In Dmitry Sitkovetsky's transcription, Bach's Goldberg Variations are revealed in a new light: a refined dialogue between violin, viola and cello, where each voice breathes and listens to the others. TrioFenix delivers a strikingly clear interpretation, combining architectural rigour, expressive freedom, and sonic poetry. Backed by nearly twenty years of musical complicity, these three chamber musicians breathe new life into one of the masterpieces of the Baroque repertoire, in a version that is as vibrant as it is intimate.

The Barcelona Clarinet Players commissioned six prominent Latin American composers to write new works for clarinet quartet and wind band. During their 2021–2022 season; they recorded each work with a different wind band in the United States or Latin America; and the result is a captivating album of extraordinary musical richness and diversity that showcases the unique aesthetic of each composer and the artistry of the performing ensembles.

Five significant 20th-century compositions for violin and cello. Works by Xenakis, Ravel and Honegger reflect the composers' French roots, while a diverse, forward-looking harmonic language contrasts with such traditional forms as the sonata and passacaglia, the latter in Norwegian Johan Halvorsen's Passacaglia for Violin and Cello after Georg Friedrich Handel; Austro-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff's Duo for Violin and Cello completes the programme. Manuel Lipstein has already released his first solo album, Roots, on OehmsClassics.

Following her highly praised debut album, Yasmin Rowe returns to Willowhayne Records for an engaging and delightful programme, in which she returned to Holy Trinity Church, Hereford for this recording. Now resident in Melbourne, Australia, Yasmin has gained critical acclaim as a soloist, collaborator and recording artist in Europe, Asia and Australia. As well as her concert hall recitals, she has given many free-to-air concerts As well as her concert hall recitals, she gives many live-to-air performances, appearing as a frequent guest on Melbourne-based 3MBS Radio since 2019.

• SIGNUM saxophone quartet will release their first album on Berlin Classics
• Feat. Alexej Gerassimez (Percussion) and Eckart Runge (Cello)
• The quartet has made a name for themselves in various exciting projects (e.g. working with Alexej Gerassimez for his solo album on Berlin Classics)
• With Chameleon they show how colorful the sound of the saxophone is with a diverse selection of music from classical (Glazunov, Bloch, Haydn, and more) as well as pop and rock

Embark on a captivating journey bridging time and soundscapes with Lithuanian pianist Guoda Gedvilaite's latest GENUIN album. Featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach at it's core, this recording interlaces Bach's original compositions, his arrangements of other Baroque pieces, and romantic piano works by famous pianists such as Wilhelm Kempff and Egon Petri. The meticulously curated album is elevated by the ethereal works of Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary of Bach, played with brilliance and profound depth, culminating in a masterful blend of artistry.

After his latest recording, devoted to Bach's Sonatas and Partitas in his own arrangement, Franz Halasz returns to Spanish music with this recital devoted to Federico Moreno Torroba. The composer of many of the best-known zarzuelas, Moreno Torroba did not initially seem destined to specialise in guitar music. It was his symphonic poems that caught the attention of the legendary guitarist Andres Segovia, who commissioned Moreno Torroba's first compositions for guitar despite the composer's unfamiliarity with the instrument. The compositions gathered here showcase a composer who, although deeply rooted in the Spanish musical tradition, was attuned to what was being done elsewhere, including the music of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, and who created a personal language marked by impressionism that would later influence guitar music throughout the twentieth century, from Heitor Villa-Lobos to Leo Brouwer. The winner of a Latin Grammy, Franz Halasz is a highly acclaimed guitarist who has himself contributed to the repertoire of his instrument by making arrangements of Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz. On a guitar built in 1936 by the legendary luthier Hermann Hauser, Halasz turns the instrument into a multi-faceted prism through which the musician can 'break the light of music' into orchestral sound, in the words of Segovia.

The debut album by the young Trio Contrasti takes us on a journey through time with a mosaic of sounds in which epochs and cultures enter into dialogue. Romanticism gave the art world a new paradigm of thought. Music took the leading position among the arts; the freedom of formal design, initiated by the content, unfolded. The quest for national self-identification and the rapid development of national styles in art began. Romanticism opened the way for a dialogue between epochs and cultures that continued into the 20th century. Three works that have no direct connection to each other are nevertheless in a common context. When viewed through the prism of a romantic paradigm, they can be seen as milestones on the path through epochs and cultures.

