In this album, Sergey Khachatryan presents the first recording of Ysaÿe's 6 Solo Sonatas Op.27 on the composer’s Guarneri del Gesù violin - a magnificent, hypnotic instrument!

Ysaÿe’s Op. 27 is not new to Sergey Khachatryan, who has been performing the cycle in concert for a long time. Today aged thirty-eight and the precocious First Prize Winner of the International Sibelius Competition in 2000 and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2005, the Armenian violinist once more demonstrates his radiant maturity, akin to his sumptuous recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas (naïve, 2008-2009, V 5181).

Here Sergey Khachatryan delivers an interpretation of heightened feelings, where what might otherwise come across as impish is deliberately turned into something fierce (the Prelude of Sonata No. 2, which uses the opening motif of Bach’s Partita No. 3), or that which is merely imitative becomes wild and relentless (the Finale of Sonata No. 4). He willfully emphasizes the popular inspiration underlying the complete collection, imbuing it with shadings and a sumptuousness previously unheard.

Supersize Polyphony is a celebration of large-scale choral works from the 16th century, performed here by the Armonico Consort and the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, under their musical directors Christopher Monks and Geoffrey Webber. The unique programme features epic motets, such as Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium and Alessandro Striggio's Ecce Beatam Lucem, alongside his rarely performed 60 part Missa sopra Ecco Si Beato Giorno. Interspersed with the serene beauty of ethereal chants by Hildegard of Bingen, this new recording presents works of magnitude and polyphonic drama in stellar performances by two of the UK's leading choral ensembles. Now Available as a CD / SACD Surround Sound album.

The pieces chosen and performed by the refined violinist Liliana Bernardi for this third CD, created with the auspices and support of the Associazione Nazionale Italia-Austria of Rome, admirably highlight the contribution given in the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries by Italian musicians to compositions for solo violin, according to the new aesthetic canons based on the sounds of nature and the movements of sentiments. (Vittorio Tedeschi - President of the Associazione Nazionale Italia-Austria)

Michael Haydn did not achieve the same exorbitant quantity of instrumental music as his older brother, since he had to compose a large amount of sacred music because of his position; but the surviving symphonies and chamber music in particular are not lacking in novel and "original" character traits. This becomes clear, for example, in the six string quartets recorded here, which he wrote sometime in the 1770s or 1780s. Here, personable elegance and subtle humour are combined with a quiet touch of tragic drama to create a very unique candour that reveals a world view that is as moving as it is entertaining, somewhere between the masterpieces of his brother Joseph and Amadeus, who was around twenty years younger.

The CD Kinetic Valves offers a listening journey inspired by the pluralism of contemporary languages, in a mix of different styles and poetics, between the sounds of the euphonium and the ophicleide. A listening journey dedicated to the new Italian compositional panorama that unfolds through the works of Matteo Tundo (Innesti e Germinazioni), Pasquale Punzo (Mirrored in the brass), Maria Vittoria Agresti (Mutea: I, II and III) and Daniele Vulpiani (Inventario di oggetti introvabili), all in firstever recordings. The conclusion of this journey into a world of rarely heard sounds is the reinterpretation of the piece PostPraeLudium per Donau by Luigi Nono. The protagonist of the recording is Marina Boselli, a virtuoso of the instrument who, after her studies, perfected herself with internationally renowned teachers. Winner of numerous national and international competitions, she is active in Italy and abroad as a soloist. Since 2018 he has been the first euphonium soloist of the Civica Filarmonica di Lugano and collaborates as a guest musician at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia for the creation of new repertoires for euphonium and electronics, also holding masterclasses on composition for brass and extended techniques in conservatories and international composition campuses.

Nearly a century before Gluck, another opera called Iphigenie en Tauride - same plot, same protagonists - had immense success on the opera stage. This 'first' Iphigenie has rather a curious history. The opera was sketched out by composer Henri Desmarest around the year 1695, but he was then banished from France by Louis XIV for having married a young girl without her father's consent. The uncompleted score of Iphigenie was then entrusted to Andre Campra. The opera, since lost and forgotten, was rediscovered by Benoit Dratwicki, Director of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, who marvels at it's stylistic unity: 'Campra easily adopted Desmarest's style. He just added some virtuoso arias to the divertissements, as well as the tuneful choruses that were his speciality.' Iphigenie en Tauride had it's premiere on 6 May 1704, and was revived throughout Europe from 1711. Thanks to Herve Niquet, a top-flight team of singers, an orchestra well versed in French repertoire, and all their collaborative research into the practices and specific playing techniques of the early 18th century, Iphigenie sees the light of day once more.

