Hugo Alfv�n was an accomplished writer and painter as well as musician and composer. Born in Stockholm in 1872, he studied first at Kungliga Musikh�gskolan (the Royal College of Music) and then in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, and Brussels. Influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss, Alfv�n's style is also permeated with the influence of Swedish folk music. Festspel (Festival Play) was commissioned to inaugurate the new art nouveau building for Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern (the Royal Dramatic Theatre) in Stockholm, in 1908, the work is suitably rousing and celebratory for such an occasion. Alfv�n was asked in 1932 to write incidental music for a play by Ludvig Nordstr�m, to commemorate the 300-year anniversary of the death of the protestant Swedish monarch at the battle of L�tzen, at the end of the Thirty Years War, the suite that he subsequently extracted is a substantial work in it's own right. Cantus arcticus is perhaps Rautavaara's best-known work, and was commissioned by the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, to honour it's first formal doctoral graduation ceremony, in 1972, Rautavaara instead took his inspiration from the natural environment of the region, incorporating two-channel tape recordings of birdsong as part of the orchestral texture.

For this their fourth album of music for string orchestra, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London present a programme of works by three composers from the Franco-Belgian school of string pedagogy, who were all themselves virtuosic string players. George Enescu studied in Paris and Vienna, spent much of his life in France, and was internationally lauded as a concert violinist and conductor in both Europe and America. Much of his music remained unknown after his death – a situation improved thanks to some high-profile champions of his work, not least his most famous pupil Yehudi Menuhin. When Enescu supplied a preface for a new edition of his Octet, in 1950, he sanctioned its performance by a full string orchestra, the form in which we hear it on this recording. Completed in 1924, Ysaÿe’s Harmonies du soir is scored for string quartet and string orchestra, enabling Ysaÿe to exploit the contrast between intimate and full string sound, a technique inspired by Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Affectionately known as the ‘First Lady of Polish Music’, Grazyna Bacewicz was an outstanding virtuoso violinist, a formidable pianist, and ground-breaking composer. A great deal of her output was written for strings, including the Concerto for String Orchestra, written in 1948. Often described as neoclassical, the work takes some inspiration from the baroque concerto grosso, but is distinctly modern in its harmonic language and was particularly admired by Lutoslawski.

Anna Clyne, described as a 'composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods' by The New York Times, is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, filmmakers and visual artists around the world. Clyne's unique voice combines tradition with postmodern techniques, giving her listeners a sense of musical adventure that is grounded in the past. From the beautiful elegy Within Her Arms to the defiant power of Restless Oceans, Anna Clyne's music strikes a positive and resilient tone.

Heinrich Marschner's role as Germany's leading Romantic operatic composer in the generation between Weber and Wagner has tended to draw attention away from his accomplished chamber compositions. Marschner had a high regard for the piano trio genre, composing seven throughout his career, which won the admiration of his friends Robert and Clara Schumann. The Trio No. 1 in A minor is profusely lyrical and not without surprises and contrasts. Written three decades later, the Trio No. 7 in F major is a work of his maturity - assured, dramatic and energetic.

The French composer and organist Thierry Escaich composed his Te Deum pour Notre-Dame for the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris; a hymn to the Cathedral's resurrection, it is a large-scale work for children's choir, two mixed choirs and orchestra. One hundred and eighty singers and instrumentalists gave the work it's first performance and recorded it in the prestigious building on 12 June 2025. Thierry Escaich was inspired by the Cathedral's thousand-year-old history and drew on many sources, beginning with the Bible but also including prestigious authors who had written about Notre-Dame such as Victor Hugo and Charles Peguy. According to Escaich himself, "this Te Deum is a journey from the destructive flames of the conflagration to the fire of redemption". Escaich, who has been a co-titular organist of the Cathedral since 2024, also presents examples of his famous art of improvisation on the Cathedral's organ between each movement of the Te Deum. The work won universal acclaim at it's first performance, with some journalists describing it as "the great French oratorio that we have been awaiting since the beginning of the 21st century" (Le Figaro).

