Mozart wrote his horn concertos, three of them complete and one lacking it's slow movement, for the former Salzburg horn-player Ignaz Leutgeb, who had returned to his native Vienna in 1777.

The idea of arranging movements from Prokofiev' popular ballet Romeo and Juliet for brass band and percussion is not as strange as it may first seem, since Russia boasts a great brass band tradition.

With this program Yorick-Alexander Abel honors the unsurpassed cello legend Pau Casals who as a Catalan is mainly known under his Spanish name Pablo Casals. When at 97 years old Casals died in Puerto Rico he had made the cello as a solo instrument more popular than anyone else - and he had won worldwide respect and affection as UN ambassador for peace. Pau Casals was the son of a Catalan father and a Puerto-Rican mother. After World War II he went into exile in Puerto Rico. YorickAlexander Abel is the son of a German father and a Cuban mother with Catalan ancestors. It is more than the European-Creole ancestry that links Abel with the legendary Casals, it is also the conviction in the power of the spiritual message, and of course - as with all the cellists - the love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach whose six suites for cello solo were recognized as the peak of cello literature due to Casals's celebrated performances and recordings. "Hommage � Pau Casals" is a journey between epochs and styles, a journey with many cross connections.

Charles Ives wrote almost two hundred songs. Although his reputation rests on orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is Ives's songs that represent the heart of his creative thinking. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting is analogous to the wider evolution of American music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new edition includes all the songs that Ives completed. The alphabetic approach ensures that each volume (of which this disc is the fourth of six) contains a representative cross-section.

This is the first complete recording of MacDowell's art songs. Between 1883 and 1902 he composed a total of 42 songs, which were, however, published out of chronological sequence. The earliest in opus number, the Two Old Songs, Opus 9, were actually the eighth group of songs MacDowell wrote. MacDowell's songs in their order of composition, marked a change in technical style. The earliest, dating from 1883, are full and opulent, but he soon began cutting back the piano score to the merest background for the vocal line. The earliest songs were composed in 1883 and published as Opp. 11 and 12 by C.F. Kahnt in Leipzig. In 1898 Breitkopf & Hartel reprinted the five songs as one set. Heinrich Heine is the author of the poems for Du liebst mich nicht (You Love me Not), Oben, wo die Sterne gluhen (The Skies, where Stars are Glowing) and Mein LiebGhen (My Love and I sat Close Together). The texts for the two songs of Opus 12 are by Emanuel Geibel and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. MacDowel1 was still very much under the influence of Raff and these five early songs are fairly Germanic in both style and beauty and some biographers have even compared them stylistically to early Richard Strauss.

Mozart was a childhood prodigy, composing from the age of five and performing at royal courts by the age of 10, becoming famous throughout Europe. As an immensely influential composer, his music sits at the very centre of Western musical culture and today casts it's spell over the hearts and minds of music lovers throughout the world. This substantial collection presents the cream of Mozart's imperishable contribution to music through his piano concertos, symphonies, chamber music, operas and choral works. Mozart will always be a key figure in classical music, his signature style with it's clarity, balance and transparency matched by the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, 30 of which are represented in this great value 2-album collection. The aim of such a collection is to deliver an attractive and entertaining programme with highlights from this great composer's prolific output in acclaimed recordings from our catalogue, while introducing newcomers to the huge variety of Mozart's creativity and provide a springboard for further exploration into every genre of his prolific output.

Celebrated Georgian composer Vaja Azarashvili is part of the generation that emerged during the Soviet era in the 1960s, becoming one of the country's most significant pioneers in the idiom of classical music and bringing international recognition to it's contemporary musical heritage. Azarashvili's intensely lyrical musical language is elegantly represented in this collection of his complete works for cello and piano, including his transcriptions of beautiful pieces including the Nocturne, Nostalgie, and the Sentimental Tango in world premiere recordings for these versions. Azarashvili's music is performed here by award-winning cellist Alexander Suleiman, whose passion for contemporary music has resulted in numerous collaborations, recordings in the improvised and jazz genres, and premiere recordings of piano trios by An-lun Huang.

Over two centuries of the world’s greatest love themes, tenderly played by world-class orchestras and performers. The 11 gorgeous, sensual tracks include Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini -Andante cantabile; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 – Andante; Borodin: String Quartet No. 2 – Notturno; Atovmyan: The Gadfly Suite – Romance; Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 – Adagio; Khachaturian: Spartacus - Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia; and more romantic classics!

Classical Music

What Dreams May Come features music spanning more than a century, beginning with Gustav Holst's Suite No. 1 in E Flat, composed in 1909, and ending with Omar Thomas's Come Sunday that premiered in 2018. Also included are Steven Bryant's Suite Dreams, first performed in 2007, and David Maslanka's A Child's Garden of Dreams, described by the composer as "a symphonic suite for one-on-a-part wind ensemble."

Renowned as a soloist and as a member of the Amadeus Guitar Duo, Dale Kavanagh is one of the most prominent classical guitarists of her generation. With this album she not only plays solo works composed for leading guitarists all over the world, but is also joined by acclaimed and award-winning colleagues in duos such as the joyful Campanellas and the tragic The Ghost of Peggy's Cove. Written as a celebration of the virtuoso artistry of three giants of the international guitar scene, Loaded covers a breathtaking range of emotion and technique.

Having sustained an injury to his left hand, Artur Malawski had to abandon his career as a virtuoso violinist and went on to become a successful teacher and composer in his native Poland. The Symphonic etudes of 1947 brought him international recognition with it's unorthodox design and powerful expression. The Overture shares something of his younger contemporary Lutoslawski's resourcefulness, while the Toccata shows a similar adventurousness of spirit. The manuscript of Mountaineers' Triptych has not survived complete - it is heard here in a realisation by Kazimierz Wilkomirski.

Cristian Carrara, born and educated in the Friuli region of north-east Italy, has earned critical admiration as one of the most creative composers of his generation. Clarity and directness inform much of his music, as does a sense of mystery, examples of which can be heard on this album. These recent works were composed during 2016-21 and focus on dialogues between a solo instrument and the orchestra. All are strongly narrative in character but as The Devil's Bridge shows, they are also informed by rhythmic vivacity and a rich variety of instrumental colour.

Giuseppe Martucci was one of the formative figures in the re-establishment of Italian instrumental music in the second half of the 19th century. His orchestral music had advocates as powerful as Mahler and Toscanini, and his piano concertos won admirers. His solo piano music was performed mostly by him, and today remains virtually unknown. These compositions offer verdant, colourful melodies, striking dance themes, and elegant music crafted for the salon. There are also some flamboyant and virtuoso challenges, tracing a lineage back to Scarlatti.

Travel Notebook, Suite for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 by Ukrainian composer Alexey Shor is cast in a neo-Classical vein. It offers personal impressions of places he has visited, with music that is harmonically traditional and melodic. Violin Concerto No. 4, composed during the Covid pandemic, is a restless, passionate and romantic work, displaying Shor's trademark lyricism. Both works are heard in the composer's versions with string orchestra.