In a remote Spanish town, the free-spirited Carmen declares that any man she loves should beware. But even she is unprepared for what happens when she decides to seduce police officer Don Jose. Though initially uninterested in Carmen's charms, Don Jose - against the wishes of his mother and of Micaëla, the woman who loves him - soon abandons his respectable career for a life of danger with Carmen, joining her and her smuggler friends as they outrun the law. But Carmen quickly wearies of Don Jose's possessiveness, longing to return to her life of independence. When she turns her attention to the celebrated toreador Escamillo, Don Jose's jealousy and despair threaten to violently erupt. Damiano Michieletto's searing production casts scorching light on the lust, violence and passion of Bizet's ever-popular opera.

Les Chemins qui montent builds on Amel Brahim-Djelloul's first album dedicated to the Kabyle repertoire, giving it a new orchestral dimension. Thomas Keck has arranged songs by Idir, Djamel Allam, Djurdjura and Taos Amrouche, and set the poems of Rezki Rabia to music. Led by Benjamin Levy and the Cannes National Orchestra, the album presents these songs in a new light, enhanced by a focus on timbre, linguistic phrasing and rhythm. The ensemble reveals the timeless power of a repertoire that is perfectly at home in a symphonic concert.

Bela Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin was premiered 100 years ago, on 27 November 1926. The evening ended in chaos and is regarded as one of the most high-profile theatre scandals, certainly the biggest since the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in Paris a few years earlier. Causing shock among the public - perhaps because there is nothing miraculous in the fairy-tale sense - the work is in Bartok's own words 'hellish with instruments clanging, clattering and blaring'. Today, it's realism, rhythmic melody and harmony still inspire awe. Released to coincide with the centenary of it's premiere, this second album in Cristian Macelaru and WDR Sinfonieorchester's Bartok series pairs the Mandarin with the composer's other major work for orchestra, the Concerto for Orchestra. Unlike the former, the reception was a triumph.

Philzuid's eighth album is a live recording of Antonin Dvorak's The Wild Dove and Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 1. Dvorak was deeply fond of the poetry of his compatriot Karel Erben. The Wild Dove is one of four compositions in which Dvorak drew inspiration from Erben's poetry. Brahms spent more than two decades working on his first symphony, ultimately producing what would become his magnum opus. Both works are performed by the orchestra under the direction of chief conductor Duncan Ward.

Per il Luigi is the 17th volume of the complete Haydn 2032 collection and presents a number of Haydn's earliest symphonies; these had been composed to display the talent of the musicians who had joined the Esterhazy court orchestra during the same period as Haydn himself. The centre of the programme is the Symphony No. 13 in D major from 1763, whose orchestration includes four horns and whose final movement features a prefiguration of the famous theme of Mozart's 'Jupiter' symphony, to be composed twenty-five years later. The Violin Concerto in C major is marked fatto per il Luigi in Haydn's catalogue of works and was dedicated to Luigi Tomasini (1741-1808), a violin virtuoso born in Pesaro and a friend of Haydn. Two centuries later, the young Baroque violin virtuoso Dmitri Smirnov now brilliantly champions this repertoire with the Kammerorchester Basel under Giovanni Antonini.

Eugene Ysaye remains best remembered for his 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin: six diverse and contrasted pieces that have kept his name alive across the century since they were written. For the present album, each one of the sonatas was dedicated to a violinist whose style and manner of playing is accordingly reflected through the piece in question. Each work has been situated in the context of music by the performer or artist who inspired it. Written for violin and piano/piano 4-hands, these works are rarely performed. Programmed between each of the sonatas, these works create an intriguing way of listening to the Ysaye's 6 Sonatas for Solo violin. The Ysaye Sonatas, Op. 27, were played on violins made by Philipp Bonhoeffer. All other works were played on the 'Caspar Hauser' violin, made by Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri 'del Gesù', c. 1724.

In bringing together in the same recording the trios of Alex de Taeye and of Lucie Vellere, we create a dialogue with two contrasting yet profoundly complementary voices of twentieth century Belgian music. They were contemporary, brought up in the same cultural climate, and they embody two faces of the same epoch: one, institutional and influential, a recognised figure of the academic milieu; the other, more intimate, almost clandestine, for whom chamber music was a refuge of liberty and sincerity. Their trios, though exceptional in their respective catalogues, share the same demand for clarity, balance and sensitivity. Each has an individual aesthetic: that of de Taeye, the inheritor of a bountiful, controlled post-romanticism; that of Vellere, imbued with an inner gentleness and a heightened sense of colour. Set side by side, these two works form a mirror portrait of a musical Belgium lying between tradition and modernity, between public illumination and poetic reclusion.

