A native of Ukraine, Alexey Shor now lives and works in New York. His music has received prestigious performances and recordings in collaboration with leading international musicians. Joining a long tradition of music inspired by literary sources, From My Bookshelf is a series of musical character portraits that range from the tortured soul of Quasimodo to the dashing D'Artagnan, with plenty of fantasy and romance in between. The engaging and virtuoso Flute Concerto No. 1 combines traditional Classical forms with unexpected harmonic language and intricate rhythmic vitality.

For the Year of Czech Music and for the 150th anniversary of the death of the Czech composer Vilem Blodek, Supraphon has prepared a real treat for opera lovers in the form of the 1959 stereo recording of the opera In the Well (V studni), never before released on any physical medium. The recording was released briefly in the first half of the 1960s on LP records, but only in a mono- phonic version. After that, it disappeared from the catalogue for several deca- des. Only now, nearly 66 years since the recording was made and after careful restoration of the sound from the original tapes, this rarity from the early days of stereophonic recording technology is being released in all of it's original sonic glory. The soloists were Milada �ubrtova, �tepanka �tepanova, Ivo �idek, and Zdenek Kroupa. The chorus and orchestra of the Prague National Theatre were conducted by Franti�ek �kvor in his only complete operatic recording in the Supraphon catalogue. At the same time, this release also commemorates the recent 100th anniversary of the birth of Milada �ubrtova, a singer at the Prague National Theatre. On CD for the first time in the original stereophonic version

Omikuji for spoken voices, violin, flute (including bass flute), clarinet (including bass clarinet), piano, percussion, and fixed sounds

It's a gift that has been handed to Jasper: the ability to choose a musical partner for a unique project where the sum of the parts far exceeds the normal mathematical result. The result is the epitome of synergy. These great live recordings are addictive. Not merely because of their lovely tones, thrilling turns, subtle waywardness and the restrained calm that pervades them. No, it is first and foremost the overall vibe that makes this release so special. You're literally transported to a sound world that breathes, where a liberating space prevails. Your sense of time wavers and you feel connected to the language of the players. Listening to them places you fully in the Now.

In Mosaici di Piazza Armerina, Semini takes up the cloistered music by Respighi with Vetrate di chiesa. The evocation of the figures in coloured pieces is translated into a use of continuously overlapping motifs, which creates a rotating, cyclical effect and alludes to the eternity of art, perpetually capable of dying only to rise again. On his side, Hindemith created 'music of use': art from workshop and craft, bound to live beyond the romantic myth of transcendental inspiration.

No half-way measures: high-class debut of a German-Dutch sextet. Between Barcelona and Arnhem: strong debut of the band of Maximilian Hering. Butter on the herring-straight to the point: multi-layered debut with personal touch.

Music is not a hoax, it is a revelation... It reveals elements of beauty that cannot exist in any other sphere, the contemplation of which reconciles us to life not temporarily, but forever. It enlightens and brings joy." These words of Tchaikovsky can refer to both of the works presented here. Tchaikovsky called his Suite No. 3 the most successful of all his works performed abroad and successfully conducted many performances of it on tours. For Dmitry Liss, the chief conductor of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, "this is one of the most unexpected works by Tchaikovsky and my near-favorite. If you look at the final movement from a modern perspective, it's hectic stylistic diversity looks almost postmodernist and has been created with subtle and stylish use of irony. The theme of the Suite's finale is consonant with that of the Rococo Variations, hence our decision to include both works on this album." The world-renowned cellist Boris Andrianov performs the Variations on this recording. He considered it "a sacred duty for a Russian cellist who is also a winner of the Tchaikovsky competition not only to record this work, but also to look at it anew.

Under the aegis of Veronique Gens and Susan Manoff, patrons of the 2024 edition of the Academie Orsay-Royaumont, four duos of young singers and pianists have put together a program whose history is woven by the interaction of pictorial and musical forms, from the Abbey to the museum. The masters of Lied and melody - Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc... - rub shoulders with lesser-known names such as Rebecca Clarke, Ivor Gurney and Isang Yun. This new b�records disc presents the fruits of their labor.

