French music specialist, Jean-Luc Tingaud, conducts a selection of Faure's secular choral and theatrical music - works that remain relatively little known. Setting a text by Victor Hugo, Les Djinns is heard in Faure's version for choir and orchestra, while his first venture into incidental music, Caligula, focuses largely on the lives of the women in the Roman court rather than the Emperor. Featuring both instrumental and vocal movements, Masques et bergamasques evokes the Arcadian allure of the French f�te galante style - antique, luminous and nostalgic. Also included is the premiere recording of Desire-emile Inghelbrecht's inventive and sympathetic arrangement of Faure's largest piano work, the Theme et variations.

Ronaldo Miranda is a multi-award-winning Brazilian composer with works commissioned by leading artists and institutions. His music is regularly performed in prestigious venues in Brazil and around the world. Miranda's Piano Concerto is an exciting virtuoso blend of atonality alongside hints of Bartok, contrasting with the flowing scales and delicate patterns found in the Concertino. The prize-winning Horizontes is a symphonic poem that tells the story of Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World, while Variacoes Temporais (Beethoven Revisitado) is an inventive set of variations on some of Beethoven's most famous motifs and themes.

Volume 65 in the Liszt Complete Piano Music series features works based on Hungarian themes, including the famous Rakoczi March, heard here in two contrasting versions. Pianist Christopher Williams has previously recorded Brahms and Mendelssohn for Naxos, as well as a series of Barmotin's piano music for Grand Piano.

Notker Balbulus, also known as Notker of St Gall or Notker the Stammerer, was a renowned Benedictine monk at the Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland who made substantial contributions to both the music and literature of his time. These include the Liber ymnorum, which forms an important collection of early musical sequences that celebrate special moments in the liturgical calendar. As the 'very long melodies' of the liturgical sequences were a formidable challenge to memorise, Notker created these texts as an aid to holding the melodies within the mind and memory. They are performed here by the acclaimed and insightful Schola Antiqua of Chicago.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes was an influential German poet who added reflective and descriptive poetry into the texture of his Passion. Among several musical settings, the most famous is the one by Handel. This acclaimed staged version transports Handel's Brockes Passion into the opera house, widening the work's historical narrative to embrace the creation of the world, bringing a message of human greed and destruction into direct contact with the present day. The Handelfestspielorchester Halle, on period instruments, is conducted by Michael Hofstetter.

The Donizetti Opera Festival in Bergamo continues to present early works by Donizetti that have been unjustly neglected for decades. Alfredo il Grande, a love story that explores the defeat of the invading Danish army by the victorious Britons, was first performed in 1823 and was revived in this production two centuries later. Skilfully orchestrated, it features memorable arias for the hero Alfredo, and includes a superb concluding rondo for the heroine Amalia, as well as a radiant quintet. The opera is heard here in Edoardo Cavalli's 2021 critical edition. Gramophone called it 'a vocally accomplished performance' and 'a fine revival'.

Mendelssohn conceived the Violin Concerto in E minor for his childhood friend, Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, though it took the composer years to perfect it. The concerto remains one of the most significant works in the genre - serene, lyrical and luminous. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major is another of the 19th century's greatest concertos, written for his favourite student, Iosif Kotek, and a work of great beauty bristling with virtuoso challenges. On this album they are performed by the brilliant Guido Sant'Anna, the first South American violinist to win the prestigious Fritz Kreisler International Competition.

The Mexican-American composer, Juan Trigos, has developed the concept of 'abstract folklore', a process by which he assimilates various literary and musical traditions in his method of composition. This first volume of his guitar works shows the process in all it's breadth, not least in the large-scale Twelve Variations and Fugue on the Folia de Espana, where old-world dances meet syncopated new-world rhythms. The Partita, based on the principle of variation, also evokes and alludes to dance, while the virtuosic and expressive Ricercare de Camara VII ingeniously explores the fusion of guitar and percussion.

Ferdinand Ries occupies a remarkable place in the history of music. He was famously a friend and pupil of Beethoven and a virtuoso pianist. His extensive oeuvre opened up the musical aesthetics of Viennese Classicism to Romanticism. Completed in 1826, the Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 143 features two lively, fast movements surrounding a poetic Adagio, reminiscent of the era's finest opera arias. Very different is the Grand Trio in F minor, WoO 86. It features four thematically interwoven movements that traverse emotions from despair to passion and eventual peace.

Includes work(s) by Richard Rodgers. Ensemble: Richard Hayman Orchestra. Conductor: Richard Hayman.

Renowned as a virtuoso Jazz clarinetist and legendary bandleader, Benny Goodman is also remembered for the works he commissioned from leading composers of his day. Poulenc's strikingly beautiful Clarinet Sonata was his last composition, while Bernstein's was his first published piece. Both Gershwin and Stravinsky added their distinctive stamp to the swing vibe which was all the rage in the early 20th century. The Jazz flavor of Morton Gould's Benny's Gig is heightened by the unusual coupling of clarinet and double bass, while pungent folk rhythms define Bart�k's virtuoso Contrasts.

HOTTETERRE: Music for Flute, Vol. 1 - Premiere livre de piec

Art & Music: Bruegel - Music of His Time

BACH, J.S.: Favourite Cantatas

TAVENER: John Tavener - A Portrait (MCCLEERY)