The first of its kind, this duet album is a musical journey that draws back the curtain which has obscured gay love-stories for centuries. In the 17th century, Venice offered a liberal safe haven of sorts to the gay community of greater Europe. There are accounts of outed artists escaping to Venice to live and work amongst its more permissive culture. Almost 400 years later, we reconnect with this uncommonly tolerant place and time to share a history that is yet untold. The album includes vivid and charming duets from Monteverdi’s 7th book of madrigals as well as his touching musical love letters (lettere amorose). Additionally, there are four modern-day premieres of works by the little-known composers Boretti, Melani, and Castrovillari; including a moving duet for the lovers Hercules and Theseus as they exit the underworld hand-in-hand. Solo arias by Cavalli and Stradella depict the yearning of hidden love, and the recording culminates with one of the most beautiful duets of all time, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. This album is a recognition and celebration of gay love that spans the centuries.

Following up her critically acclaimed recording of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Rosary Sonatas (CCSSA37315), violinist and musical director Rachel Podger leads Brecon Baroque on Just Biber, an album of Sonatas from Biber's 1681 collection Sonatae Violino Solo and his theatrical Sonata Representivo. These works are extremely virtuosic with extensive multiple stopping and dazzling passages of stylus fantasticus. In Biber's time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental and celestial bodies. Dedicated to Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf, the sonatas were not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and heal; Biber described the sonatas as a kind of prayer for the Archbishop's longevity and good health.

This deluxe, 21st anniversary reissue of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's legendary recording of the character Irene's arias from George Frideric Handel's Theodora - plus the composer's cantata La Lucrezia and the evergreen aria "Ombra Mai Fu" from Serse - evokes vivid memories of the mezzo-soprano's galvanizing musicianship and opens the ears of a new generation of music lovers to appreciate the timelessness of Lorraine's poignant interpretations. Specially remastered for this CD and newly available digitally in Dolby Atmos, the longevity of these performances is a testament to Lorraine's unique voice and soul. Conductor and leading Baroque specialist Harry Bicket recalls the immediate musical connection he and Lorraine shared from the time they first met in 1996 during rehearsals for Theodora at Glyndebourne. When Peter Seller's staging of the cantata was revived in 2003, it seemed obvious to go into the studio to record Lorraine's Theodora arias. A maverick musician and a riveting performer, Lorraine died in 2006 due to complications from cancer at the far-too-young age of 52. This recording, one of her last, preserves her consummate musical persona for posterity. The New Yorker's classical columnist Alex Ross characterised the album as "pull-down-the-blinds, unplug-the-telephone, can't-talk-right-now beautiful. She's singing it again; I have to go."

Led by it's Director Matthew Martin, The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, joins forces with the Academy of Ancient Music in Michael Haydn's rarely heard masterpieces: the Requiem and Missa Sancti Hieronymi. The four soloists are all ex-choral scholars of Caius Choir, showcasing the distinguished musical tradition of this student group. Unjustly neglected, Joseph Haydn's younger brother was a talented composer in his own right. Written after the death of his infant daughter and his patron, the deeply emotional Requiem is a masterpiece that combines complex colourful textures and forms with imaginative orchestration and vocal writing. Mozart was a great admirer and it is thought that Haydn's Requiem formed the prototype for his own better known masterpiece. In contrast, the later Missa Sancti Hieronymi is lighter and more optimistic. Unusually scored for oboes, bassoons, trombones and continuo (with no upper strings), it exudes transparency and joyful energy. This recording will undoubtedly put these neglected works back into mainstream repertoire.

If you’ve seen the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, you’ve seen and heard The Orchestra Now, the exceptional ensemble that appears in the movie’s Tanglewood Music Festival scene. The Orchestra Now (TON), a New York-based graduate-level training orchestra comprised of the most vibrant young musicians from around the globe, was founded by conductor, educator and music historian Leon Botstein, whose insatiable curiosity has resulted in rescuing countless musical works from oblivion. Their first recording for AVIE, “The Lost Generation”, brings together three German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music became supressed by historical events of the 20th century.

In November 2022, TON gave the US premiere of Hugo Kauder’s Symphony No. 1, a “splendid” work that “made a splash” (New York Classical Review). The largely self-taught Moravian-born composer had a distinguished career in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938. The first of Kauder’s five symphonies was dedicated to Alma Mahler. Whilst his musical language is rooted in the tradition of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, he forged an individual voice with his ease and flexibility of harmonic and metrical shifts.

