The name of the young Czech virtuoso Michaela Koudelkova should be committed well to memory. She has far more going for her than just the names of her teachers (Peter Holtslag, Erik Bosgraaf). She is a winner of the Tel Aviv Recorder Competition and a finalist of the York Early Music International Young Artists Competition in England, and her solo recitals have included an appearance at the prestigious Oude Muziek Festival in Utrecht. Her Supraphon debut, for which she has chosen masterworks by Handel and Corelli, showcases her uncompromising technique, but above all it shows her supreme musical sensitivity and her interpretive stylishness, including the ability to improvise, participating in the recreation of notated works. Of all the sonatas listed on the album, only one is intended for her instrument; the rest were originally for violin or transverse flute. Of course, a characteristic of the baroque era was great freedom in the choice of solo instruments, as is clear from period printed editions, and the recorder was very popular at the time. Besides the most common alto and soprano recorders, the recording also features an instrument with a darker timbre, the voice flute in D, which was popular in England, and the sixth flute, pitched an octave higher and often used for music played between acts of Handel's London operas. Besides sonatas by Handel, the soloist has also chosen three sonatas from Corelli's Opus 5. Over the centuries, the art of improvisation has been taught using the passaggi in the slow movements of the twelve violin sonatas in this iconic collection. The last and most famous sonata, "Follia", is the brilliant and rather experimental climax of the album, combining the creativity of the composer with that of the performers. Lightness, liveliness, spontaneity, bravura, intoxicating richness of sound - Michaela Koudelkova's exciting Handel and Corelli

The new album by pianist Ragna Schirmer tells the story about the blind composer Maria Theresia von Paradis. Louis Braille invented the tactile writing system for Maria Theresia in 1824/25. Ragna Schirmer plays on an original replica of a grand piano from the composers' time, built by the Greifenberger Institut. Maria Theresia's contemporaries Mozart and Haydn accompanying the repertoire list.

This recording includes works by two leading Czech composers, both of them women. Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940) lived in the first half of the twentieth century, and the career of Sylvie Bodorova (b. 1954) has spanned the final decades of the twentieth century up through the most recent years of the twenty-first. Both composers have excelled in all musical genres, except that Kapralova's shortlife precluded her from exploring the world of opera, her final planned project.

The new Philharmonix VOL 4 album "Baltic" is dedicated in a special way to the music of the Baltic States. Sebastian Gurtler, composer of the entire Philharmonix repertoire alongside Stephan Koncz, was inspired by melodies, folk songs, and children's tune

The Concerto Copenhagen and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir celebrate the 90th birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Part. The new recording under the musical direction of the Estonian chorus master and conductor Tonu Kaljuste is the perfect 'birthday serenade' for their renowned compatriot. The repertoire includes "Silouans Song", "Stabat Mater", "Trisagion", "Berliner Messe", "Festina Lente" with a unique combination of historical/period instruments and contemporary choral singing.

Award-winning duo, cellist Doris Hochscheid and pianist Frans van Ruth present enchanting works by Daniel van Goens with natural elegance and breathtaking virtuosity. Their highly-acclaimed Dutch Cello Sonatas Project is a veritable treasure trove of musical rediscoveries and the duo was honoured with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau for their contribution to Dutch culture.

The magic of art needs a frame, a somewhat solid container to hold the freedom that can only be found once we integrate some form of structure. And that also holds in every other area of life. We all need a frame, a structure, a rhythm, or else, we fall apart. This human form needs the body, and yet it transcends the limitations of the body - through art.

Jan H Borjesson - organ

La Battaglia di Legnano is among the least recorded operas of the Verdi repertoire. Currently the only studio edition available is the Philips' conducted by Lamberto Gardelli in the Seventies. However, prior to that famous edition is this recording made at La Scala in 1961 which enjoyed great fame and diffusion especially in the Eighties and Nineties. Currently this famous live version has been unavailable for a long time. For this reason, and for the excellent quality of the sound recording, we have decided to make this important document available again. Naturally, a new equalization of the sound source has been carried out, making the original recording as natural as possible. The vocal cast remains one of the greatest possible in the entire history of recording.

Ferdinand Hiller was the son of a wealthy industrialist from Frankfurt. He studied with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar from the age of ten, lived for several years in Paris and finally settled in Cologne in 1850. He took over the direction of the Gurzenich Orchestra and the municipal conservatory, organised twelve instalments of the Lower Rhine Music Festival and played an outstanding role in Cologne's music scene. Nevertheless, the oeuvre of the precocious composer Ferdinand Hiller still requires careful review and evaluation. To this end, the two symphonies in F minor (1832) and E minor (1848) recorded here are revealing - these are two fiery, dramatic works of a vivacious temperament. He took audible pleasure in forcing his ideas into classical forms and rejoicing in the fact that they clearly embraced the boundaries.

