The third and final installment of the Schumann recording series by South Korean pianist Jimin Oh-Havenith includes Carnaval op. 9 and the Davidsbundlertanze op. 6, two summit works from the 1830s which, with their unique combination of intensity and sensitivity, are undoubtedly among Schumann's best-known piano cycles and are particularly beloved by performers and audiences alike.

When someone goes on a journey, they have stories to tell. When the travelers are talented musicians with an open ear for foreign sounds, they will not just tell whimsical stories but will want to transform the impressions they receive into their own creations. This was the case with Cornelis Schuyt (pronounced S-chr-o-it), son of an organist. Born seven years before William Shakespeare in Leiden, the Netherlands, he had the opportunity to visit the land of blooming lemons, and the musical inspirations he brought back apparently stayed with him. Throughout his life, he composed four volumes of enchanting madrigals and published a collection of Padouanas and Gagliardes of breathtaking beauty. Manfred Cordes and the Weser-Renaissance ensemble present a successful mix of vocal and instrumental pieces you will want to hold onto.

Kiki of Montparnasse immortalised by Man Ray: the suggestive curves of a woman, her back with the two sound holes of a violin painted on the body itself, thus turning this feminine body into the most irresistible of musical instruments. Daughter of nothing who wants everything, a free woman unencumbered with conventions, Kiki is the epitome of feminine emancipation and is the inspiration for this discographic programme that illustrates the passage of song to chanson in the course of the twentieth century. The multiple facets of femininity, the audacity, the sensuality embodied by this natural, airy singing within this improbable trio should not deceive us. It is truly a genuine declaration of love that is sung on this recording.

The highly acclaimed Karg-Elert edition on AEOLUS is being supplemented by another series: for the ninth series, the monumental E.F. Walcker organ (1927) from the Hans-Sachs-Haus in Gelsenkirchen was once again found to be an ideal instrument for Karg-Elert's sensational late cycles, which has been completely restored in the St. Antoniuskirche Papenburg since 2018. The SACD with Elke Volker is the first recording of this instrument in it's new location, where it's fascinating sound comes into it's own better than in the dry acoustics of the former concert hall.

Montreal-based string nonet Collectif9 presents another innovative programme, featuring works by Hildegard von Bingen, Arvo Part, Michael Tippett, Nicole Lizee, Bryce Dessner, and Jocelyn Morlock. Rituaels is a new collection of music from the medieval to the modern era with a narrative - an artistic gesture - that recalls the human tradition of passing on knowledge and practices in culture and art. An element of continuity ties each work of music to the next, whether introduced as a drone or held note, a chord that imperceptibly transforms, or a group of continuously repeated notes. The earliest performances included dance and movement, an idea that influenced the interpretation and development of the programme that is revealed on this album.

Pavel Gililov plays Chopin

Multiple award-winners Holger Falk & Steffen Schleiermacher are the ideal duo for this multifaceted selection of songs by Georges Auric, an impressive addition to their Les Six anthology series.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to present Music for Two Pianos by the French virtuoso pianist and composer, Camille Saint-Saens (1835 - 1921), whose output for solo and duo pianists totals almost 200 compositions. The programme on this release comprises original works for two pianos alongside selections transcribed by Saint-Saens from his orchestral pieces. The featured pianists, Artur Pizarro and Ludovico Troncanetti, made their piano duo debut in Lisbon in 2023 with a recital featuring the repertoire on this album.�The artists share a love of performing two-piano and four-hands repertoire, and they have plans to continue their collaboration with further projects on stage and in the studio. The renowned Portuguese pianist, Artur Pizarro, winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition amongst others, performs internationally as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with the world's leading�orchestras and conductors.�The Italian pianist, Ludovico Troncanetti, is a graduate of the Milan Conservatory and is actively involved in reviving the works of the Russian pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. The recital opens with Saint-Saens' transcription of Le Rouet d'Omphale (Omphale's Spinning-Wheel), the most famous of his four symphonic poems inspired by Greco-Roman mythology. Both this work and the Marche heroique had their premiere in the original version for two pianos, the march seeming to presage the war that broke out between France and Prussia in July 1870. The first and most substantial of Saint-Saens' original two-piano works is a set of Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, based on the Trio section of the Minuet from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18, the Hunt. The eight variations plus a fugue, presto, and coda require considerable ensemble skill from the pianists to pull off. From 1886-the year of the Organ Symphony and The Carnival of the Animals-comes Saint-Saens' tribute to Chopin, whom he had passionately admired since he was a student. Saint-Saens vividly evokes the spirit of the Polonaise without actually quoting any of Chopin's own works inspired by the national dance of his native Poland. Saint-Saens frequently wintered in North Africa; in fact he died in Algiers in December 1921. During an 1889 trip to Las Palmas in Northern Africa, he began composing his Scherzo for two pianos. It's a work with echoes of Debussy, Ravel, and Satie, which he cautioned would be difficult to read at sight and would require much practice. Caprice arabe, along with the symphonic poem Africa and the "Egyptian" Piano Concerto, is one of a trio of piano compositions inspired by Saint-Saens' journeys to North Africa. The recital ends with another caprice, the virtuosic Caprice heroique, which leans more towards being capricious than heroic, despite it's powerful opening and fugue-like ending.