German-born, Austrian composer Hans Erich Apostel studied with Schoenberg and Berg. His works incorporated his mentors’ expressionism and 12-tone methods in equal measure. The Nazis deemed Apostel’s music “degenerate”, but he lived out his life in Vienna until his death in 1972. His Variations on a theme by Haydn, performed frequently in the mid-20th century, is an homage to the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the “Drum Roll, which itself comprises variations on a theme.

Adolf Busch, one of the most celebrated violinists and chamber musicians of the 20th century, was also a prolific composer. A staunch opponent of Nazism, he left his native Germany, arriving first in Switzerland and eventually the United States in 1939. A late Romantic compositional style imbues his Variations on an Original Theme, originally for piano four hands and presented to his wife as a Christmas present in 1944. Busch’s longtime chamber music partner and son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, frequently performed the work with his son Peter, who made this orchestration of his grandfather’s composition, in a familial labor of love.

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217), and the conductor is now tackling the composer’s Seventh Symphony. This cycle marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mahler interpretation, as Rattle is just as passionate a Mahler admirer at the helm of the orchestra as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel, and Kubelík.

Simon Rattle gained his international reputation during his 18 years as Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1980–1998), which he made world famous. In 2002 he was appointed to succeed Claudio Abbado as Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position he retained until June 2018. In March 2015 the London Symphony Orchestra elected him as their new Chief Conductor for the 2017-2018 season, a position he retained until summer 2023. Simon Rattle also maintains close ties with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras, as well as the Vienna Philharmonic.

The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink's death in October 2021. BRKLASSIK now presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past years. This recording of Dvorak's Seventh Symphony documents a concert given in March 1981 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The "Scherzo capriccioso" is a studio recording, also from March 1981. Following the success of Antonin Dvorak's first visit to London in 1884, the London Philharmonic Society asked him to return the following year and to compose a new symphony for the occasion. It was an honourable request - after all, the London Philharmonic Society had commissioned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony six decades earlier! When Dvorak began sketching out the symphony on December 13, 1884, he was well aware of the high expectations involved - both his own and those of others. Most music critics and Dvorak biographers, however, have struggled with the interpretation of this exceptional piece. For example, it has been interpreted "politically" against the background of the growing German-Czech tensions of those years. But the existential power of the D minor Symphony - it's anger, it's expansive pessimism, i.e. it's confessional character - may also derive from the biography and personality of it's composer, which were probably far more complex, painful and problematic than any "Bohemian idyll" we might assume. Even in Dvorak's Eighth Symphony, which is considered to be more cheerful, and in his last symphony, "From the New World", one can still detect a more or less latent tendency towards tragic longing. The world premiere of the Seventh Symphony took place on April 22, 1885 in London, with the composer conducting. It became one of Dvorak's greatest successes. Dvorak's Scherzo capriccioso of 1883 is certainly more than just a filler on this CD. The fact that it is more dramatic and passionate than it's playful title suggests is probably due to the fact that it was written at a time of crisis in the composer's life. The work is an elaborate composition of convincing craftsmanship

Saxophonist Pat Posey goes to extremes for his solo debut album, they/beast. Introducing the tubax – a German-invented, modified version of the contrabass saxophone – Pat plays deep, dark renditions of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, Melodies for Saxophone by Philip Glass, Bach-inspired Mo’ingus by Brooklyn-based composer-saxophonist Shelley Washington, and Pat’s own Hymn.

REVIEWS:

Pat Posey’s solo album they/beast displays the Tubax›s incredible sound with a wide variety of materials, from Bach cello suites to Philip Glass› Melodies for Saxophone. If listening to Paul Desmond’s alto sax is like sipping a fine white wine, Posey’s Tubax is like drinking a delicious porter. Its lows are glorious and Posey dexterously wrestles it through some very complex material. they/beast is a unique and sonically adventurous treat.

-- The Whole Note

The growling, guttural timbre and harmonic timbre and harmonic overtones are perfectly showcased…Posey displays colossal lung power and technique…fiendishly virtuosic…a dazzling, unsettling spectacle by a musician pushing the creative envelope.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The tubax has an amazing low register, and in the hands of a player like Pat Posey, it can be nimble and produce astonishing multiphonics … Posey’s own Hymn (2022), a real tour-de-force of inspiration, beauty, quirkiness, and earblowing sounds. Fantastic album.