Giovanni Battista Velluti, born in 1780, was the last heir of the great Italian castrati. His exceptional voice, both powerful and agile, and his impressive vocal mastery opened the doors to the most prestigious opera houses in Europe. His talent for highly complex vocal ornamentation had a lasting influence on the style of vocal interpretation in the 19th century. Franco Fagioli immerses himself in Velluti's theatricality to recreate the full extent of his genius, and gives a superb performance of his most famous roles, accompanied by the Orchestre de l'Opera Royal de Versailles.

Over the past century or so, composers have tended to see themselves as either traditionalists or modernists. The music of Joel Feigin (born in New York in 1951) bridges both worlds, combining the resources of tonality and atonality with equal relish, naturally extending the styles of the recent past. It's freewheeling energy is often tempered by an elegant restraint, sometimes revealing the warm, humanist impulse behind his sound-world. This first volume of his piano and chamber music follows a lusty piano trio and a moving tribute to a much-missed teacher with four sets of variations, three by Feigin and one an arrangement of Bach, the composer who Feigin says is the root of all his music.

When baritone Milan Siljanov decided to record his first song album, the composers to be immortalised on it were immediately clear to him. Even in his early youth, he had the desire to become a pianist, even though he realised early on that his talents lay in other musical areas. But it was during this time that he first came into contact with Schubert's piano works, in particular the Impromptu No. 4 in A flat major - a piano piece that still fascinates him to this day. The singer also finds the melancholy and pathos of the music in many of Schubert's songs. It quickly became clear that Schubert would be a focal point of the album, complemented by two weighty cycles by Johannes Brahms and Frank Martin

The new CD Time is breathing by the Sbaffi Campi Duo is released on Stradivarius, with Leonardo Sbaffi on saxophones and Cristina Campi on piano. A singular musical journey between present and past that develops, with a free and passionate approach, a listening journey characterized by contamination, in the wake of musical solutions that broaden horizons and outline stories, images and emotions, in an eclectic meeting between the classical and contemporary repertoire. The album opens with two medleys, the result of elaborations by the Duo: Discontinuous Vibrations and Cellular Armonies, with songs by G. I. Gurdjieff, Claudio Monteverdi, G. F. Handel, Arcangelo Corelli, J. S. Bach. "The CD - declares the Duo - is nothing other than our reading of what we live, of what happens and of what happens to us. The work is conceived as a fractal, the individual pieces are entities having their own structure which then go on to constitute another, larger but identical one. This is the purpose of the two medleys, where centuries-old songs intertwine and overlap to form a single work. "Vibrazioni Discontinuous and Armonie Cellulari are followed by Paul Hindemith's Sonata and the first ever recording of Last Cloud by Alberto Napolitano, a piece which, states the composer, "finds it's expressive modernity in memory". To complete the programming of the CD, the Debussy's Rhapsody, an integral part of the work which can be downloaded by connecting to the website stradivarius. It. The booklet of the album is enriched by images, texts and poems in an enthralling meeting of the arts.

Lovers and Mourners: Variations and Sonatas from 17th-century Germany, offers a comprehensive glimpse into the lives of virtuoso composer-performers Johann Jakob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Georg Pisendel. The Composers featured on Lovers and Mourners drew upon the “stylus phantasticus,” a 17th-century Italian idiom whose features were marked by jagged shifts of affect and intended to display the player’s technical command and expressive abilities.

Bandy nimbly guides the listener through a labyrinth of variation sets and themes, simultaneously reproducing faithful interpretations of the music while injecting his own unique touch. Lovers and Mourners boasts a brief, yet intense survey of one of the richest chapters in the history of the virtuoso composer-performer.

On Darknesse Visible, Inon Barnatan brings together French and British composers with works by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy Thomas Ades and Ronald Stevenson. The album title is derived from Ades's piece of the same name and conveys some of the aspects that Barnatan finds most fascinating about the music on this album: all the pieces are inspired by stories or poems, and in all of them dark and light are intertwined. Ades and Stevenson both take their inspiration from existing pieces, by Dowland and Britten respectively. Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and La Valse showcase the evocative power and colour of his music, while Debussy's Suite Bergamasque contains the world-famous Clair de lune.

The collection of toccatas Apparatus musico-organisticus, published in 1690, immediately established Georg Muffat as one of the greatest organists of his century. A veritable reference in the organ repertoire, appreciated for it's stylistic diversity, this work testifies to Muffat's ambition to blend European styles while exploring the expressive possibilities of the Baroque organ. Bernard Foccroulle deploys a range of emotions that underline the breadth and harmonic richness of the toccatas, performed on an organ emblematic of the French style that suits them so well, to which is added the delicate Sonata a violino solo, executed with brio by Marie Rouquie.