Layers The Album For centuries, spiritual singing was an inseparable part of everyday life of mankind. It accompanied the course of day, course of life and course of year and acted as a kind of measure to keep in touch with the flow of time. There were songs to sleep and wake by, pray for God's mercy in all situations possible and maintain a harmonious and modest life. These songs travelled through Europe mostly with the help of protestant pastors and songbooks, but blended into local folk heritage in every parish. Different versions of well-known chorales create a unifying web across Western culture while maintaining a distinct, irreplicable voice of the isolated communities. These songs, either straight from songbooks or transcribed during field trips by scholars of early 20th century, are the core of this album. Layers, so to speak, of spiritual singing reach seamlessly from Estonia, across the Swedish-speaking areas of Estonia to mainland Sweden and Norway, overseas to Iceland, making a stop at good old England where similar cultural processes took place a little earlier. Latin hymns translate into local languages, blend into folk tradition, get picked up again, make their way into art music directly or indirectly and become a source of inspiration once again. We encounter these songs in an environment where boundaries between social classes, styles of music, scenes and venues get blurred over and over, each time according to a whole different logic. We break a few canons, cliches and customs by approaching spiritual hymns with modern equipment, still making the vocals sound natural, timeless and unprocessed, vulnerable and enlightened. In our arrangements, we are aware of the tradition but treat the material with playfulness and a slight sense of irresponsibility. This is the layer we add to the heritage that has shaped our identities as individuals and nations, keeping the very core of human knowledge and spiritual existence alive and relevant.

« These two concertos by Joseph Haydn are cornerstones of the cello repertoire. For me, they belong to those works that accompany a cellist through the different stages and moments of life. I have always taken immense pleasure in performing them. This music, often described as 'solar,' moves me deeply through it's light, vitality, and energy, but also through a subtle sense of melancholy that occasionally emerges. Recorded both in a single day, the urgency and energy of the session will remain for me an unforgettable and unique memory. » Julie Sevilla-Fraysse

Two composers, two works devoted to Our Lady, and two ways of expressing sorrow and supplication through music. This recording brings together Domenico Scarlatti and Jose de Nebra around two of the great texts of Marian devotion. Scarlatti's Stabat Mater, one of the pinnacles of the sacred vocal repertoire, dazzles with it's imposing ten-voice writing and refined contrapuntal craft. Nebra's setting-composed within the milieu of the Real Capilla for a reduced ensemble-possesses remarkable expressive power and a pronounced theatrical accent. In his Salve Regina for solo soprano, strings, and continuo, Scarlatti explores a more intimate and virtuosic dimension in what is considered his final work. Nebra, by contrast, chooses an expressive restraint for the same text. La Grande Chapelle thus presents a compelling dialogue between two major figures of eighteenth-century music in the Iberian Peninsula, whose paths converged around the figure of Queen Maria Barbara of Braganza.

What happens when music becomes an act of rebellion? Step into Winchester Cathedral on a February morning in 964, a day which sparked a silent coup and forever changed the sound of worship. Nexus Winchester invites you into this charged moment, when canons - men of wicked and scandalous behaviour, not celebrating mass, marrying illicitly, living in gluttony and drunkenness, even trying to poison the bishop - were expelled, monks took their place, and some of the earliest polyphony in Western music arose from the conflict. Drawn from the Winchester Troper, these sumptuous works reveal a virtuosity and refinement that feel startlingly modern. Two voices entwine in the earliest known polyphonic masterpieces, fiddle and flutes drift between ritual and imagination, stories by the poet Wulfstan surface like whispered testimony, while voices and instruments open uncanny sonic spaces. A thousand years later, Ensemble Dialogos revives this repertoire not as a relic, but as living drama - where power, silence and song collide, and the past speaks urgently to the present.

Following her first recording of concertos for Channel Classics (CCS47825), the Franco-Hungarian pianist Suzana Bartal pays tribute to her Hungarian roots with a programme that showcases a variety of styles, from Liszt and his Gypsy influences to Bartok, who, through his campaigns to collect folk songs, immersed himself in folk and peasant music. Erno Dohnanyi's Ruralia Hungarica, composed in 1923, is more post-Romantic in style, although the composer himself also occasionally turned to folk music.

