German violinist/composer Friedrich Seitz performed widely as a soloist and chamber musician, as well as working as a conductor and founding the first music school in Magdeburg. The Concertos for Violin and Piano or Schuler-Konzerte ('Student Concertos') are designed as introductions to violin technique, Seitz's genius being to create student works that are always tuneful and interesting, with flowing and expressively inventive melodies, wonderful slow movements and plenty of carefully curated technical fireworks. This second volume takes us up to Seitz's ambitious and beautiful final Schuler-Konzert No. 10. Hyejin Chung studied with Takako Nishizaki at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and graduated with an Advanced Certificate in violin performance. She subsequently studied with Sergey Kravchenko, a student and assistant of Leonid Kogan, at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatoire. She graduated with a Doctorate in Musical Arts in 2011. While in Russia, she won a number of competitions and performed with various orchestras. This is her second recording for Naxos.

Classical Music

The internationally admired Spanish composer Ramon Paus has written a sequence of music for piano that clearly reflects his wide-ranging and creative personality. Both Piano astrolabio and Piano al origen share passages that are poised between dream and wakefulness, with lush and transparent melodies evoking religious elements in music of transcendent expressivity. Inspired by Dreams, a film by Akira Kurosawa, Piano en Arles reflects a journey in search of light through shadow and doubt, the music brightened by Paus’ characteristically exciting absorption of jazz elements.

Johan Smith, 2019 winner of the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America Competition, presents his dream programme in this recital. Bach's Toccata for harpsichord 'borders on the unplayable' for the guitar, especially in it's final double fugue, while Manuel Ponce's Variations on La fol�a de Espa�a and Fugue is one of the most challenging peaks of the repertoire. Mertz's celebrated virtuoso Concertino is followed by Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland, renowned for it's blend of Elizabethan melancholy and contemporary strangeness. The recital concludes with a world premiere, the evocative Sables Stellaires by Josquin Schwizgebel, dedicated to Johan Smith. We are continually in awe of the remarkable musicianship of each new generation of classical players, and as a result our Guitar Laureate series goes from strength to strength with every season. Named the 'Classical Guitar Revelation of 2017' by French Guitar Classical Magazine, Johan Smith has been invited to perform in renowned festivals as soloist and in concertos with orchestras such as the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and the Verbier Festival Orchestra.

Robert Schumann's dramatic life and transcendent music can be considered an archetype for the Romantic age in which he lived. Most of the works on this recording were written towards the end of his life, and Gesange der Fruhe (Songs of Dawn) was completed just months before Schumann's final breakdown and confinement to the asylum in Endenich, it's strange beauty infused with ideas of double identity. Schumann had his own daughters in mind for the utterly charming Klavier-Sonaten fur die Jugend (Piano Sonatas for the Young), while the earlier sonata movements have recently been transcribed and edited from the composer's incomplete or discarded sketches.

The final volume in this revelatory song series charts a twenty-year period during Bohuslav Martinu’s life. The early The Three Virgins, H 73 exudes an impressionist atmosphere enhanced by Martinu’s advanced harmonic language whilst the New Slovak Songs, H 126 was the result of a highly successful rapprochement between Czech and Slovak art, reflected in music of beauty and inventiveness. Nursery Rhymes, H 283bis, though composed in perilous times, is full of wit and joy. American Record Guide wrote of Volume 3: ‘[Jana Hrochova] has a golden tone and crisp diction, and Koukl plays with warmth and clarity.’

Lorenzo Palomo has long established himself as one of Spain's greatest contemporary composers, and these three recent works reveal the vivid themes and colors of his music and the richness of his orchestration. 'Arabescos' evokes Spain's Moorish past in episodes linked together with rhapsodic freedom and fluidity, while 'Humoresca' features the double bass as it's protagonist in writing as witty as it is virtuosic. The extended choreographic poem 'Caribiana' is sensuously atmospheric and has a wealth of exuberant rhythms and melodies.