Christopher O'Riley's THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER BOOK II continues the pianist's exploration of Bach's masterpiece. A true expedition into the second set's finest of details, O'Riley delves beyond the notes themselves and into the spaces between them, sifting through the silence for every last possibility of rhythmic flexibility and potential for expression. With preludes and fugues more intricate and complex than those of the first, the second book provides an even richer opportunity for the discovery of texture, articulation, and hidden meaning within the music.

After Piazzolla Reflections, (ALPHA664), Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova devotes this new recording to Bach and compositions influenced by his music - starting with the famous Concerto BWV 1052, which has inspired so many adaptations for piano, violin and even heavy metal guitar, "so I don't think a version for an instrument with two keyboards will surprise anyone!" says Ksenija. The programme also includes Sergey Akhunov, a composer who featured on her previous album, with a work inspired by Bach's Chaconne BWV1004; Beyond Bach by Gabriela Montero, the Venezuelan pianist and composer famous for her improvisations; and Horizons by the Anglo-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The programme is completed by Bach's Chorale Prelude Ich ruf zu dir, which has accompanied Ksenija since childhood: 'I think this organ piece works particularly well on the accordion. Both instruments use bellows, but the accordion offers a much more flexible dynamic range. You can really let the music breathe.'

Francesco Tropea plays the Sonatas BWV 963 - BWV 970 by Johann Sebastian Bach. Recorded on a Steinway B Grand Piano.

The protagonist of this new album is the Fairy Guitar Quartet, a group born in 2020 from the meeting of four guitarists united by a strong passion for chamber music. Volver, the album that marks their recording debut, explores the great Argentine musical repertoire with a new research approach, offering an evocative musical journey along the multiple ties that unite Italy to the South American country and allowing you to experience and rediscover intense emotions. In a story of continuous departures and returns, complex fee- lings emerge, chapters with great evocative power that belong to the shared cultural heritage. A precious opportunity to rediscover a world that is always full of charm, a reflection of the creative encounter of dif- ferent cultures (African, indigenous, Spanish and Italian), through a listening journey that develops along the subject of Volver, a theme that resonates deeply in Italian and Argentine culture but also, more generally, in every corner of the southern hemisphere: the sadness of separation from what you love and the hope of re-embracing your roots. With the surprising arrangements of Gianvincenzo Cresta and Francesco Fausto Magaletti, the album features songs by Carlos Gardel, Anibal Troilo, Ariel Ramirez, Gustavo Leguizamon, Daniel Toro and Astor Piazzolla.

Passion, solitude, nostalgia, the pain of the world, flight, death - these are the typical themes of Romanticism. Konstantin Krimmel had already explored the extreme emotions that characterise this era of extreme emotion in Saga, his first recital album (Alpha549); he now plunges even deeper into this cosmos with collaborative pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. "I simply love telling stories. Even as a child, I loved listening to old legends and tales", says Krimmel, who is indeed a fabulous storyteller-singer. The two artists have chosen here to compare songs by Franz Schubert and Carl Loewe that embody these great themes. The two composers, both masters of the Lied, had very different destinies: Loewe lived to be 72 years old, more than twice as old as Schubert, who had died aged 31.

The motivations behind a choice The basic question we asked ourselves in taking on this work was whether it was practicable and interesting on an artistic level to study and perform these trio sonatas by Bach using musical instruments that he had not originally envisaged, but which nevertheless belonged to his era and musical environment. We are now convinced that the answer is affirmative, and not only that, but that this kind of experience of study and listening can lead to the discovery of details and expressive resources that are fully inherent to the music that Bach composed. On the other hand, it is well known that reworking, "accommodation", as it was then often referred to, was a daily and natural practice in the Baroque era, both at the compositional level and at the performance level tout court (the distinction, with the consequent value judgement, between an "original" and it's adaptations, belongs to a more modern sensibility): the motivation for such operations, which were considered entirely legitimate, often derived from marketing requirements (think, for example, of the numerous title pages of printed works explicitly designated for various different instruments in order to attract more buyers: "[...] for a German flute, Violin, Hautbois or Harpsichord [...]" etc.) and the intended use for teaching purposes and the study of composition, as well as from the availability, in a given court environment, of instruments and virtuosos of particular ability, or even simply the need to have ready-made musical material, one's own or that of others, to be adapted to other ensembles and other functions. What was and is important to us is the survival of the original idea of the work. Indeed, if respected, this is revived and communicated to the listener in all it's potential thanks to the different timbres, the different dynamics and the various "pronunciations" in the emission and articulation of sound that characterise each chosen instrument. A fascinating operation because it can enhance the richness already inherent in the work, in this case of Bach, sometimes revealing it's most hidden and otherwise neglected aspects. While it is true that the musical idea often (but not always) develops in a composer at the moment in which he also imagines it's instrumental destination, and is therefore influenced by it, one could also speculate, precisely on account of what we have described as the very nature of composition and performance in the Baroque era, that the work (the idea) is conceived to a large extent even before it takes on a specific instrumental voice and therefore remains in a certain sense available to be communicated through different means.

