir and instruments. Like Frontini, who already included regional variants from Catania, Palermo, and other parts of the Mediterranean island, Arman also arranged different regional versions of two songs. The melody of the Italian Marian carol O sanctissima, which is one of the most popular Christmas carols in the German-speaking countries with it's opening verse O du frohliche, could possibly also have originated from Sicily. The arrangement is once again by Howard Arman.

The three works on this recording bear witness to the changes that took place at the dawn of musical modernism. The reappraisal and reinterpretation of traditional musical genres and innovations led to new ways of organising and addressing the harmonic, melodic, timbral and rhythmic elements of music. Polish composer Karol Szymanowski developed a highly personal musical language that prioritises tone colour, an approach that is perfectly suited to the triptych Mythes, inspired by legends from ancient Greece. Here he developed a new mode of expression, a fusion of the violin and the piano into a single entity with the use of extended violin techniques. The Hungarian Bela Bartok assimilated Szymanowski's contribution and composed his two sonatas for violin and piano in quick succession at the beginning of the 1920s. These two works, as daring as they are demanding, skilfully blend the influence of contemporary composers such as Debussy and Schoenberg with elements of Central European folklore. Frank Peter Zimmermann, whose recent recording dedicated to Bartok's two Rhapsodies and Stravinsky's Violin Concerto (BIS-2657) has received international critical acclaim, performs these landmark works with pianist Dmytro Choni, his regular partner since 2023.

George Lloyd will mostly remembered for his 12 Symphonies, but his compositions include Opera, Choral, Concerto, Piano and Chamber Music. In 2023 the Trustees of Lyrita Nimbus Arts reached an exclusive agreement with The George Lloyd Society to take over the sale, hire, archiving and preservation of all George Lloyd's scores as well as the commercial exploitation of the collection of recordings made by the Society in the 1990s and conducted by the composer. Because George Lloyd's personal attention is a dominating influence on the scores and recordings, which he mostly conducted himself, we have decided to headline this representation the 'Signature Collection'. Scores will be cleaned, and new orchestral parts created, recordings will be reorganised into collectable sets available on CD, Download and Streaming with new notes commissioned from Paul Conway.

Jose Elizondo is a multifaceted Mexican composer. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Harvard University. In the field of technology, Jose works full-time as an engineer in a company that specializes in speech recognition technology systems. As a composer, Jose writes chamber and orchestral music in a style that is lyrical and expressive, often drawing inspiration from Latin American folk music.

The Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was one of the greatest composing child prodigies in history. His keyboard style was highly personal and fully formed from the start, yet he seems to have had hardly any instruction on the instrument. Apart from a few lessons when he was five years old (not from an eminent teacher, but a needy relative), he seems to have been entirely self-taught. Celebrated British pianist Martin Jones released NI 5705 The Complete Piano Music of Erich Korngold on 4 CDs which is still available. This compilation includes many of the prodigious works written even before Korngold entered his teenage years.

This anthology of unknown American violin sonatas - the first of a series - reveals music of astonishing craftsmanship and energy. All three composers - Henry Holden Huss, Henry Schoenefeld and Rossetter Gleason Cole, born less than ten years apart - went to Germany to study before returning to enrich American musical life at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sheer confidence of their writing in these sonatas, for both violin and piano, in a bold Brahmsian style indicates how much more fine music still has to be discovered, in the output of these three men and from their 'lost generation' of American composers more generally.

Discovering Wilfred HeatonPremiere recordings of major instrumental works by a remarkable yet overlooked English composer Wilfred Heaton (1918-2000) is a name well-revered in brass band circles, but nearly unknown in the wider world of classical music.�Discovering Wilfred Heaton�seeks to change that with no less than seven premiere recordings from pianists Murray McLachlan and Rose McLachlan, tenor James Gilchrist, clarinetist Linda Merrick, and flutist Alex Jakeman. The album is anchored by the first recording of Heaton's monumental Piano Sonata, which was performed in 2024 to rapturous applause by Murray McLachlan at Manchester's Stoller Hall. The Sonata, composed in the 1950s, is a work of striking ambition and depth. Harmonically daring, emotionally raw, and technically formidable, it stands comparison with the great mid-century sonatas of Bartok and Prokofiev. From the muscular counterpoint of it's opening, through a grief-tinged slow movement and a dazzling finale, Heaton's sonata reveals a powerful, individual voice he was fearless in embracing big themes, bold melodies, and contemporary idioms. Also featured are first recordings of the�Three Pieces for Piano�(1954), and the poignant piano suite�Pilgrim Reflections, adapted from Heaton's mystery play�Pilgrim's Song. A selection of Heaton's rarely-heard�songs written in his youth and again in later life are performed here by the acclaimed tenor�James Gilchrist, accompanied by�Rose McLachlan. Together, these works illuminate Heaton's stylistic evolution: his command of bitonality, rhythmic complexity, and melodic invention, rooted in a deep understanding of Bach and Brahms, and influenced by Walton, Hindemith, Bartok and Stravinsky. Heaton's career was shaped by a lifelong tension between personal conviction and professional ambition. A deeply private Yorkshireman, he turned away from a mainstream musical path after early promise studying with Matyas Seiber and submitting works to the Society for the Promotion of New Music choosing instead a life of teaching, reflection, and selective composition. The result is a body of work of exceptional quality, much of it unpublished or unheard until now. This album is not only a significant act of musical archaeology by Heaton's biographer and editor Paul Hindmarsh� - it is a compelling argument for Heaton's inclusion among Britain's most original post-war composers. Track highlights:-Piano Sonata (premiere recording) - Murray McLachlan, piano-Three Pieces for Piano (1954)-Pilgrim Reflections (suite for solo piano) For fans of:�Bartok, Britten, Prokofiev, William Walton, Elisabeth Lutyens, early Tippett. An essential discovery for collectors, performers, and listeners drawn to British 20th-century repertoire beyond the usual names.