Georg Philipp Telemann belongs to the auroral phases of the Enlightenment, a musician with an inexhaustible and perhaps unparalleled creative vein in terms of the breadth of his catalogue. Johann Michael Bohm was skilled in the violin as well as the flute and oboe; Johann Friedrich Fasch was a very industrious music craftsman, although reluctant to publish his own work, which appeared posthumously. The embarrassment that seizes some commentators is due primarily to little familiarity with the music included in this album, informed by a sound "individualism" and a systematic spirit, yes, but still little inclined to the rigid regularities that perhaps only the late-Romantic school imposed on the view of music.

Gramophone considered Oleg Marshev's first album of Prokofiev on Danacord (DACOCD391) as featuring 'one of the most authoritative and impassioned performances [of the First Sonata] on disc so far'. His interpretation of the 'War' Sonata trilogy was awarded a 'Classic CD Choice' and compared with pillars of the gramophone such as Richter, Berman and Ashkenazy. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oleg Marshev trained with Valentina Aristova at the Gnessin State Musical College and with Mikhail Voskresensky at the Moscow Conservatoire. He is numbered among the fifth generation of Russian pianism since Liszt, through he lineage of Alexander Siloti, Konstantin Igumnov and Voskresensky's teacher, Lev Oborin. Resident in Italy since 1991, Marshev received awards in several international piano competitions in Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain, USA, including four first prizes. He is now widely acknowledged as one of the most talented Russian pianists of his generation.

Jeremie Rhorer and Le Cercle de l'Harmonie launch a new collaboration with Alpha Classics, with several projects planned, following the Mozart operas released on the label in 2016 and 2017. Here they tackle a monument of the sacred repertoire that is fascinating for it's rich, complex, even 'mysterious' conception. Rhorer tells us that his interpretation pays close attention to the question of tempi, which have often become progressively slower and heavier since the post-Romantic period: the tempi have 'a direct bearing on the vocal comfort of the singers, since breath control is one of the great difficulties of this work', he says. For this recording, he has called in a quartet of top-flight soloists along with the Audi Jugendchorakademie, a remarkable German youth choir founded in 2007. In conjunction with his period-instrument orchestra, soon to celebrate it's twentieth anniversary, they offer a passionate vision of Beethoven's masterpiece.

This collection by Hugh Shrapnel brings together works written between 2005 and 2022 for wind and piano. The varied influences give rise to music that ranges from pensive and slow, to rhythmically taut and harmonically astringent, all showing Hugh's characteristically expressive style.

Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge celebrate the 500th anniversary of Palestrina's birth in style, recording for the very first time an album of outstanding works by the Roman master that are still little-known. To add resonance to their program, they pair settings of the same texts by three of Palestrina's English contemporaries: William Byrd, Robert White, and William Mundy.

Volume 4 in Louis Karchin's ongoing Bridge series includes both instrumental and vocal music. Karchin is a prominent figure in American music, having composed more than 100 works, and served as conductor of ensembles, including the Harvard Group for New Music, the Chamber Players of the League-ISCM, and the Orchestra of the League of Composers. Karchin's music has been praised for it's "fearless eloquence" (The New Yorker), "bare-nerve intensity" (NY Times) and "coruscating beauty" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Despite achieving great success in the operatic scene, Pablo Sorozabal (1897-1988), born in Donostia and passing away in Madrid, maintained a profound connection with choral music throughout his extensive career. In fact, it was within the ranks of the vibrant choral movement of his native Basque Country where his artistic personality began to take shape, including his fascination with voice and theatre. It's no surprise, then, that he devoted some of his most intimate pages to these choirs, connecting them to his family heritage. In fact, his father, a stonecutter by trade, was also a talented bertsolari who shared his songs in the taverns of San Sebastian. From him, Sorozabal inherited a language, Basque, "that sounded like music" on his lips, and a deep love for folk music. According to a tradition passed down through generations, as recounted by the writer Bernardo Atxaga from his great-grandfather, Sorozabal's ancestors, who hailed from the Portale farmhouse in the village of Larraul, near Asteasu, "whistled better than the birds" ("txoriek baino hobeto egiten diate txistu").