A pupil of the legendary pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and composition student of Alfredo Casella, Camillo Togni became one of Italy’s most progressive and multi-faceted composers in the latter half of the 20th century. While the Serenate represent an anti-romantic move away from chromaticism towards serialism, the Tre fantasie scherzose, with their glimpses of Liszt, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, recall the nineteenth-century custom of paraphrases based on well-known themes. Using a theme from The Art of Fugue,the Omaggio a Bach was described by the composer as a “fantasia, both serious and ‘commemorative’ in character, which cites and develops Bach’s material in several contrapuntal episodes.”

Sergey Taneyev was a distinguished pianist and influential educator, succeeding Tchaikovsky as professor at the Moscow Conservatory and counting Scriabin and Rachmaninov among his students. The Piano Trio, Op. 22 is a demonstration of Taneyev's technical skill, filled with subtle use of counterpoint, lyrical expressiveness and virtuoso fireworks. Alexander Borodin was a leading member of the "Mighty Handful", and his incomplete but brilliant Piano Trio was seen by Glinka as setting a precedent in teh genre for its deeply Russian character.

Seen as the successor to Beethoven by many of his contemporaries, Johannes Brahms combined traditional form with an originality o fmusical language that has inspired generations of composers. His two string quintets are, like Mozart's, scored with two violas for richness of texture and harmonic depth. The positive mood of the First String Quintet reflects the sunny resort of Bad Ischl where Brahms composed during the spring of 1882, while his Second String Quintet combines symphonic breadth with nostalgic melancholy in what was originally intended to be his final chamber work. Formed in 1987, the New Zealand String Quartet has established a distinguished international reputation over the past three decades. The ensemble's discography includes all the quartets by Mendelssohn, Bartok and Berg, and this recording completes their three albums of Brahms chamber music for Naxos.

Based in Leipzig with a length career as principal cellist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Julius Klengel was a renowned soloist and revered the world over as a great interpreter and pedagogue, whose works are still in use by students today. Composed in true Romantic style, the three Concertinos were written for teaching purposes, the first coming closes to the idea of a mini-concerto but all having virtuoso elements and expressive and lyrical central movements. The Konzertstuck, Op. 10 gives the piano equal status with the cello to create a thrilling conclusion to any programme.

Giacomo Carissimi was one of the most admired of seventeenth-century Italian composers. The maestro from Marino, near Rome, acquired a Europe-wide fame at an early age and excelled in church music. Commonly employing texts that modify or amplify passages from the scriptures, rather than taking those texts verbatim, Carissimi employed all his genius for vocal melodic lines and accompanying instrumentation to fashion a sequence of spellbinding masterpieces. Foremost among these is Usquequo peccatores which, through its size and length, blurs the very distinction between motet and oratorio. This is the fourth Naxos release of music by Carissimi from this ensemble.

Restored by Mayr expert Frans Hauk from two extant manuscript versions and heard here in its world premiere recording, Simon Mayr’s Stabat mater in F minor was singled out by a contemporary biographer “for its marvelous effect” and “heavenly beauty.” Mayr himself frequently returned to this work, recycling one of its movements in his great Requiem. The song-like Ave maris stella builds on a hymn that dates back to the 8th century. Born in Neuburg an der Donau in 1955, Franz Hauk studied church and school music, with piano and organ, at the Munich Musikhochschule and in Salzburg. In 1988 he took his doctorate with a thesis on church music in Munich and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since 1982 he has served as organist at Ingolstadt Minster, and since 1995 also as choirmaster. He has given concerts in Europe and the United States and made a number of recordings. Since October 2002 he has taught in the historical performance and church music department of the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater, Munich. He founded the Simon Mayr Chorus in 2003.

Andrew Staniland (b. 1977), recently recognized by election to the Inaugural Cohort of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists Royal Society of Canada, has become one of Canada's most important and innovative musical voices. His powerful body of music for solo instruments with electronics that reveals the exciting and evocative use he makes of sound files and 'looping' have been performed and broadcast internationally. On Talking Down the Tiger, the eponymously-titled opening piece explores the ferociousness, beauty and mystery of percussion instruments whilst Flute vs. Tape is virtuosic, vivacious, and not afraid to embrace capricious fun. These qualities permeate his music and help explain why leading American writer Alex Ross calls it 'alternately beautiful and terrifying'.

