This box set represents the culmination of Viktoria Mullova's celebrated series of Beethoven Violin Sonata recordings - a distinguished body of work produced in collaboration with pianists Kristian Bezuidenhout and Alasdair Beatson that has earned consistent critical acclaim since it's inception in 2009.

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.

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.

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.

What if a shopping centre could become a place of presence? In 'Concert for a Space and Time' (2019), the Danish-American composer Lil Lacy stages an 'alternative Christmas concert' among the escalators and glass lifts. Singers emerge unnoticed from the crowds, strings sound from the building's heights and depths, and stone, steel, wood and glass dissolve into their elemental origins-an invitation to let go, look up and rediscover connection in the most unexpected of places.

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.

With Love Letters, drummer and composer Joost Lijbaart has created perhaps the most personal album of his career, an album on which he let's go of many of his musical certainties. After 35 years in jazz, improvisation and world music, Lijbaart asked himself a simple yet confronting question: what remains when technique, virtuosity and musical complexity are stripped away? What happens when the only intention is to play honestly? The answer was rhythm, sound and the expressive power of words. Together with young New Zealand singer, bassist and songwriter Amelie Spinks and American bassist River Adomeit, Lijbaart formed the band Sunflower. In it's music, his long-standing love of country, folk and Americana comes clearly to the surface-genres he had listened to for years but had never previously explored in a project of his own. The age difference between the three musicians (Spinks is 23, Adomeit 29 and Lijbaart 58) did not create distance. Instead, it became a source of inspiration, shaping the songwriting, the lyrics and the musical concept. Their collaboration brought back the excitement of first experiences: making music without routine and without predetermined roles. For Lijbaart, Sunflower also required a radical new approach to drumming. Much of what he had developed throughout his career, extended percussion, complex rhythms and technical virtuosity had no place in these songs. Instead, he searched for something more essential: rhythm, texture and expression through simplicity, finding exactly the right balance between instrumentation, lyrics and groove. The songs on Love Letters draw attention to the places where life may reveal itself most truthfully: in small gestures, in touch, in waiting and in care. They open up a world in which quiet actions carry more meaning than grand statements, and where silence and listening can lead to greater understanding and wisdom. At the heart of the album is the idea of equality not as a declaration, but as a way of being. In 'If I Was a Woman, ' Lijbaart consciously attempts to step into a perspective that is still too often overlooked within a patriarchal society. 'Eight Hands on a Black Cat' explores the strange contrast between the tangible, truthful experiences of domestic life and the noise and superficiality of the outside world. For Joost Lijbaart, Sunflower is not a side project, but a new artistic beginning: music made without protection, in which virtuosity no longer determines what should be said. The song does.

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.

Tania Giannouli and Nik Bartsch have played together as a piano duo since 2023. Whilst they are both open to influences and traditions, their skill and passion are also nourished by chamber music from the classical tradition, by the true spirit of folk music, by a dedication to the ritual structures of sacred music and by the innovative creativity and need for freedom that jazz demands.  Their rhythmic energy is shaped by the legacy of Balkan music and by the rhythmic traditions developed on percussive instruments such as the cimbalom. The intellectual and musical backgrounds of these two artists have now merged naturally after long individual journeys and have created a shared sonic philosophy rooted in the present. The eight pieces on this album present an organic and effortless distillation of all of these aspects.

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.

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.

The latest release by the two classically trained brass musicians/composers Aaron Messing and Anni Hochhalter, Recall, Recall, is an overflowing menagerie of sounds and melodies featuring textured injections of trumpet and French horn, with some voice, guitar, drums, and sensory percussion giving the whole a unique sound. Aaron Messing is a composer, arranger, producer, and trumpet player, and Anni Hochhalter is a founding member and French horn player of classical chamber ensemble WindSync. In substance, the album slips from dimension to dimension within and between songs as though traversing the contours of a calabi-yau manifold - heady and quirky like a Terry Gilliam cut-out animation but grounded in a Herman Hesse-esque spirituality. Each song encompasses it's own singular world, tethered to the next by the brass and the unique contours of the voices of Hochhalter and Messing.

Arvids Jansons (1914-1984) was born in Liepaja on Latvia's west coast. He studied violin from 1929 until 1935 at the Conservatory of Liepaja, then composition and conducting (under Leo Blech) at the Conservatory of Riga from 1940 until 1944 while working as a violinist at Riga Opera. In 1944 he was appointed conductor of Riga Opera, then of the Latvian Radio Orchestra (1947-1952). In 1952 he was appointed associate conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky and toured frequently with them, as well as with other Russian orchestras, to the UK and to the Continent from 1970 onwards. Jansons became principal guest conductor of Manchester's Hallé Orchestra in 1965 at the personal invitation of Sir John Barbirolli, who knew of Jansons as an expert orchestral conductor but a genius in the rehearsal studio. It was in Manchester that Jansons collapsed and died from a heart attack in 1984 while conducting a concert with the Hallé. Arvids was the father of Mariss Jansons (1943-2019).