Christoph Graupner had spent five years as an opera composer in Hamburg before the Landgrave Ernst-Ludwig called upon him to take up the position of Hofkapellmeister in Darmstadt in 1709. He became the best-paid music director of his time and would continue to define the musical style of the court until his death in 1760. His relative isolation there apparently enabled and allowed him to develop a personal style that does not exactly conform to the norms that had been set during the past centuries through the reception of Bach's monumental oeuvre; the slow rediscovery of Graupner's music has also meant that he was not included in the musical picture we now have of that era. This album presents a varied sample of Graupner's musical activities during his almost fifty years in service in Darmstadt - we hope that it will spark the listeners' curiosity to discover more of this extraordinary composer.

Irish violinist Darragh Morgan, a tireless advocate for new music, here presents four concertos written for him over the past two decades by Frank Lyons, Brian Irvine, Bill Campbell and Ryan Molloy. Recorded with the Ulster Orchestra under David Brophy, this compelling programme reflects the richness of Northern Ireland's contemporary voice. Electronic transformation, folk-inflected rhythms and lyrical introspection coexist with passages of dazzling virtuosity, each work revealing a distinctive sound world. Together they form a vivid, cohesive portrait in which solo brilliance and symphonic imagination are fused with striking assurance and colour.

A festive classic, including some of Tchaikovsky's - and indeed, the classical ballet canon's - most instantly recognisable tunes, Peter Wright's production of The Nutcracker has been enchanting children and adults alike since it's first performance by The Royal Ballet in 1984. Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs bring the story wonderfully to life, from the 19th-century German home of the Stahlbaums - which features a Christmas tree that transforms beyond one's imagination - to the Kingdom of Sweets, where everything is sugar and sparkle.

The 15 romances from Ludwig Tieck's Magelone represent Johannes Brahms' only true song cycle. With his reputation as an ideal accompanist it is clear that Brahms was extremely familiar with the examples of his predecessors Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, and as such was able to convey an authenticity of feeling with this work. Set in medieval times, Die schone Magelone is a wonderfully epic yarn in which Count Peter falls in love and elopes with the fair Magelone, leading to disaster and dramas equaling that of any romantic opera.

Matthew Martin stands among Britain's leading composers for choir and organ. Performed by The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral under David Newsholme, with Jamie Rogers at the organ recently rebuilt by Harrison & Harrison, this programme reflects Martin's close association with Canterbury. The album spans the jubilant Psalm 150, first heard in Manchester, and the direct, concentrated writing of the Coventry Missa brevis, to the stillness of Ave verum and the dramatic narrative of When David heard. An Evensong sequence reveals Martin's instinct for liturgical form, while the organ work concludes the collection with clarity and purpose. Several pieces are recorded here for the first time, offering a focused survey of a distinctive contemporary voice.

A recognised specialist in the music of Robert Schumann (he recorded the complete works for solo piano between 2000 and 2010 for Alpha Classics), the French pianist eric Le Sage has devised this programme as a tribute to those who loved Schumann and to the woman he loved: Clara Wieck, of course - who would go on to become Clara Schumann despite her father's opposition to their marriage - but also Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure and Camille Saint-Saëns. Alongside their Variations on a Theme by Schumann, we find music by Robert, who also wrote Variations on a Theme by Clara Schumann, as well as two piano transcriptions of his Lieder, including the famous Du bist wie eine Blume, completed the day before their wedding.

Japanese guitarist Koki Fujimoto presents a recital of evocative pieces from France, Spain and Japan. He begins with his own arrangement of Ravel's Alborada del gracioso, a work shimmering with Spanish guitar evocations, and continues with one of Sor's finest masterpieces, the Fantaisie et Variations brillantes. Miguel Llobet was one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century and a prolific composer for the instrument. His mastery of harmony and melodic expressiveness can be heard in the exquisite miniatures celebrating Catalan folk music. They preface two expressive works from Japan - Fujimoto's Aki no Sankan Nigiri and Tropical Count by Sunao Isaji. Ansgar Krause's arrangement of Debussy's earliest known piano piece, Danse bohemienne, concludes the album.