-- American Record Guide

Anton Bruckner 200 (1824-2024)

Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were linked by a long and intensive artistic collaboration, brought to an abrupt end by his death in October 2021. BR-KLASSIK now presents outstanding and as yet unreleased live recordings of concerts from the past years.

This recording of Bruckner's "Te Deum" and his Eighth Symphony (version by Robert Haas, 1939) documents concerts performed in the Philharmonie im Gasteig in November 2010, and in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz in December 1993.

Behzod Abduraimov's performances combine great musical depth with phenomenal technique: 'He has a magical touch,' wrote The Times. This recital is yet another illustration of his many talents: it begins with variations by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a teacher of Liszt. Next, the famous Apr�s une lecture de Dante (whose title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo) represents Liszt's Ann�e de p�lerinage en Italie (1846-1849). The title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo... Another era, another poetic inspiration (Verlaine), with the Suite Bergamasque, an allusion to the festivals of the Lombard commedia dell'arte, which Debussy composed between 1890 and 1905... Still celebrating, this time in Saint Petersburg, with 'it's crowds, it's shacks and it's small traditional theatre, the character of the magician and conjurer... and the animation of the dolls, Petrushka, his rival, and the ballerina', notes Stravinsky, who in 1921 wrote a piano transcription of his ballet Petrushka, composed ten years earlier. Brahms and a peaceful Intermezzo from his Klavierst�cke Op. 119 conclude this infernal programme.

The German composer Johanna Senfter was a student of Max Reger, who recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to pursue advanced studies in his composition class in Leipzig, which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910, she was awarded the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of the year. Born into a well-to-do industrial family, she was financially independent and able to devote herself entirely to her creative work throughout her life. In addition to numerous chamber music pieces, she left behind nine symphonies. From the youthful Sturm und Drang of her first symphony (1914) to the thoughtfully moving ninth (1949), composed after two world wars, the development of her musical language can be discovered here with this world premiere recording.

The release of this 61-disc box (58CDs and 3 DVDs) coincides with the 50th anniversary of the death of David Oistrakh, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century - and indeed of all time. Born in Odesa (now in Ukraine) in 1908, he died while on tour, in Amsterdam, on 24th October 1974. The box contains - On 27 CDs: the entirety of David Oistrakh's Warner Classics studio catalogue (originally recorded for Columbia & HMV), newly remastered in HD from the original tapes and in packaging that uses the original LP artwork. On 31 CDs: live recordings and studio recordings from the early period of Oistrakh's career and from his post-War years of international celebrity. One-third of these items are world premieres and a number of them are CD premiere releases. All the recordings have been remastered from the best available sources. On 3 DVDs: DVDs 1 & 2: Performances (in the concert hall and radio/television studio), filmed in Moscow, of concertos and recital repertoire; presented for DVD by film/TV director and Oistrakh expert Bruno Monsaingeon. DVD 3: David Oistrakh - Artist of the People? A 1996 documentary, directed by Bruno Monsaingeon, examining Oistrakh's life. It includes interviews with his son Igor Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich and Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Classical Music

These selections were recorded in November 1995 and June 1996.

Ingrid Matthews plays a baroque violin on this recording.
REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (7-8/00, pp. 83-84 - "...Matthews...has excellent taste, does a wonderful job of characterizing each movement, and is very good at bringing out all the voices in the fugues....This superb recording
is...my top recommendation....A very auspicious debut...a major talent..."

Live at Carnegie Hall

Schubert & Beethoven: Piano Trios

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7, WAB 107

Brahms: 25 Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24,

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 - Capriccio Italien: Classic Lib

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the second solo album by exceptional young American organist, Cameron Carpenter, All You Need is Bach. Bach’s great keyboard masterpieces provide an ideal platform for Carpenter’s formidable creative gifts and the seemingly limitless possibilities of his dream instrument – his signature International Touring Organ. The album takes is cue from The Beatles’ classic “All You Need is Love”, where Bach’s Invention No. 8 in F major proudly rises out of the coda’s collage-like texture. Works include Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue, Organ Sonatas in D minor and E-flat major, Prelude and Fugue in B minor, Invention No. 8 and, as the centerpiece, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The latter holds a special place in Carpenter’s affections. “It is undoubtedly one of the Top 10 masterworks of all music, no matter how you evaluate it.”

