In 2015, composer Michael Zev Gordon took up the idea of writing musical diary entries, which has spawned this ongoing series of small pieces for solo piano. With most written in a single day, with only minor subsequent refinements, Gordon beautifully captures a feeling, a nuance, an image and, as is the nature of a diary, often with personal associations. Pianist Joseph Houston sensitively responds to Gordon’s recurring themes of the bitter-sweet waltz, unwavering stillness, elegiac simplicity, folk-like dances and fleeting brilliance.

Franco Alfano was a major musician and teacher who enjoyed considerable success with his operas during his lifetime, but who has been overlooked for decades. Generally regarded as the regenerator of the Italian art song, the works featured in this album offer a generous overview of Alfano’s vocal output, from his Opus 1 Cinq mélodies, written in 1896 when he was a twenty-one-year-old student at Leipzig, to Due liriche per canto, violoncello e pianoforte from 1949, five years before his death. Anna Pirozzi has established herself as the leading Italian dramatic soprano of today, performing on the most prestigious international opera stages. She is joined here by the acclaimed pianist Emma Abbate and renowned cellist Bozidar Vukotic.

Conductor Paul Gameson directs Ex Corde Vocal Ensemble in this album of music by composer David Lancaster. These works draw upon the legacies of artists and craftsmen who lived and worked in England’s medieval York, leaving evidence of their beliefs, stories and ideas which have survived into the present, in carved stone and painted glass. The compositions on this recording belong together; whilst they can each stand alone, they are linked musically, historically and geographically. The title track, Apocalypse, is based on a Middle English poem entitled ‘Pricke of Conscience’. At the Edge of the World, documents the life of Emma Raughton, an anchoress who lived in York’s All Saints Church during the early part of the fourteenth century.

For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest. Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest. John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.

Throughout his career, clarinettist Robert Plane has given the premiere performances of a number of works written especially for him, and is renowned as a champion of contemporary music. This album celebrates the results of the intense and very personal collaborations between Plane and the composers Diana Burrell, Huw Watkins, Mark David Boden and Sarah Frances Jenkins. Plane is joined by pianist Benjamin Frith, the Gould Piano Trio and the BBC Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Geoffrey Paterson.

The harpsichord concertos of J.S. Bach form the origins of the keyboard concerto genre that was to continue to flourish through the music of his sons, C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach, and onwards. Here, celebrated keyboardist Steven Devine is joined by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in this recording that features the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, Concerto in A major BWV 1055, and the Concerto in D major BWV1054, together with a new reconstruction by Steven Devine of the Concerto in D minor BWV 1059.

Georg Philipp Telemann was one of the most successful and wealthiest German Baroque composers and his Twelve Fantasias for solo flute, TWV 40:2–13 were written between 1727 and 1732. The pieces are given a systematic structure with the pieces in alphabetical order by key, A to G, major and minor. In these solo Fantasias, Telemann combines secular and sacred music using a variety of forms. Solemn courtly dances and rhythmic central European country dances engage in dialogue with pieces that are more akin to the serious and strictly polyphonic musical tradition of the Catholic Mass. Finnish flautist Sami Junnonen performs on a modern Japanese Muramatsu flute, hand-crafted in twenty-four carat gold in the 2000s.

In their debut album, the Sakuntala Trio presents the world premiere recording of Franz Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat major, D.471, in this innovative and compelling completion by Professor Brian Newbould. Of this first trio, only the first movement and the beginning of the slow movement, were penned by Schubert, before he abandoned the work, leaving a gem of a fragment. The album also features the second version of Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat major, D.581, together with a selection of Peter Warlock’s transcriptions of Henry Purcell’s Three-Part Fantasias.

Flauguissimo duo, Yu-Wei Hu and Johan Löfving are joined by violinist Magdalena Loth-Hill, soprano Emily Atkinson, and viola da gamba player Henrik Persson for this recording of eighteenth-century sonatas, arias and trios by Johan Helmich Roman. Frequently hailed by later historians as the Father of Swedish Music, Roman started his career at the Royal Chapel of the Swedish Court, and also spent time studying and performing in London, where it is thought he received lessons in composition from Handel and Pepusch. This album features three contrasting sonatas, two arias from the composer’s cantatas containing flute obbligato parts, and an arrangement of a trio sonata in E minor, evoking a court salon concert in early eighteenth-century Stockholm.

Pianists Rebeca Omordia and Martin Jones present this album of world premiere recordings of works for piano and orchestra by three major composers. Joining with the BBC Concert Orchestra and award-winning conductor John Andrews, Martin Jones continues his survey of the piano works of Elisabeth Lutyens with this recording of Eos (in which he performs the piano part) and Music for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 59. Jones also performs Elizabeth Maconchy’s concise and striking Dialogue for Piano and Orchestra. Rebeca Omordia performs Errollyn Wallen’s arresting new Piano Concerto, that was commissioned for her by Julian Lloyd Webber and first performed in November of 2022.

This second of two releases to mark the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth presents a further two major song collections by the composer, while bringing to light another selection of songs by his student Elizabeth Maconchy. Her works here are almost all unpublished and virtually unknown since their first performances from manuscript, and span several decades of the composer’s career from the time of her studies with Vaughan Williams in the mid-1920s through to her committed espousal of the British modernist aesthetic by the 1960s and 70s. The songs are performed by tenor James Geer and pianist Ronald Woodley in this continuation of their long-standing partnership.

Alla Milanese (‘in the Milanese style’) explores the connections between musicians at the heart of Milan’s scene for experimental music, c.1592–1626. Alongside compositions from the city’s most illustrious musical families – Rognoni and Cima – The Gonzaga Band has sought to rediscover the music of their lesser-known contemporaries, including Biumi, Casato, and the nun-composer Caterina Assandra, to illuminate a rich and complex network of stylistic innovation at the dawn of the Baroque era.

Pamela Harrison belongs to a generation of women composers whose star shone brightly in the aftermath of the second world war but who subsequently faded into obscurity as the establishment turned towards the Continental avant-garde. Here, the Gould Piano Trio, with clarinettist and project curator Robert Plane, are joined by friends and colleagues in this survey of her work. The Violin Sonatina of 1949 is the earliest work of Harrison’s to feature on this album of world premiere recordings, and this compelling programme also features the thematically linked Clarinet Quintet and Piano Trio, along with the Clarinet Sonata. The short work for clarinet and piano, Drifting Away, is inspired by the W.B. Yeats line ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters’.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, pianist Mark Bebbington, members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Hilary Davan Wetton, present a recording of the composer’s almost totally neglected orchestral work, Fantasia on the ‘Old 104th’ Psalm Tune, for solo piano, choir and orchestra premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1950. The album also features the Romance for viola and piano; the ever popular The Lark Ascending in the original 1914 version for solo violin and piano; and the early but ambitious Piano Quintet of 1903, which was embargoed until as late as the 1990s and scored for the same combination of instruments as Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet.

Early music ensemble Ceruleo presents an album of music from restoration-era England. Featuring works by Henry Purcell, John Blow, Francesco Corbetta, and John Eccles, the album looks at the dramatic character of English Restoration music and its relationship to the theatrical tradition of the time. Providing a snapshot of the music that might have been heard in English theatres and concert halls, Ceruleo creates a performance – like the stage works of Purcell and Blow – which freely flits between deep emotion, humor and melancholy, all interspersed with instrumental dance music.