Classical Music

Robert Still’s four string quartets vividly encapsulate his compositional career. The first two, of which No. 1 was first performed in 1948, display an early inclination towards folk-song and pre- classical models, while Nos. 3 and 4, written during the 1960s “without key”, reflect his later change towards a continental European-influenced method of composition that can be summed up by the abandonment of writing in a tonal style. These world première recordings owe a considerable debt to the editorial expertise of James Dickenson, leader of the Villiers Quartet, who prepared the performance material from the original scores.

The final volume of the 24 Etudes-Caprices by the internationally renowned virtuoso Emile Sauret, crowns one of the most impressive but seldom performed bodies of solo violin writing in the entire canon. In the last five Etudes, once again played by Nazrin Rashidova on Sauret's own Stradivarius violin, the full range of his art can be heard, from double and triple stopping, to registral leaps, chordal and staccato techniques and exercises for absolute control of the bow. Of Volume 3 The Strad wrote: "Rashidova plays superbly." The Azerbaijani-born British violin virtuoso, soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral director Nazrin Rashidova made her solo debut at the age of three in Baku, and was awarded a Gold Medal by the Cairo Opera House for an exceptional violin recital three years later. Rashidova's recordings for Naxos - works for violin and piano by Godowsky (8.573058) and Moszkowski (8.573410) - were acclaimed by The Strad and Gramophone magazines. Rashidova is pursuing a PhD at the Royal Academy of Music, where her research explores �mile Sauret and his 24 �tudes-Caprices. Her world premiere recording series of these works comprises four volumes.

Composed in 1947-48 but unperformed until 1955, Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto is one of the great concertos of the twentieth century. The wide emotional range of it's four-movement structure encompasses an opening of brooding, elegiac melancholy, a manic scherzo, a harrowing and deeply felt passacaglia, and a brilliant, concluding burlesque. Wolfgang Rihm has been described as 'one of the most approachable, engaging and profound composers writing music today' (The Guardian). The solo violin in Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) plays one long fine-spun melody, the work creating a maximum of expression with a minimum of means.

Australia's premier guitar quartet Guitar Trek reflects life in modern Australia with a programme that showcases works of immense color and rhythmic vitality. The album includes the rich melodic and nostalgic quality of Richard Charlton's Five Tails in Cold Blood (including the eponymous 'Bluetongue'); the driving energy and shifting timbres of Nigel Westlake's Six Fish that adds the distinctive sound of the 12-string guitar and dobro to the mix; and at it's heart the music of Philip Houghton, one of the most original and poetically imaginative guitar composers of our time. The energy, enthusiasm and affection of Australian quartet Guitar Trek for it's artistic mission surrounds this recording like an attractive aura. The album highlights some of the best guitar quartets written by Australian composers for Guitar Trek and others over the past 30 years; the all-Australian-made instruments used by the quartet adding further synergy to the whole. This recording has extra personal meaning to the ensemble as it serves as a homage to two very close friends of the group who have passed away in recent times: composer Phillip Houghton, four of whose works form the core of the programme, and luthier Graham Caldersmith whose instruments are featured on the release.

Carl Maria von Weber's achievements as a composer were considerable and influential, demonstrating new possibilities in opera and orchestration, particularly in the handling of wind instruments. His attractive, lyrical style is ideal for the making of arrangements, and the impressive and beautifully proportioned Flute Sonata is a virtuoso masterpiece, as is the operatic Grand Duo Concertant. There is a feeling of solemnity in the G minor Trio, an unusual work with an enigma at it's heart: the song-like Schafer's Klage or 'Shepherd's lament'- the origins of which remain a source of conjecture.

Classical Music

Piano music has always been important to Bechara El-Khoury: it brings his compositional voice closer to the listener, allowing him to share his feelings more directly than in some of his orchestral works. These works represent different periods of El-Khoury's life, but share a conception aimed at creating atmosphere with expressive states that continually switch between violence, anger, suffering and rebellion, and inquiring explorations of peaceful or dreamlike meditation. Italian concert pianist and recording artist Giacomo Scinardo has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras including the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kiev Symphony Orchestra. He is a professor at the State Conservatory of Music Trapani, Italy.