Besides being an engineer, a mathematician and a professor of geography, Luigi Hugues was also a flutist, a composer and an esteemed exponent of the nineteenth-century musical genre called Salon Musik. Born in 1836, he started and pursued his musical education together with his brother Felice. Both studied the flute and accompaniment piano; Luigi also proceeded with the study of composition. As we have already pointed out, music was not his only interest. He was also an eminent professor of geography and a scholar in that field. In 1859 he was a teacher at the Istituto Tecnico "Lerdi" of Casale Monferrato, and from 1875 onwards he was appointed professor of geography at the Regia Universit� of Turin. At the same time, in the years between 1863 and 1875 he was director of the Civica Scuola di Musica, a member of the board of directors of the Teatro Municipale, the conductor of the Corpo di Musica della Guardia Nazionale of Casale Monferrato, the organiser of the concerts of the Accademia Filarmonica of Casale Monferrato, and an organist first in the Chiesa di Santo Stefano of Casale, then in the Duomo of that city. Hugues, as previously stated, composed works of the Salon Musik genre: pieces that were suitable for everyday use and could be appreciated by a vast public, but at the same time were unmistakably characterised by didactic features. A careful analysis of his music, moreover, reveals a conscious, intentional use of the virtuosic style that was in vogue in the nineteenth century and was greatly loved by the public of concert halls: this feature is particularly noticeable in all the variations on operatic themes written for one or two flutes and piano accompaniment.

The poet's words awaken the song that sleeps dreamily in all things, as Eichendorff aptly put it. According to Romantic artistic aesthetics, however, only instrumental music can reveal the inexpressible. The two works by Brahms and Schubert presented here harbour auratic traits that can be traced back to the origin of their lyrical themes in their own songs.

Pressed between bodies heaving to the pulse. The room inside the drum: each of us within it's envelope. Sent elsewhere. Stamped to distant locales but together in this resonating box. My wrists were broken. My mind screwed on tight.�I wake next to a reflecting pool. An inlet. The water here is cool, shaded by trees that lean in to listen, swaying lightly with the gentle breeze, the hairs on my neck alive. I start my own religion here.�But I ask of the sea: long to see it's waves crashing. As I approach, the blue-green colors of my oasis dull to a metallic blur. The wind a knife's edge into my bleared eyes. From below the surface, shafts of artificial light emerge. Power indicators of unseen machines from another time, rising endlessly... narrow spotlights pushing into the sky. My heart quickens. These climbing pixels build a hard-edged latticework of digital snow, blinding me. I try to tune it. I look for the one of one. No wiser, I exhale and step into a clearing among the trees: an orderly garden path. I pace slowly among the carefully selected native plants... am I yet awake? Each turn reveals that these rows lead into a deep forest. The roots intertwine with a soil rich in jumbled wiring, broken monitors, cables to outdated devices. The path opens suddenly onto an outcropping above the sea. From this new vantage, each square of color in the water pollutes it's surface with 8-bit splendor. I spin back into the forest, the roots and limbs now formed of telephone cords, drive thru bank tubes, and strings of LED lights. They whirl me into a dance: a rite of doubt and self-abdication. Awakening from the depths of this wood: a giant stone head. Looming. Impassive. It's face in a half-smile of cool knowing. It's surface like a freshly cut tree trunk, brindled with geological age and the scars of it's removal from the earth. I am lifted up and held against it: a familiar texture, it's rough beard streaked with aquamarine moss. A deep calm comes over me: of the kind one feels when giving in to the weight of a midday slumber or a powerful drug. A kept beast that loves it's strict, heavy-handed trainer. Below this effigy, an entry to the junkyard earth. I walk myself dutifully down the mossy stairs to my resting place, each step echoing with a memory of an imagined golden age. "Activity involving in a single process the many, turning them, even though some seem to be opposites, towards oneness, contributes to a good way of life." - John Cage

Memorable melodies and a descriptive sense of place mark out Alexey Shor's two concertos. The Cello Concerto juxtaposes styles across the epochs in pursuit of a unique 'musical pilgrimage', while in the Violin Concerto No. 3 his focus is on 'seasonal' Manhattan, as he adds a contemporary vision to the historical precedents set by Vivaldi and Piazzolla. Phoenix is a rhapsodic fantasy, lyrical and full of variation, which evokes a sense of renewal and transformation, while Schubertango offers a celebration of playful contrasts.

Cassandra is an opera about knowing what lies ahead yet not being able to do anything to prevent it, about sensing impending disaster, but not being heard. It's an opera about today. Two main characters, prophets in their time, are heralds of the world to come. Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, warns against the doom facing her people during the Trojan War. Her warnings go unheeded and the world, as it was then known, comes to an end. Sandra, a young modern-day climatologist and PhD candidate, has turned to comedy as a language through which she hopes to communicate her research on climate change and global warming, to no avail. Finally, the two meet: Cassandra from time immemorial, Sandra battling with the complexities of today. Perhaps it will be Cassandra's turn to make Sandra laugh