Lux Stellarum (Light of the Stars) is a short requiem for choir and organ, written for Zach Ullery, Andrew Dewar, and the choir of the American Cathedral, Paris. Along with texts by Marjorie Pickthall and John Donne, Lux Stellarum interpolates a number of biblical passages about stars and the universe.

For her first project at Cypres, young Belgian pianist Cassandre Marfin thinks big and has come up with Jusqu'a la nuit, a triptych devoted to chromesthesia, one of the many forms of synesthesia known to date. Synesthesia refers to the general alliance of two senses within the brain of an individual. Chromesthesia, on the other hand, refers specifically to the association between colours and sounds. Each volume of this trilogy is dedicated to a primary colour: blue, yellow and red. This first volume focuses on blue, which is undoubtedly the colour most present in music and the one most appreciated in the Western world. According to Cassandre Marfin, it evokes the world of night and dreams, something intangible and indefinite. It is a source of multiple representations in our imaginations. Through a skilfully conceived programme, the pianist associates this colour with ideas, metaphors and compositional systems that allow us to form our own personal impression of blue.

In keeping with the fascinating rediscoveries of French music made by the Palazzetto Bru Zane, this programme of sacred music presents works by well-known composers such as Saint-Saens and Faure as well as lesser-known works such as the Kyrie by Clemence de Grandval and Charlotte Sohy, the Ave Maria by Leon Boellmann and Fernand de La Tombelle, and a Cantique de Jean Racine composed by the deeply religious Mel Bonis to a different text from that chosen by Faure, in memory of her deceased son edouard. Instruments were added ad libitum for performances in the most prestigious religious buildings to encourage performances of the said works in other places as well. Faure's Tantum ergo, for example, with organ, piano or harp and double bass, could be played in church, in concert, or at home. These discoveries are what make this programme so interesting, bringing the Choeur de Radio France together with vocal and instrumental soloists of the highest calibre under the expert direction of Christophe Grapperon.

In 1955, the conductor Gary Bertini founded the Rinat Choir and thus established professional choral music in Israel. The founding of the Rinat had a significant influence on the development of the Israeli choral scene; the choir was finally named the national choir in 1972. Psalms, verses and hymns were set to music for the Rinat Choir by the country's leading composers and transformed into extensive Hebrew motets and oratorios. The founding generation of Israeli music consisted of outstanding professional musicians who were born in Europe around the turn of the century. Although these composers came predominantly from Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia, their sources of inspiration can by no means be reduced to the music of their respective countries of origin. On the contrary: what united many of these composers was their fascination with the traditional music of the Jews, especially of Sephardic, Persian and Yemenite origin, and with the music of the Arabs they encountered in Palestine. The next generation of Israeli composers were not necessarily born in Israel either, but were strongly influenced musically by this country from the very beginning. In the 1960s and 70s, this generation disseminated their inspirational sources and borrowed from contemporary styles that they had become familiar with during their studies in Europe and the USA. While some representatives of this generation carried on the tradition of the founding generation, other composers introduced current developments in the musical world into the Israeli art music of their time. The pool of influences was also expanded to include American composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, John Cage and Lukas Foss.

Of the few pupils of Clara Schumann to make recordings, Fanny Davies (1861 - 1934) was by far the most important. She studied for two years with the great pianist and very much saw herself as a disciple. She went on to have a significant career and was praised for her noble and unsentimental approach to the music of Robert Schumann in interpretations that were said to resemble Clara's very closely. The three recorded works she left us are thus some of the most important documents of 19th-century pianism we have, and we are delighted to return them to the catalogue in new transfers. Adela Verne (1877-1952) is less well-known today, perhaps because she left only two recordings, made in 1917, but in her day, she was a major figure, starting life as a prodigy and giving the first performance of Brahms' 2nd Concerto at the Proms in 1905. Her principal teacher was her elder sister Mathilde Verne, another Clara Schumann pupil. This is the first time her discs have been reissued.

On the path to true faith and it's practice to please God, there have been regular heated debates over the role of music. Reactionaries repeatedly closed the lid on excessive cheer. This was also the case in the Netherlands of the 17th century. The reformist spirit of the Frenchman John Calvin led to an almost complete ban of music during worship services, despite the fact that the psalms of David ("Sing unto the Lord") provide unassailable proof to the contrary. Shortly before 1600, the great Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck discovered how these psalms could be, and were permitted to be, set to new music. The "Orpheus of Amsterdam" succeeded in transforming imposed restrictions into acoustic wonders. Our small selection of psalms, alternating with several organ works, proves once again the victory of the spirit over heavy subject matter