Collegium Vocale Gent and it's founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with 'Silenzio Mio', which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a 'pathos' new on the literary scene. A veritable historical testimony to the artistic turning point that occurred at the court of Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, this fourth book takes it's place in the long-term recording project of Collegium Vocale, hailed by critics for it's 'homogeneity, contrapuntal transparency and luminosity, strikingly evident even in the most tormented pieces' (Diapason).

Enchanting tales and timeless legends are the common threads running through this album conceived by Duo Jatekok: Na�ri Badal and Adela�de Panaget are transformed into sorceresses on four hands and two pianos - enchanting guides who lead us through a programme featuring a Faustian pact, magic, and the world of childhood. At it's heart is Liszt's Piano Sonata, brilliantly transcribed for two keyboards by Saint-Saens: 'It illustrates the eternal struggle between the hubris of excess and the tragic fall, between light and darkness', say the duo of this 'Faustian' masterpiece by Liszt, a great admirer of Goethe. In a more carefree but equally fantastical vein is the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice, which Paul Dukas himself transcribed in 1898. The trance-like atmosphere and frenzied dancing continues with Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo (Love the magician). Finally, Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, a 'danse macabre between the world of the living and that of the spirits', rounds off this supernatural odyssey.

Quatuor Diotima presents Lachenmann: String Quartets, a powerful testament to their 25-year collaboration with visionary composer Helmut Lachenmann. Known for pioneering "instrumental musique concrete," Lachenmann redefined the sonic possibilities of the string quartet. Their first meeting in 1998, originally just a one-week workshop, sparked a deep artistic bond and a shared fascination with his radical approach to sound and listening. This album is the result of hundreds of hours spent in rehearsal, performance, and conversation - a tribute to a composer who has become a central figure in contemporary music. Lachenmann: String Quartets captures not only the evolution of a musical language, but also the story of a transformative and enduring partnership. The quartet returns to PENTATONE following their acclaimed releases Metamorphosis Ligeti (2023), Bruckner & Klose: String Quartets (2024), and Boulez: Livre pour Quatuor (2025).

Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have made a lasting impression on the Bach discography with their many recordings devoted to the Kantor. They have also explored other sacred repertoires by Beethoven, Haydn, Dvorák and Bruckner, to which they have brought all their excellence and sensitivity. Here they are together for the first time in a boxed set of 11 CDs.

The young organist Mona Hartmann (*1994) is currently enjoying a stellar career and has already won numerous national and international competitions. For Chaconne 1927, the musician chose the Walcker organ built in 1927 in St. Antonius in Papenburg. The form of the chaconne runs through the entire album as a leitmotif: It's principle of variation, like that of the passacaglia, allows the Walcker organ with it's 89 stops to be presented in countless, ever-changing sound combinations like no other genre.

Starting from our common passion for Italian instrumental music of the early twentieth century declare Chiara Burattini and Umberto Jacopo Laureti we have composed a picture (as varied as possible) around the two key figures of the world of piano (Busoni) and cello (Mainardi) of the time. From the Kultaselle variations (a youthful page, dense and full of passion) and from Busoni's seraphic Albumblatt, we passed through the Art Nouveau drawings of the WolfFerrari Sonata and the Two Album Pages of Alaleona, ending with the Malipiero Sonatines and by Mainardi (the latter, together with the songs by Alaleona, in the very first recording).

In the dark years of the Nazi-Fascist period, when the light of the end was still far off, Malipiero completed a long-awaited undertaking: an edition of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi. Its last volume, the sixteenth, came out in 1942 at the height of the war. The edition contained the sacred production that the publisher Vincenti had assembled in the collection Messa a 4 voci et salmi (1650).