This new MarchVivo release presents a live recording of the concert given by the Albeniz Jazz Quartet at the Fundacion Juan March on 10 June 2026. The project explores how the piano music of a classical composer such as Isaac Albeniz can inspire the transformation of his music into a jazz idiom. Albeniz opened new horizons for the piano in the 20th century through his refined and visionary writing, just as this recording reveals a previously unexplored dimension of his music. The chosen pieces, conceived as soundscapes of an imagined Spain, are reinterpreted here with rhythmic freedom and new harmonies for a jazz quartet, offering a fresh perspective on this classical repertoire with it's unmistakable Spanish stamp, transformed by the sonic palette of contemporary jazz.

Moonrise is the first album recording from young British composer Christopher Churcher (b.2004), bringing together works written between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one while studying at the University of Oxford and singing with Somerville College Choir. Performed by the choir under Will Dawes, the album presents both a cappella and piano accompanied pieces-from music for Advent to works celebrating queer identity, and secular settings reflecting on light and the passing of day. It is an intimate and assured collection, moving between moments of contemplative stillness and radiant, lyrical choral writing. Moonrise offers a compelling first introduction to Churcher's developing voice, alive with clarity, warmth, and immediacy of expression.

Reaching Farther: Clare College 1326-2026 marks the 700th anniversary of Clare College, Cambridge, with a programme of choral music commissioned for and closely associated with the Choir, performed under Director of Music Graham Ross. The recording spans works by composers with direct connections to Clare, from William Denis Browne's canticles composed as a student in 1911, through to world premiere recordings of new commissions including Nico Muhly's title anthem, Heloise Werner's canticles, and a setting by current undergraduate Thomas Alban. Also included is a rare first recording of a work by former Clare Organ Scholar Ayo Bankole, recovered after considerable research.

John Adams is a composer whose works are shaped by the full breadth of American music, while being equally grounded in Classical and Romantic traditions that inform his sense of structure, harmony, and expressive line. Both Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Road Movies combine this aesthetic with a distinctive rhythmic drive that has made these some of his most enduring pieces, while Roll Over Beethoven demonstrates how far Adams has been able to move away from traditional minimalism. With the lyrical eloquence of arias from his stage works, and the 'Satie meets Bill Evans' transparency of I Still Play, this program is a vivid reminder of what makes John Adams one of the most versatile and influential composers of our time.

A festive classic, including some of Tchaikovsky's - and indeed, the classical ballet canon's - most instantly recognisable tunes, Peter Wright's production of The Nutcracker has been enchanting children and adults alike since it's first performance by The Royal Ballet in 1984. Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs bring the story wonderfully to life, from the 19th-century German home of the Stahlbaums - which features a Christmas tree that transforms beyond one's imagination - to the Kingdom of Sweets, where everything is sugar and sparkle.

This twentieth volume of the complete Haydn symphonies, conducted by Giovanni Antonini, highlights the popularity of Haydn's music in England during the 1790s. Although Haydn was unable to travel to London himself, he sent his music there instead, as no fewer than eleven of his symphonies were performed during the twelve evenings of the first season of the Grand Concert in 1782 - the year of the death of Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who directed this series of concerts in London. This volume pays tribute to him, as alongside Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 76, 77 and 78, the Kammerorchester Basel and Giovanni Antonini have recorded J.C. Bach's Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6, published in 1769. Also worth reading in the album booklet is Antonini's delightful analysis of Haydn's 'humore inglese' in his symphonies!

In a remote Spanish town, the free-spirited Carmen declares that any man she loves should beware. But even she is unprepared for what happens when she decides to seduce police officer Don Jose. Though initially uninterested in Carmen's charms, Don Jose - against the wishes of his mother and of Micaëla, the woman who loves him - soon abandons his respectable career for a life of danger with Carmen, joining her and her smuggler friends as they outrun the law. But Carmen quickly wearies of Don Jose's possessiveness, longing to return to her life of independence. When she turns her attention to the celebrated toreador Escamillo, Don Jose's jealousy and despair threaten to violently erupt. Damiano Michieletto's searing production casts scorching light on the lust, violence and passion of Bizet's ever-popular opera.

Four chapters across generations: 'Danish Resonances' sets accordion works by Hans Abrahamsen, Niels Rosing-Schow and Per Norgard against four newly commissioned world premieres by Anders Skibsted, Loic Destremau, Matias Vestergard and Gustav Bjerre. Accordionist Jose Valente threads them into a single, unfolding journey that moves by turns lyrical, virtuosic, introspective and expansive, revealing the full expressive range of the classical accordion.

