Cavallini was known as 'the Paganini of the clarinet' for his beautiful tone and dazzling performances. The Capriccios are still used as mandatory exam pieces at Italian conservatoires. Recorded here for the first time, the Three Duos were also composed for teaching purposes.

Respighi’s Sonata in B minor was completed a year after The Fountains of Rome had brought him international renown. + A work of considerable dimensions and scope, it combines expressive intensity with techniques grounded in early Italian music. + Like Respighi, Pizzetti, Casella, Malipiero and others, Riccardo Pick-Mangiagalli belonged to the ‘generation of the 1880s’, which played such a key rôle in the resurgence of Italian instrumental music. + His early Sonata, notable for its concise ideas and attractive melodies, and the three short pieces on this album, comprise the complete works for violin and piano of an undeservedly neglected composer. + Volume 1 of this two-disc series can be heard on Naxos 8.573129.

Described by the Observer as "a contemporary hero of British Choral Music", Bob Chilcott is one of today's most widely performed composers of choral music. This program includes premiere recordings of favorites such as a Little Jazz Mass, songs and carols on a variety of texts, and the wit, wisdom and drama of Aesop's Fables in which Chilcott makes musical references to Brahms and Schubert. Winner of the coveted BBC Choir of the Year award in 2010, the Wellensian Consort is one of the United Kingdom's leading chamber choirs.

Haydn's Andante con variazioni is a masterpiece of fantasy and expression in which the alternation of themes provides ever-changing variety. Domenico Scarlatti's Sonatas revel in color and rhythmic vivacity with the G minor, K.450 luxuriating in a 'Spanish Tango' of great originality. Robert Schumann told his wife to be, Clara, that the Sonata in F sharp minor, so rich in poetry and passion, was 'a cry from my heart to yours'. Marianna Prjevalskaya is a laureate of numerous international piano competitions, including the Paderewski (2007), Seoul (2008), Jose Iturbi (2008), Sendai (2010) and Maria Canals (2011).

Japanese organist Mari Fukumoto has won First Prize at two of the world’s leading competitions, the 7th International Organ Competition, Musashino-Tokyo, and the International Organ Competition of the 62nd Organ Week in Nuremberg. She has also broadcast extensively on German radio. Her wide-ranging programme explores the connections between the works of Bruhns and Buxtehude, J.S. Bach and Grigny, and those of Messiaen and the contemporary Romanian-German composer Michael Radulescu.

Standing at the heart of award-winning Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer's output are his symphonies and string quartets. The first four quartets chart his development over an important decade, from the 1963 First Quartet, Op. 8 to the strikingly powerful Fourth of 1974. Whether structured in a single span - as in the Second with it's hints of Bartok - or more formally devised in three movements, Meyer's work is at the forefront of contemporary European quartet writing, showing some allegiance to, but differences from, the quartets of his compatriots Penderecki and Lutoslawski. This is the fourth and final volume of the complete Quartets.

• Haydn's piano trios are products of his later maturity and reflect technical advancements made in keyboard design. • The three members of the Bartolozzi Trio came together specifically to perform Haydn's unjustly neglected Piano Trios. • Recorded 2012

Towards the end of the 19th century a new, home-grown school of instrumental music began to flourish in Italy, bearing fruit over the following decades. Casella's Cinque Pezzi (1920) and Concerto, Op. 40 b (1923), both for string quartet, are two high points of the genre, with the Concerto quickly becoming an international success. Guido Turchi's Concerto Breve, which draws on the models of Hindemith and Bartok, is another significant contribution to the development of the string quartet in 20th-century Italy.

Franz Liszt wrote relatively little chamber music in his long and illustrious career. The DuoSonata is a tribute to Chopin, drawing on one of his famous Mazurkas as well as other Polishthemes. The gracefully charming Epithalamium was Liszt’s wedding present to the greatviolinist Eduard Reményi, for whom the gipsy style of Die drei Zigeuner was also intended. Thetwo lyrical Elegies commemorate the passing of members of Liszt’s circle, while the demandinglyvirtuoso variations of the Grand Duo concertant make no concessions to either player.

This recording brings together two of today's finest British organist/composers and includes specially commissioned works. Jeremy Filsell's music is rooted in a long liturgical tradition and ranges from a poignant Epitaph to a Te Deum which recreates the spirit of William Walton's glorious piece for the 1953 Coronation. David Briggs's Pange lingua portrays the wonders of the Holy Communion in music, and his dramatic and grandiose Messe pour Saint-Sulpice also has moments of quiet, emotional profundity. The Vasari Singers' Great British Anthems (8.572504) has been described as 'essential listening' (Gramophone).

The twin series of symphonies and string quartets stand at the centre of Krzysztof Meyer’s achievement as one of the most renowned composers of our time. His mastery of the chamber medium is also revealed in the two works presented here. The Piano Quartet, Op. 112, heard here in its world première recording, is unusual in Meyer’s output for its one-movement structure with several contrasting sections. Elegy, threnody and caprice co-exist in an intense interplay of great passion. In its scale and impact the Piano Quintet recalls similar such pieces dating back to Brahms.

The Suite dans le style ancien updates Baroque dance forms in spiffy Neo-Classical dress characterized by accessible tunes and tart harmonies that take root in Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Poulenc yet sound refreshingly original. Among the six 1930 Arabesques, a Mazurka in homage to Chopin begins with some deliberately "wrong note" melodic trickery, and eventually gives way to more than a few chords lifted (consciously or not) from the Gershwin songbook. The Fanfare's orchestrally evocative rumbles put both pianist and the instrument's bass register in peril, while the concluding Danza is a cross-rhythmic finger-twisting tour-de-force.

Although for many, Antonio Vivaldi's contemporary renown may rest primarily with The Four Seasons, his legacy is steadily achieving greater and richly deserved recognition today with the help of collections such as this one abetted by the Aradia Ensemble, a fine period instrumental ensemble with an impressively robust discography. Vivaldi was astoundingly prolific composing hundreds sonatas, sinfonias and concertos, as well as more than forty operas, numerous sacred choral works and around forty cantatas. The works on this recording dedicated to his sacred music range from the virtuosic to the simple, but Vivaldi's vivid musical imagination is in full force throughout. Though his sacred music has generally received less attention than his instrumental works, they are equal to them in their originality and power.

Three very varied works make up this latest disc in the Naxos series of Gian Francesco Malipiero’s orchestral works, including two world premiere recordings. Malipiero claimed, extremely improbably, to have created his Fantasie di ogni giorno – ‘Everyday Fantasies’ – simply by stringing together musical ideas he had scribbled down from day to day, ‘and it was not even necessary to change their order’. In the Passacaglie, by contrast, Malipiero deliberately set out to use far stricter structural devices, while Concerti, composed two decades earlier, is a highly imaginative and diverse suite of miniature concertos for different instrumental sections of the orchestra.

Composer-Producer William Perry Has Played a Major Role in the Revival of Interest in Silent Films, Both Through His 100 Silent Film Scores and His Emmy Award-Winning TV Series 'The Silent Years', Hosted By Orson Welles and Lillian Gish. The Critically-Acclaimed Naxos Recording 'Music for Great Films of the Silent Era' (8.572567) Presented a Rich Array of Perry's Film Music; This Companion Volume Offers a Further View of Perry's Colorful, Exuberant Writing, Including His New Silent Film Heroines Song-Suite for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra, Celebrating Eight Legendary Silent Cinema Actresses. Perry's Supremely Melodic Sense of Period and Style Captures Perfectly the Romance, Grandeur and Humor of Those Entertaining Days When Movies Were Movies!