Skillfully crafted, meticulously executed and utterly enjoyable, Giulia Nuti's solo recordings include three anthologies of keyboard music, the last two released with Arcana. These albums feature historically significant instruments carefully chosen by the artist to enhance the repertoire with which they are associated: Le Cœur et l’Oreille (2017), recorded on the 1658 Louis Denis harpsichord and, more recently, The Fall of the Leaf (2022), featuring the splendid Italian “Rucellai” virginal built around 1575.

Her albums have been met with critical acclaim and awards, such as the “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” (German Record Critics’ Award) and the “Diapason d’or”.

For her fourth solo recital album, Giulia Nuti explores a different path, performing one of the pinnacles of keyboard literature, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Partitas. In this recording, she uses a splendid harpsichord by Christian Kuhlmann (2016), a copy of the magnificent Henri Hemsch of 1751.

Sony Classical releases the full cycle of Bruckner’s symphonies recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann on 11 CDs. The box set, featuring the composer’s nine numbered symphonies, his ‘Study Symphony’, his ‘Nullified’ symphony, and a 172-page booklet. This release constitutes the first complete recording of the Austrian composer’s symphonies from the orchestra under a single conductor. Christian Thielemann enjoys a strong rapport with the Vienna Philharmonic and has established himself as one of his generation’s most esteemed interpreters of the Romantic Austro-German repertoire.

Past praise for previously released CDs included in this set:

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 / Thielemann, Vienna Philharmonic

This new Bruckner Fourth deserves a strong recommendation. It is a reading of undeniable power and presence.

-- Fanfare

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 / Thielemann, Vienna Ohilharmonic

Overall, there’s an aliveness to the music, inspired by the concert setting, which adds another reason this Bruckner Eighth is so satisfying. If you want to hear Thielemann at his best, conducting a stupendous orchestra, that’s precisely what we have here.

-- Fanfare

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 . Thielemann, Vienna Philharmonic

Thielemann's interpretation has intimacies hard to find in other versions, and a vulnerability movingly communicated in the Vienna Philharmonic’s super-empathetic playing.

-- BBC Magazine

Bach's six suites for cello (BWV 1007 to 1012) are considered the must-haves of the instrument's repertoire. In this recording, Valérie Aimard offers a generous version that radiates without ever seeking effect for its own sake. With finesse and subtlety, the performer honors Bach's greatness.

While pursuing its constant search for music to study and rediscover, Zefiro undertook another important challenge by recording, in 2017 and 2015 respectively, the Brandenburg Concertos and Overtures, two pinnacles of the 18th-century instrumental literature. For this project Alfredo Bernardini waited until he could count on a select band of musicians who were not only in a perfect symbiosis of spirit and intent, but also equipped with the indispensable virtuosity and long-standing familiarity with the works. Thanks to the historical insight and human energy displayed by the ensemble, the interpretative results are both vivid and profoundly moving.

The recordings acquired not only prestigious awards such as Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Diapason d’or, Choc de Classica and Toccata’s CD of the month, but also specific acknowledgements for Overtures nos. 3 (France Musique) and 4 (SRF 2 Kultur), judged to be the best-ever versions. After being out of the catalogue for some time, they are now gathered together for the first time in an elegant box set.

Vom Reden und Klingen showcases the artistry of Laurens de Man, the first organist to be awarded the prestigious Nederlandse Muziekprijs. The album is a highly original recital consisting entirely of program music (music that depicts a story). These organ pieces by Bach, Mozart, Kuhnau, and Kurtag are therefore rare specimens of program music outside the 19th century. Laurens de Man plays the newly reconstructed Contius organ at the St.-Michielskerk in Leuven, Belgium

With this LP, IBA is beginning to release a new series of live concert recordings from the immense sound/video archive of Idil Biret from the 1950s to 2020. On the first LP, Schumann's Fantasie Op. 17 from the New York concert at Alice Tully Hall in 1972 and Liszt's Sonata in B minor from the Paris concert at Salle Gaveau in 1978 are included. These two performances of the works were significant milestones in Biret's concert career, opening up to her the stages of the Soviet Union and East Germany.

The large-scale Bach Organ Landscapes project featuring J.S. Bach's entire organ oeuvre recorded on a range of instruments aims to provide an overview of organ-playing and organ-building traditions that were key to Bach's composing. With a keen eye to the unique cultural organ legacy of the places associated with Bach, Halubek has placed Bach's original sound at the heart of his project. The recordings are accompanied by digital material that offer an almost tactile access to the great composer's sound universe.

