Ausias Parejo won the 2022 'Alhambra' International Guitar Competition at the age of 17. In this programme he includes works by Leo Brouwer, Ponce and Guastavino, as well as works by Juan Erena, Lorenzo Palomo (a premiere recording) and Ausias's father Ruben.

Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez was a key figure in the cultural life of Rio de Janeiro. The primordial power of Batuque, the final movement of his Afro-Brazilian influenced suite Reisado do Pastoreio, gained the composer international fame. Without ever abandoning his Brazilian roots, in his later career Lorenzo Fernandez moved away from explicit nationalism towards a more universalist idiom as can be heard in the vigorously themed and atmospheric First Symphony of 1945 and the programmatic Second Symphony, inspired by the life and death of the heroic 17th-century explorer Fernao Dias Paes Leme. Symphony No. 1 is a world premiere recording.

The award-winning Quartetto Adorno present Castelnuovo-Tedesco's complete works for string quartet. He began composing chamber music during the 1920s, and these works date from 1929, 1948 and 1964 respectively. Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 are world premiere recordings. This is a major addition to the comprehensive catalogue of Castelnuovo-Tedesco albums on Naxos.

Franz Clement was a composer and violin virtuoso who premiered Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Clement's solo violin works heard here display a lexicon of technical demands, suave lyricism, wit and imaginative writing. The award-winning violinist Haoli Lin performs this programme of world premiere recordings.

Fernando Lopes-Graca's importance to 20th-century Portuguese music cannot be overestimated. His study of native songs and traditions has been compared to that of Bartok, and the soulful melodies of the Tr�s cancoes corais are an early example of his highly effective integration of folk style into rigorous historically established forms. From the reverence and purity of the Christmas Cantata songs to the harmonic density of the Tr�s liricas castelhanas de Camoes, the powerful and often deeply moving combination of Lopes-Graca's use of classical structure alongside his country's musical heritage finds it's zenith in his writing for voices.

Recorded during the 2022 Rossini in Wildbad festival. The soprano Serena Farnocchia stars as Ermione in a Rossini opera filled with captivating lyrical expressiveness and spectacular vocal acrobatics. Antonino Fogliani conducts this critically acclaimed performance.

Ukrainian guitarist Marko Topchii (b. 1991), winner of the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America Competition, presents a diverse programme of music from across the centuries. Includes the world premiere recording of his countryman Konstantin Bliokh's Sonata No. 6 'Kharkiv'.

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The pioneering work and unconventional ideas of John Cage deeply affected Western music during the second half of the 20th century. This second of two volumes completes Katrin Zenz's review of his complete works for flute. The earlier chromatic pieces include an incredible variety of extended techniques and a perplexing rhythmic complexity. The elements of chance and experimentation in the later compositions result in music that is constantly undergoing seismic shifts in form and expression. The elegance and purpose of Cage's music rests in a tenderness and devoutness that he stated should "sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences."

Lukas Foss may be regarded as a mirror of twentieth century music, since his works seem more influenced by other composers and trends than influential in their own right. Whether experimenting with neo-Classicism, as in his Two-Part Inventions (4) (1938), the Passacaglia (1940), the Prelude in D (1951), and the Scherzo Ricercato (1954), or dabbling with popular song in his Grotesque Dance (1938) and the Fantasy Rondo (1944), Foss toys with styles and mannerisms with an amused detachment. Ever mindful of his craft but reticent in expression and apparently unconcerned with originality, Foss seems to approach composition with a utilitarian attitude, and his results are quite similar to Hindemith's Gebrauchs music. Even in such late works as the stylistically varied Solo (1981) and the witty For Lenny, Variations on "New York, New York" (1987), Foss seems a distant observer, and writes what is effective without revealing much of his own personality. Pianist Scott Dunn plays these works with a crisp touch and a disciplined control of line, but at no point does he express more than Foss indicates.

Spanning a fifty year period, from the Three Pieces for Flute Duet of 1935 to his homage to the Kyoto Zen garden Ryoanji from 1984, this first volume of John Cage's complete works for flute with Katrin Zenz provides a way to access Cage's music and hear his development throughout the decades of his impressively long career. From his 12 tone influenced early years that yielded works of astonishing beauty to the latter years that included electronics, song sprech and unorthodox scoring, Complete Works for Flute provides insight to this master's various musical directions as the 20th century unfolded. Includes the world premiere recording of Music for Two, which Cage dictated was written for any combination of the 17 different instrumental 'parts without scores' provided by the composer.

John Cage was one of the twentieth century’s most radical thinkers who redefined his own contribution to musical history in the light of his ceaseless exploration. + One aspect of this was the technique of ‘indeterminacy’, exemplified by Winter Music, a major work on the grandest of scales that can be freely interpreted as to time but which remains coloristic and resonant. + Two2 is one of Cage’s ‘Number Pieces’, and one of his most forward-looking works, a composition that considers the structure of listening itself and one that continues to influence a new generation of composers. + This is the final disc in the series (volume 1 is on 8.559726, volume 2 on 8.559727).

John Cage's remarkable magnum opus A Book of Music for two prepared pianos is brought together here with his complete works for toy piano. Intricately structured according to Cage's ideas about Mozart, A Book of Music is an eloquent and virtuoso mosaic of driving and sometimes frenetic rhythms, the exotic sounds of the 'prepared' piano strings transporting the listener into worlds of the strangest imagining. The Suite for Toy Piano is a modest miracle of precise expression and the first ever serious concert music written for this instrument, while Music for Amplified Toy Pianos is composed using chance elements, generating a spacious field of sound filled with surprise.

John Cage’s practicality transformed the piano into a full percussion orchestra and a workbench for sonic experiment. Three Dances is one of his most ambitious prepared piano works. Music for Two includes bowed piano techniques to create shifting tapestries of subtle expression, making for some of the most exquisite and moving chamber music of the late 20th century. The second of a three volume series; Volume 1 can be found on Naxos 8.559726.

This program documents almost four decades of Ernst Toch’s artistic development. His romantic First Violin Sonata marks the end of the composer’s early period. The Divertimento and Cello Sonata were written during his most productive period, the 1920s, while the String Trio is the work of an exile determined not to compromise a style declared ‘asphalt music’ by the Nazis. The Adagio elegiaco commemorates the many relatives and friends Toch lost to the Holocaust.