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony emerged at a biographical crossroads, between his definitive establishment as a leading composer and the onset of increasing isolation caused by his advancing deafness. At the time of it's premiere, it was the second-longest symphony ever written, surpassed in scale only by Beethoven's own Third, the 'Eroica.' Since it's first performance in 1813, there has never been a period in which it was not counted to the composer's most popular works. Since 2025, Francois-Xavier Roth-who had already served as Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg from 2011 to 2016-has been Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra. A musical visionary and remarkably versatile conductor, Roth has recorded and released all of Richard Strauss's tone poems, the ballets of Igor Stravinsky, the orchestral works of Ravel and Berlioz, as well as the complete symphonies of Bruckner, Mahler, and Schumann. With the present recording, Roth and the SWR Symphony Orchestra set a highly musical opening marker for a collaboration that promises to continue with great momentum in the years ahead.

Athene is proud to present Cantata (re)mixed for four hands, an exciting album of J.S. Bach's Cantatas arranged/re-composed by Chiahu Lee and Gyorgy Kurtag, and performed by piano Duo Vershinina-Lee (Chiahu Lee and Yulia Vershinina-Mukhopadhyay). This follows their acclaimed Diversions release in 2024 (re)inventions a deux pianos (DDV 24172), a complete recomposition for two pianos of J.S. Bach's 15 two-part inventions, praised by BBC Music Magazine as 'an invigorating and beguiling spring clean for the ears.' Yulia Vershinina first encountered Kurtag's transcription of the Sonatina from J.S. Bach's Cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit ten years ago, and drawn to it's intimacy, the Duo have longed to record it. It's included on the album alongside six new four-hand reimaginings of J.S. Bach cantata sections composed by Chiahu Lee, and in doing so the duo have formed an imagined cantata of their own, bringing Bach's vocal world into the shared space of one piano, embodying the joy, spontaneity, and trust of their unique partnership. The album opens with the exhilarating and joyful arrangement of Sinfonia 'Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir' (BWV 29), followed by the Chorale 'Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme' (BWV 140), both bringing to mind the layered textures of electronic music. The Chorale Prelude 'Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein' (BWV 734) successfully manages the tricky task of translating the various different instrumental colours into one shared keyboard. Chorale Prelude 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' (BWV 639) was inspired in part by Kurtag's transcription style: intimate, spare, and intensely concentrated, and is followed by his long-awaited arrangement of the Sonatina 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit' (BWV 106). Chia- Chia has waited since childhood to play Aria 'Alles, was von Gott geboren' (BWV 80), and to bring this beloved vocal moment into the shared space of four hands. The final Chorale 'Alle Menschen mussen sterben' (BWV 262) was inspired by string instruments - Lee found ways to allow the piano to replicate their resonance and to suggest bowed sound. Chiahu-Lu Lee says 'Bach himself was a master of transcription: he arranged music by other composers and reworked his own. Seen in that light, the desire to carry Bach's vocal worlds into the hands of pianists felt less like an intrusion and more of a continuation - a way of entering a tradition rather than stepping outside of it.' Pianists Yulia Vershinina-Mukhopadhyay and Chiahu 'Chia-Chia' Lee met at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where a lasting friendship grew into an enduring musical partnership. United by a shared curiosity for reinvention and lesser-known repertoire, the duo explores music across centuries through performance, arrangement, and creative reimagining, with projects ranging from Baroque reinventions to works by contemporary women composers.

Elevation explores the search for new sonic possibilities. At it's core is the conviction that the diatonic harmonica possesses far more expressive capabilities than are often attributed to it. It is precisely it's direct connection to the player that makes it an instrument capable of navigating a wide variety of musical worlds. A formative companion on this journey of discovery was Howard Levy. Working with him opened up classical music as a new field for the diatonic harmonica. His Concerto for Diatonic Harmonica and Orchestra remains one of the few significant concert works for this instrument and became an important source of inspiration. The long-standing collaboration between Benyamin Nuss and Konstantin Reinfeld arose from the same curiosity. Over many years, the two musicians developed a shared musical language that bridges classical, jazz, improvisation, and crossover. This deepened musical rapport gave rise to the desire to expand the sound of their duo with the colors of an orchestra. With Elevation, this idea became a reality. The new works by Wolf Kerschek and Benyamin Nuss take up the duo's characteristic sound and transport it into a larger orchestral space. In this way, the album combines the familiar with the new and opens up new perspectives for the harmonica. Elevation was recorded in February 2023 with the Detmold Chamber Orchestra at the Kulturstiftung Marienmünster. The title represents a path on which curiosity, openness, and artistic development give rise to new musical horizons.