The young Wolfgang, aged only 10, composed the oratorio Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots (The Duty of the First Commandment) in 1767 on his return to Salzburg after a fabulous tour of Europe with his father Leopold and his sister. It's rich and varied orchestration reveals Mozart's precocious talent in using instrumentation to enrich the musical narrative and accentuate the emotions of the drama. The libretto depicts a half-hearted Christian who, thanks to Divine Mercy and Justice, is led back to the path of virtue by the Spirit of Christianity, despite the temptations of the Spirit of the world. Camille Delaforge and Il Caravaggio gracefully underline the harmonic skill of this most famous of musicians.

The album features archival recordings of an outstanding Polish violinist and teacher associated for years with Hanover, Adam Kostecki, a musical heir of such great violinists as David Oistrakh, Isaac Stern and Nathan Milstein. There are also new recordings, showing two versions of Johann Sebastian Bach's famous Chaconne - traditional, for solo violin, and in the artist's own arrangement, with the accompanying viola acting as a harmonic basis. The remaining compositions on the album are well-known virtuoso pieces, in which the violinist is partnered by chamber orchestras from Sopot and Hanover, as well as by guitarist Carsten Petermann. The CD's leitmotif is the phenomenon of Bach's Chaconne, a timeless that can still be interpreted anew. The album takes the listener into the world of slightly forgotten performance aesthetics; it also allows us to admire the sound of an old Italian instrument and a mature interpretation of the Bach masterpiece, although full of passion and fresh.

Three classics from Grimm's fairy tales musically retold by Berlin composer Mark Scheibe. Narrator Meike Droste and the recorder players of the Boreas Quartet Bremen bring the fairy tale characters to life in vivid language and new verses. The ensemble's entire range of instruments is used: from the tirilating sopranino to the donkey-like contrabass recorder.

What does the German word Heimat mean? The place of one's birth, a place of initial socialisation, or a feeling of security and belonging? Many composers made the city of Vienna their Heimat. Beethoven, Schubert, Ernst, Vorisek and Mozart - all represented on this recording - were shaped by it's rich traditions and contributed to the style that we now call Viennese Classicism. The Austrian capital has always been a centre for the arts, and music in particular. It attracts creative minds and artists and is the embodiment of a bridge between tradition and modernity. This recording aims to take the listener on a journey of discovery through a pivotal period around the year 1800, in the form of a spontaneous and intimate chamber music concert. It combines masterpieces of the duo repertoire for violin and piano with little-known gems such as Vorisek's Sonata in G major.

Astrig Siranossian and Nathanael Gouin pluck from obscurity three rare works that time has rendered (temporarily) invisible. The first of these sonatas for cello and piano, recorded at the La Grange-Fleuret Music Library, was composed by Jean Cras in 1901, when he was a young naval officer aged twenty-two. It displays his precocious mastery of form and texture. Pierre-Octave Ferroud's Sonata, written in 1932, four years before this promising composer died in a car accident at the age of thirty-six, evokes a very different mood. Marcelle Soulage is certainly the least-known of the three. A pupil of Nadia Boulanger, teacher, radio producer and journalist in addition to her work as a composer, she was a founder member of the Groupe Instrumental Feminin in the 1950s. Her Sonata in F sharp minor, written in 1919 when she was twenty-five, reveals inventive qualities that were already very apparent.

This recording is the first time I have immersed myself in the world of Sergei Prokofiev, a composer who has always held a special place in my life and in my repertoire. His Sixth and Seventh Piano Sonatas were written almost simultaneously at the start of the Second World War and are very similar in form and content. The conflict between man and machine, the individual and the collective, complexity and simplicity lies at the heart of their narrative. The music combines philosophical symbolism and almost orchestral polyphonic writing with brilliant piano technique and vibrant colouristic effects, making this pair perhaps Prokofiev's two most frequently performed works for solo piano. My connection with both sonatas began many years ago, so I was very interested in taking a quick snapshot of how this music resonates with me today, in the midst of these troubled times. Sergei Redkin

Arnaud Marzorati and his singers, 'Les Lunaisiens', are unrivalled specialists in the popular French songs of the past centuries. Here they tackle two great monuments of 19th-century France: the writer Honore de Balzac, and songwriter Pierre-Jean de Beranger, a poet and composer highly famed in his day for his genius in depicting society in all it's social diversity, from the poorest to the very richest. During this period Balzac was also making his sharply drawn portrayals of more than 5,000 characters in the course of his great opus of around 90 novels bearing the overall title of The Human Comedy. Here the 'Lunaisiens' have recorded musical settings of a wide selection of witty and often satirical verse, reflecting all the Parisian themes that obsessed Balzac: social climbing, money and greed, corruption, love and betrayal. With the participation of Lucile Richardot and Cyrille Dubois, Arnaud Marzorati and his ensemble give an enthusiastic account of Balzac's extraordinary human menagerie. As Marzorati concludes: 'The Human Comedy was greatly inspired by song.'