Renowned oboist Celine Moinet releases her 5th album with Berlin Classics. The program features a virtuosic Baroque selection of oboe concertos, highlighting brilliance, elegance, and expressive depth, including concertos by Franz Xaver Richter, Jean-Marie Leclair, Alessandro Besozzi, and Carlo Besozzi. It is a vibrant journey through the rich and rarely explored Baroque oboe repertoire, that showcases Moinet's refined tone, technical mastery, and stylistic sensitivity across diverse European traditions.

With Love Letters, drummer and composer Joost Lijbaart has created perhaps the most personal album of his career, an album on which he let's go of many of his musical certainties. After 35 years in jazz, improvisation and world music, Lijbaart asked himself a simple yet confronting question: what remains when technique, virtuosity and musical complexity are stripped away? What happens when the only intention is to play honestly? The answer was rhythm, sound and the expressive power of words. Together with young New Zealand singer, bassist and songwriter Amelie Spinks and American bassist River Adomeit, Lijbaart formed the band Sunflower. In it's music, his long-standing love of country, folk and Americana comes clearly to the surface-genres he had listened to for years but had never previously explored in a project of his own. The age difference between the three musicians (Spinks is 23, Adomeit 29 and Lijbaart 58) did not create distance. Instead, it became a source of inspiration, shaping the songwriting, the lyrics and the musical concept. Their collaboration brought back the excitement of first experiences: making music without routine and without predetermined roles. For Lijbaart, Sunflower also required a radical new approach to drumming. Much of what he had developed throughout his career, extended percussion, complex rhythms and technical virtuosity had no place in these songs. Instead, he searched for something more essential: rhythm, texture and expression through simplicity, finding exactly the right balance between instrumentation, lyrics and groove. The songs on Love Letters draw attention to the places where life may reveal itself most truthfully: in small gestures, in touch, in waiting and in care. They open up a world in which quiet actions carry more meaning than grand statements, and where silence and listening can lead to greater understanding and wisdom. At the heart of the album is the idea of equality not as a declaration, but as a way of being. In 'If I Was a Woman, ' Lijbaart consciously attempts to step into a perspective that is still too often overlooked within a patriarchal society. 'Eight Hands on a Black Cat' explores the strange contrast between the tangible, truthful experiences of domestic life and the noise and superficiality of the outside world. For Joost Lijbaart, Sunflower is not a side project, but a new artistic beginning: music made without protection, in which virtuosity no longer determines what should be said. The song does.

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.

Lyric Opera of Chicago, under the leadership of General Director John Mangum and the baton of Music Director Enrique Mazzola, presents the world premiere recording of The Listeners, a striking new opera by Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill. Drawing on distinctly American preoccupations, the work unfolds within a community bound together by circumstance and belief, shaped by the unsettling presence of an unexplained 'hum' that blurs perception and reality. Through Mazzoli's richly textured orchestral writing and Vavrek's incisive dramaturgy, the opera becomes a powerful reflection on vulnerability, tenderness, rage and hope, all sung into existence with a haunting sense of optimism. At it's centre is Claire Devon, a high school math teacher portrayed with remarkable intensity by Nicole Heaston, whose collaboration with the composer shapes a character defined by curiosity, precision and uncompromising emotional depth. Her journey from isolation to reluctant authority exposes the human need for connection in a world where listening becomes both consolation and control, and where belief can quickly harden into collective illusion. Mazzoli's expansive score, driven by large orchestral forces and a distinctive electronic 'hum,' creates an immersive sonic landscape in which inner psychology and external reality continuously intersect, building towards a devastating reckoning in which voices reshape reality itself. Missy Mazzoli previously appeared on PENTATONE with Proving Up (2020); Lyric Opera of Chicago appeared with The Three Queens (2022) and Puccini: Heroines (2026), together with Enrique Mazzola.

Shaped by fragments and moments of improvisation, the Noctunes are the personal take on the tradition of the Nocturnes?. This album contains a series of pieces dedicated to the quiet hours of the night?. Composer and pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch is recognized for his unique blend of modern classical, jazz, and electronic music. He studied piano at the Hochschule fur Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, earning his artistic diploma in 2010, followed by composition studies under Thomas Zoller.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shaped by fragments and moments of improvisation, the Noctunes are the personal take on the tradition of the Nocturnes?. This album contains a series of pieces dedicated to the quiet hours of the night?. Composer and pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch is recognized for his unique blend of modern classical, jazz, and electronic music. He studied piano at the Hochschule fur Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, earning his artistic diploma in 2010, followed by composition studies under Thomas Zoller.

Pieces for Lutha" Anders Ericson plays this unique instrument from the Gustavian era, and presents an unknown part of the late 18th century Swedish musical landscape to the modern audience. Lute player Anders Ericson plays recently restored instruments by Swedish 18th century master luthier Johan Jerner, that take us back to an intriguing and intimate sonority from another time. Swedish composers Cloos, Ankar and Wikmanson clearly display the high musical and technical level of early Swedish "Luthenists". Each work on "Solo Pieces for Lutha" is a world premiere recording, which makes this disc truly exciting. An unknown musical treasure and an unheard instrument resounds!

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.

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.

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.