Bruckner’s Second Symphony is a rare enough encounter in its 1877 version, but it’s virtually unperformed in the 1872 original version. This is not owing to some deficiency of the earlier ideas compared to the later alterations. It’s mainly habit and convenience because to get new parts and re-learn something ostensibly known, that differs in a great many details, means an extra expense of effort and resources. That’s a shame, really, because it is decidedly worth discovering the original, not-yet-ironed-out rawness of Bruckner’s early masterpiece, which was something unheard of at the time – but needn’t remain unheard now.

What does it mean for Schumann's Kreisleriana to be Romantic? Is it the violent contrasts, the mercurial shifts in mood, the fragmentary architecture, the raw and unfiltered expression? Is it the breathtaking lyricism? Or is it the spectre of the tormented kapellmeister Kreisler haunting this work that dissolves the boundaries between music, literature, and psychological portraiture? Acclaimed virtuoso Paolo Giacometti brings both poetry and psychoanalysis to Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen, performing them on a resplendent 1838 E�rard born in the very year these works first saw the light.

As an instrument from Italy, one that was exotic and evocative of Mediterranean atmospheres, the mandolin was very much in fashion in France until the end of the Century of Enlightenment: a fact also confirmed by many iconographic and musical sources. Pizzicar Galante, an ensemble that stands today as a benchmark for the interpretation of the galant literature for mandolin and continuo, has been acclaimed for the “finesse, creativity and spirit” (Olivier Fourés, Diapason) and “communicative energy” of its performances (Sébastien Llinares, France Musique).

For its second recording with Arcana, it offers a compilation of the finest music played during the veritable “golden age” enjoyed by the mandolin in Paris from the 1760s to the Revolution. It is a rare and unexplored repertoire in which the dazzling virtuosity of Anna Schivazappa, a specialist in historical mandolins, dialogues with the beguiling and charismatic voice of Marc Mauillon.

Modern Solo Violin Music

“Since Beethoven, nothing has been written that even comes close!”

The great conductor Arthur Nikisch made this remark to Bruckner’s former student, Joseph Schalk and also his fellow conductor, Hermann Levi, described the piece as “the most significant symphonic work since Beethoven’s death.”

Arthur Nikisch conducted the first performance in the Stadttheater, Leipzig, on 30 December 1884, with Bruckner in the audience. While the performance was not a total triumph, it brought the sixty-year-old composer significant international recognition for the first time. During the composer’s lifetime, the Seventh, especially its Adagio, was his most popular symphony, and it remains among his most beloved and frequently performed works.

With Pierre Boulez's 2nd Piano Sonata Idil Biret not only makes her American recording debut, but also presents the first U.S. recording of this important contemporary work. Composed in 1948, this sonata occupies a position that exerted a causative influence upon Boulez's subsequent music. It's experimental and ground-breaking nature may be better understood if one regards it as having grown out of a response to Webern's Variations (1936), the companion piece on this album. The rigid, geometric patterns of Webern's work, the classical purity of it's encompassing organization, seems to have served as a base of departure for Boulez's broadened structures that are equally rigid but incomparably more complex. It is this very complexity that conceals the strict framework of the entire composition and projects it as the product of an ardent improvisatory impetus. It demands from it's interpreter a similar approach, along with technical prowess and intellectual control of the highest order. It was only a matter of course that this work, together with influences emanating from other sources (chiefly John Cage), should lead the path not only to open-form and aleatory compositions, including Boulez's own 3rd Piano Sonata, but also, through it's new pianistic language, urge the development of a whole new generation of virtuoso pianists. (Ilhan Mimaroglu, 1973)

Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.

This recording emerged from a quest to explore new rhetorical and poetic spaces, timbres, and dynamics, aiming to reveal the soul of J.S. Bach's splendid sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. The cello piccolo, an instrument similar in size and texture to the viola da gamba, proves ideal for capturing the lyrical quality of some movements and the virtuosity of the more intricate and faster passages. The fortepiano, an English instrument beautifully restored, was chosen to emphasize the contrapuntal nature of the three trio sonatas, particularly in the continuous duetting of the right hand with the cello.

Composer Rodion Shchedrin (1932-2025) was one of the leading figures of post-war Soviet music. This album by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Olli Mustonen brings together four of his works, including music from his ballet The Lady with the Lapdog, as well as a viola concerto, Concerto dolce, performed by Lawrence Power, one of the greatest violists of our time. Rodion Shchedrin passed away while this album - a monument to the unique friendship and artistic collaboration that Olli Mustonen and Rodion Shchedrin cultivated over the course of three decades - was in preparation.