Quartetto Sincronie’s choice to include an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Mass, alternating the parts with Malipiero’s work, is yet another example of reinvention-creation that Malipiero would likely have appreciated. In the composers’ poetics, instruments are asked to sing as voices, and so the opposite—voices translated to instruments—is fitting. Philological rigor was, after all, foreign to Malipiero’s worldview. Instead, the composer spoke of his relationship with Monteverdi as a kind of psychic channeling: finding synchronicity within the synchrony of listening, which dissolves the distance of centuries. The Mass for Four Voices is thus split into parts throughout the record, but it remains possible to orient oneself. The cohesion is melodic: there’s a descending tetrachord G-F-E-D at the beginning of the Kyrie that returns in various guises (inverted, diminished, augmented), articulating the contrapuntal fabric of the different movements. The listener can thus follow this pathway, from the Gloria to the Agnus Dei, in a zigzag that turns Monteverdi the sacred “refrain” to Malipiero’s profane cycle of quartets.

This album offers a new approach to the character of Scheherazade, with Rimsky-Korsakov's musical masterpiece transcribed for the forces of Ensemble K and a previously unpublished text, freely adapted from the Thousand and One Nights and ancient love poems, which tells the story of Scheherazade. The Franco-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani plays Scheherazade, while Kristin Winters is her sister, Dinarzad: 'For me, this story is a literary and historical treasure of humanity. But our collective imagination has seen Scheherazade as either a seductress or a submissive woman who told stories to survive. The greatness of this character goes far beyond that, and in fact represents the ancient figure of the "hero", or rather the heroine!', says Simone Menezes, who is artistic director of this project. For this second collaboration with Alpha Classics (after Amazonia, ALPHA990), she presents two versions of the programme, one with music and texts, the other with Rimsky-Korsakov's music alone.

Between the new and the familiar, the accordion is a young instrument. This is precisely why I believe it lends itself almost naturally, or rather vocationally, to experimentation. At the same time, its place in the collective imagination, its wide diffusion in popular and folkloric cultures, also make it a “familiar”, “domestic” instrument. This combination of “familiarity” and experimentation is, then, the inspiration behind the entire “Fly. Electronic Music for Accordion” project. New works for accordion and electronics aimed precisely at enhancing such duplicity: the feeling of familiarity and the disconcerting activation of the new. For this purpose, I involved some of the Italian composers among those I most respect, with whom I could establish a creative relationship that could lead to the development of particularly significant works featuring this instrument. At least in my ambitions and intentions. What the outcome will be is not for me to say. The fact remains that when a new work is born, especially one with some compositional weight, we are always faced with an event, the opening up of a world, which, however bewildering, or perhaps precisely because of this, proves capable of putting us in relation with ourselves and with the contemporaneity in which we live. Besides this, the choice of alternating the electroacoustic works with “small” pieces (in terms of duration) taken from the historical, classical literature to which we belong, is also intended to promote precisely the coexistence between familiarity and experimentation. A piece of “easy” listening, “familiar”, a prelude or postlude, as it were, in order to “cleanse” the ear, in some way to prepare it for a different kind of listening, that of electroacoustic music, which is complex and full of novel information, not “familiar”. Fragments of history, therefore, that intervene in the rhythm of listening, supposing a linear path, almost like recollections that assail the involuntary memory, to try to undergo an experience that allows us to achieve a relationship between reminiscence and the new.
Germano Scurti

With this "colourful" selection of pieces, we intend to give an impression of the diverse repertoire collected in the Turin Tablature. The motets and liturgical works were most likely intended for performance in church, whereas dances and madrigals were intended more for secular settings: at festivals, celebrations, and for domestic music-making. Toccatas and ricercars could be played in both ecclesiastical and secular settings. [In light of the wide variety of purposes of this repetoire, we utilized a wide variety of instruments.] Thus, in addition to the Marx-Gunzer organ, three other stringed keyboard instruments were used: a clavicytherium in southern German design from the 17th century, a virginal after Michael Praetorius (1619), and a harpsichord of a seventeenthcentury Italian design.

No one has surpassed Marais: only one has equalled him, and that is the famous Forqueray: with these words, in 1752, a contemporary praised one of the last great virtuosos of the viola da gamba. Known for his formidably difficult and technical musical style, Forqueray's world is nonetheless immensely rich: through the works of the father Antoine, his son Jean-Baptiste and his nephew Nicolas-Gilles, an august lineage emerges whose grace and genius never ceased to inspire. At times proud, even bellicose, at other times deeply tender, the viol pieces by this Forqueray family plunge us into a flight of expressions of passions whose vivacity is equalled only by their intensity. Myriam Rignol, as a distant granddaughter, accompanied by her exquisite Timbres, delivers in this complete work a powerful homage to these 18th-century chamber music icons who, in their image, could never be anything other than virtuoso.