A virtuoso composer-performer unique among organists, Cameron Carpenter’s approach is to smash the stereotypes of organists and organ music. Described as “extravagantly talented” (New York Times), and “smasher of cultural and classical music taboos,” (The New Yorker), Cameron is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy Award® for his debut album, Revolutionary. All You Need is Bach is the second recording made on Cameron’s new International Touring Organ. The organ, designed by Cameron himself, is a mobile digital organ that is artistically and sonically equal to any of the world’s great organs and will challenge the way the world thinks about organs.

From the early days of the twentieth century until the Anschluss forced him into American exile, Richard Stohr (1874-1967) was one of the more prominent personalities in Viennese musical life, as composer, teacher and author. Earlier releases in this series of recordings revealed him to have an individual voice, somewhere between Bruckner, Mahler, Korngold and Strauss. It can be heard in it's full glory in his Chamber Symphony of 1912, a sunlit score modest in it's orchestral demands but expansive in it's ambit and generous in it's ceaseless flow of gorgeous melody.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) in 2024, the BR-KLASSIK label is releasing previously unreleased recordings of concerts worth listening to, available on CD and as a stream.

Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony remains today one of the greatest and most powerful creations of the Late Romantic period. The immense symphony, longer and more monumental than others, incorporates texts from the collection of poems by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim entitled “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”. Composed over a period of four years from 1892 to 1896, with particular focus during the summers of 1895 and 1896 spent at the Attersee in Austria, it was premiered in its entirety on June 9, 1902, at the 38th “Tonkünstler Festival” in Krefeld. Mahler conducted the Städtische Kapelle Krefeld and Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra at this momentous event, which garnered great acclaim from his contemporaries. Between 1902 and 1907, the composer conducted his Third Symphony a further 15 times.

Among the symphony's six powerful movements, the slow fourth movement necessitates not only a large orchestra but also a mezzo-soprano solo for a setting of the “Midnight Song” (“O Man! Take heed!”) from Friedrich Nietzsche's poetical-philosophical work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." In the cheerful fifth movement, the mezzo-soprano soloist is joined by a children’s choir and a female chorus for the song "Es sungen drei Engel" from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." The symphony presents a significant challenge for all its performers, and this concert recording from December 2010 features a prestigious lineup: Mariss Jansons conducting the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, with the Tölzer Knabenchor, and solo parts sung by Nathalie Stutzmann.

Bach's Coffeehouse brings together a selection of Apollo's Fire recordings - old and new alike - featuring repertoire that is believed to have been performed at Cafe Zimmerman in Leipzig, the city where Johann Sebastian Bach served as Cantor. Coffee houses were all the rage at the time, centres for socialising and musical soirees. Bach would have found respite from his formal duties as Cantor, by curating informal concerts at the thriving coffee emporium. Bach's Coffeehouse features new recordings of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with virtuoso soloists Alan Choo, the Singaporean violinist and Assistant Artistic Director of Apollo's Fire, and recorder player Daphna Mohr; the Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Debra Nagy and violinist Johanna Novom; and "Air on a G String" from Orchestral Suite No. 3. Rounding out the album, Apollo's Fire brings back catalogue favourites by two of Bach's contemporaries: Telemann's swaggering Don Quixote Suite, and Vivaldi's fiery "La folia", featuring Alan Choo and Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana.

With Hail! Bright Cecilia, Henry Purcell, herald of the British Baroque, pays tribute to the patron saint of music through a score widely regarded as one of his masterpieces. Composed in 1692, this ode reflects both the artistic effervescence of 17th-century England and the central role of music in society at the time. Vincent Dumestre and Le Poeme Harmonique reveal the full expressive richness of Purcell's writing in a performance where jubilant brilliance, lyrical delicacy, and dramatic contrasts unfold with infectious vitality. Alternating between recitatives, solo arias, and sumptuous choruses, the score showcases Purcell's mastery of musical dramaturgy, balancing orchestral refinement with controlled theatricality.