After listening for a while (to orchestral music on the radio) Idil would detect the main melody and then play it on the piano with one finger. Afterwards, when she reached the age of four, she would play these with two hands and with the correct harmony. Bach preludes and fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier, for example, which even the talented musicians took considerable time to study and memorise, were mastered by Idil in only a few days after listening once or twice, after which she would play these without a single wrong note. (Leman Biret, 1988)

For the fourth instalment of his Schubert+ series, Can cakmur focuses on the genre of the impromptu, aiming to identify historical predecessors for Schubert's piano writing as well as gain an insight into the evolution of free-standing poetic keyboard compositions. Placing Franz Schubert's famous set of 4 Impromptus, D 899, at the heart of this recording, cakmur also presents two Impromptus by Jan Vaclav Vorisek, a composer who was praised by Beethoven and seems to herald Schubert. Four works by Chopin and two by Scriabin complete the programme and bear witness to composers' fondness for this free form, capable of expressing romantically a moment, a feeling or a mood. Designed to place Schubert's major piano works alongside works by other composers, Can cakmur's Schubert+ series has so far earned the highest praise: 'With Can cakmur you are returned to your first sense of wonder and revelation at discovering Schubert's genius' (International Piano), 'cakmur [is] remarkable from start to finish, with irresistible colours, refined nuances and a clear tone' (Crescendo), 'cakmur's phrasing and his use of dynamics and colours are overwhelming' (Pizzicato).

Bach published during his lifetime four volumes of keyboard pieces under the title Clavierubung which began with a set of six Partitas, published between 1726 and 1731. The first of the set was the Partita No. 1 in B flat major. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, was apparently written during Bach's time at Cothen, probably about 1720, and revised in Leipzig about 1730. The six English Suites, the 3rd being included here, have nothing particularly English about them, except their title. They were written perhaps in Weimar in about 1715 or possibly during Bach's period at Cothen. Bach brought together a set of five French Suites, of which the 5th is Biret's favourite, later augmented to six and forming part of the Clavierbuchlein for Anna Magdalena, his second wife. The Italian Concerto in F major was published in 1735 in the second volume of the Clavierubungen, with the original title Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto. It reflects the style of the Venetian solo concertos by Vivaldi.

September 8, 1960 Oscar Pettiford, American bassist/cellist/composer with unparalleled recognition died abruptly at age 38 due to a virus disease in Copenhagen where he had made his permanent residence. He was one of American jazz players Denmark welcomed in in the 60s and 70s. A few weeks after Pettiford’s passing a circle of Danish jazz fans organized a memorial concert presented here to raise fund for his children with a star-studded program that included Stan Getz, Alice Babs, among others.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Carlotta Colombo, this set of La corona d’Arianna represents the second instalment of the Arcana series which documents the recordings made in the course of this six-year cycle, following the success of Dafne in lauro (A488, 2021 – awarded Gramophone Editor’s Choice and rated Eccezionale by Musica), La corona d’Arianna was described as a "festa teatrale" and indeed it breathes a festive atmosphere throughout. It was written and performed in Vienna in 1726, as a birthday present from emperor Karl VI to his wife Elisabeth Christine. The choir, representing the guests at this big party, has a predominant role. On a closer look, Venus (Monica Piccinini) is busy combining couples of characters so far unlucky in love: Arianna (Carlotta Colombo) with Bacco (Rafal Tomkiewicz), Teti (Marianne Beate Kielland) with Peleo (Meli-li). This recording was made following the stage performances in Graz in June 2022 in which the work was shortened in relation to post Covid requirements. Yet the music by Fux flows happily, with plenty of dramatic tension and variety of colours. 

Gregor Meyer, director of the GewandhausChor, fulfills a dream by returning to "his" instrument, the organ, and recording an album at GENUIN that gathers sounds from Saxon organs of an organ-building dynasty: the Kreutzbach family from Borna. Meyer plays organs from three eras, taking us through Saxony from Johanngeorgenstadt to Wiederau and Zwickau-Marienthal. Meyer's organ playing utilizes the full range of the highly characteristic and historically valuable organs to faithfully and differentially portray music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Böhm, and Max Reger. A must for lovers of historical, regionally anchored organ craftsmanship!