Before his thirtieth birthday the young Catalan composer Antonio Soler had become maestro di capilla and organist at the Escorial palace, positions he held for hte rest of his life. Many of his keyboard sonatas were written for Don Gabriel, son of King Carlos III, and they represent his greatest compositional achievement, effortlessly embodying the dual influences of Domenico Scarlatti and the emergent Viennese school. Each sonata in Volume 6 has its own distinctive character, from the ingenious contrasts of No. 63 in F major and the harmonic sophistication of No. 64 in G major to the delicious Iberian colours evoked in No. 66 in C major.

Beauty, purity, and expressivity mark out music for upper voice choirs. On this recording, performed by one of the UK's leading vocal ensembles, the repertoire embraces classics of the genre such as Gustav Holst's sublime Ave Maria and his third group of Hymns from the Rig Veda, as well as contemporary music. James MacMillan and Sir John Tavener are represented by works that explore their unique musical language, whilst Bob Chilcott's technically demanding The Song of the Stars offers richly approachable pleasures.

Framed by Edward Elgar’s deeply personal Violin Sonata and the bravura fireworks of his Mazurka, this programme is a fascinating look at British music for violin and piano at the turn of the last century. Popular pieces such as Delius’s haunting Serenade can be found alongside premiere recordings such as that of Frank Bridge’s attractive Con moto or Cyril Scott’s contemplative Versperale.

Composed in 1954 for the 400th anniversary of the founding of S�o Paulo, Amer�ndia is the composer's largest symphony. Effectively a hybrid symphony and oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra, it is memorable for it's stylistic variety and breadth, drawing on many different sources of Brazilian music. This recording is based on a newly revised edition made by Editora Criadores do Brasil (the S�o Paulo Symphony Orchestra's publishing house) in collaboration with the Academia Brasileira de M�sica. Born in Brazil in 1934, Isaac Karabtchevsky studied conducting and composition in Germany under Wolfgang Fortner, Pierre Boulez, and Carl Ueter. He has held posts at the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (OSB), La Fenice in Venice, and the Tonku�nstler in Vienna. He is currently director of the Petrobras Symphony of Rio de Janeiro and the Heliopolis Symphony, an orchestra composed of young musicians, most of them from disadvantaged communities in S�o Paulo.

The small-scale motet was at the heart of daily and weekly musical practice in the Roman Catholic Church of the mid-seventeenth century. One of the genre's most distinguished exponents was the maestro di cappella in the Jesuit Church in Rome, Bonifazio Graziani. An ordained priest, he was commissioned by Pope Innocent X to compose solemn music for the "most holy year" of 1650, and his works were in demand across Europe. His elegant mixture of text, melody, and harmonic accompaniment is highly distinctive, with the two oratorios revealing the extent of his compositional breadth.

The innovatively written and richly varied song cycles Olivier Messiaen wrote between 1936 and 1945 works perfectly conveying the expressive and aesthetic evolution in his life and art over these years, occupy a strikingly important place in his musical biography. The intense and at times heroic Poèmes pour Mi is laid out on the largest scale. Chants de Terre et de Ciel, lighter in tone but still deeply expressive, celebrates the joy and energy of married love and family life. The Bruun Hyldige Duo’s acclaimed recording of Messiaen’s Harawi and Trois Mélodies can be heard on Naxos 8.572189.

This much lauded series continues with a sequence of four premiere recordings played by the elite Illinois State University Wind Symphony. Roy Magnuson's House Plants in Terracotta Pots is described by the composer 'as a simple statement of something simply thought.' Sydney Hodkinson's expressive Duae Cantatae Breves explores the slow and meditative potential of the wind band. Jayce John Ogren's richly imagined and poetic Evening Music is followed by Francesco Jos� Mart�nez Gallego's exciting, monumental Sinfon�a No. 1 'Kaprekar'.

A student of Kodaly in Budapest, the pianist, composer and conductor Tibor Harsanyi travelled to France in 1923 where he joined an elite group of expatriate composers, including Martinu, Tansman, and Tcherepnin, known as ‘l’ecole de Paris’. The music on this recording presents a survey of Harsanyi’s stylistic development, from one of his earliest works, the Sonatina, with its essentially Romantic roots, to his final work, the Viola Sonata, notable for its mixture of sensuousness and earthiness that connects it to the earlier compositions. The Violin Sonata reflects currents of modernism in Paris, including American jazz, as well as the music of his compatriot Bartok.