It was between the publication of the Quatrieme Livre de Pieces de Violes in 1717 and the Cinquieme in 1725 that Marin Marais offered his public an exceptional collection of works that use both the violin and the viol. These works are very different from the earlier viol pieces, from the instruments used to the works' formal structures: they include a sonata inspired by Italian models marked � la maresienne (in Marais' own style), a piece on a three note basso ostinato that evokes the peals of bells in a Parisian church, and an astonishing monument of a piece - La Gamme - that Marais described as an example of a small opera for instruments.

A monument of piano literature, the grand finale of the "New Testament of the piano": Tomoko Ogasawara performs Ludwig van Beethoven's last three piano sonatas on her new GENUIN album. She captures the transcendent quality of these masterpieces, which transcend boundaries in every respect, with precision and sensitivity. The immense technical difficulties vanish, just as Beethoven must have wished, behind great seriousness and depth of feeling. Musical proclamation par excellence!

A Musical America New Artist and BBC Rising Star, Ian Niederhoffer is a fast-rising, young conductor. Here, together with his orchestra Parlando, he explores music as a tool of cultural resilience in the face of censorship, particularly within the Soviet Union. This eclectic program includes Shostakovich's Adagio from Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk, a work infamously censored after Stalin's disapproval, the Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a composer whose career was shaped by persecution during Stalin's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, and Edvard Mirzoyan's Symphony for String Orchestra and Timpani, which is a powerful testament to Armenian cultural survival despite Soviet Russification. Inspired by Parlando's mission that "every concert tells a story", the album ends with three narrated tracks detailing Soviet censorship.

Flo� og Fjara is Gulli Gudmundsson's new project. The Icelandic bassist has been a cornerstone of the Dutch jazz scene for many years. His new trio has a chamber music-inspired setup. With pianist Jeroen van Vliet and trumpeter Koen Smits, he has found two musicians who share his pursuit of similar sound ideals.

On his new GENUIN album, cellist Christian Erben, a member of the renowned Gewandhaus Orchestra, presents one of the most intriguing oeuvres for his instrument from the 20th century: Max Reger's three suites for solo cello. Baroque grandeur and intellectual depth, late-Romantic harmony, and masterful counterpoint: no one had explored the soloistic possibilities of perhaps the most human of all instruments as comprehensively since Johann Sebastian Bach as Max Reger did. Christian Erben delves into the immense suites down to the finest detail and brings their tonal intricacies to light!

In this unique recording, Lee Jae-Hwa -a geomungo zither virtuoso- performs the suites Geomungo Hoesang and Geomungo Sanjo in the respective styles of the South and North of the Korean peninsula: distinct forms, techniques and rhythms, but with a shared subtlety, sensitivity and emotion. The geomungo, a 6-string zither, features 16 frets over a resonating board made of paulownia wood. It's origins trace back to the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo (37 BCE to 668 CE), which dominated the territory of present-day North Korea and a large part of Manchuria. It's rich history spans some 1600 years. The geomungo makes dramatic sounds, through the friction created by the plectrum striking the strings, or the rustling created by the subtle movements of the left hand over the strings. Due to it's dignified and stately nature, the geomungo was considered "the greatest of all instruments" throughout the Korean peninsula.

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.