Recorded live, this final volume in Chlo� Hanslip and pianist Danny Driver's critically acclaimed cycle of Beethoven's violin sonatas features the epic 'Kreutzer' Sonata, described by the composer as being in the style of a concerto for violin and piano. The enigmatic and beautiful Sonata No.10 and the vibrant Sonata No.2 from the late 1790s complete this much anticipated album.

Homelands is a powerful album of classical art song about exile. Featuring Ian Bostridge, Jennifer France, James Atkinson, Wonsick Oh, and pianist Aron Goldin, who curated the project. The songs (include many favorites by Tchaikovsky and Faure) are on the theme of exile and yearning for home. A performance of Homelands at the Royal Academy of Music in London on World Refugee Day in June 2022, with Olivier Award, Bafta and Tony Award winning actor Sir Simon Russell Beal reading poems by Auden, Brecht and Carol Ann Duffy with ancient Hebrew and Chinese poetry raised over �200,000 for the 30 Birds Foundation, a charity that enabled 500 Afghan school girls to escape the Taliban and fly from Kabul to Canada.

How composers draw their creative lives to a close continues to fascinate. Are their final works the culmination of all that has gone before or suggest what might have come next? Did illness enhance their profundity or diminish their powers? Can we listen to such pieces without thinking of them as some kind of message from beyond the grave? The music featured on this fascinating program from violinist Sophie Rosa and pianist Ian Buckle each suggest different answers to these questions and challenges some preconceptions. In their last years, Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) both continued to be inspired by musicians around them. Schumann in post-revolutionary Germany and Schoenberg in post-war America looked back to classical models, to reinvigorate, even lighten, their compositional approach. That sense of playing with history is also evident in the music of Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov (b. 1937), who has claimed: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to, and an echo of what already exists."

Sonya Bach's fourth album for Rubicon is an all Mussorgsky program. The famous Pictures at an Exibition and Night on the Bald Mountain bookend rarer repertoire such as the two Pictures from Crimea, Duma, and M�ditation. Sonya Bach studied with two of the 20th century's great pianists - Alicia de Larrocha and Lazar Berman.

Pianist Karim Said came to the public spotlight as the subject of Christopher Nupen's celebrated 2008 documentary Karim's Journey. The film traces the development of an exceptional musical talent from childhood to the beginnings of musical maturity and is one of a series of Nupen films focusing on young artists in the early stages of their careers. Echoes from an Empire, Said's debut album on Opus Arte, was hailed by Gramophone as 'superbly executed' and by The Guardian as 'Wonderfully full-blooded.' His sophomore album on Rubicon, Legacy, features works by Byrd, Schoenberg and Brahms, among others. Said said of the recording's wide-ranging program, 'The way in which composers influence each other, whether across generations or more directly through the master/pupil relationships that they often cultivate, fascinates me.'

Thomas Guthrie writes - In 2001, I had studied for a PhD at York University under the guidance of the inspirational conductor, musicologist and all-round Lieder lover, Peter Seymour. Our subject was ornamentation in Schubert Lieder. I was a poor student, and never finished it, but my eyes and ears were opened to the idea that Schubert expected his singers to ornament - and adapt in other ways - his music. I also learnt some of the wider ideas inherent in Rhetoric, an obsession of the literati of the Renaissance (and later). At the heart of this antique science, based on the art of both speech writing and speech giving, is the idea that genuine engagement with an audience demands spontaneity and invention. According to the rules of Rhetoric, this should be exactly half of it, right down to questions of tempo, instrumentation, expression and even the notes themselves. In this context, performing Schubert songs in white tie and tails, standing in the crook of a large grand piano in a refined, often large-capacity cultural venue, began to seem to me to be inauthentic, and even contrary to the spirit in which Schubert had composed them. I hope you can feel even a tiny whiff of it as you listen to these songs. Above all, I hope they conjure some sense of the Schubert that perhaps we have come to miss - a lover of relaxed storytelling through friendship, humanity, and intimacy.

Andrew Armstrong's debut album for Rubicon is a fascinating recital of American piano music. The great George Gershwin is represented by his 3 Preludes, plus I Got Rhythm, and his most popular work, the sparkling Rhapsody in Blue, which unbelievably is 100 years old in 2024. Two African American composers, Julia Perry and William Grant Still feature - Still's impressive 3 Visions, and Perry's exquisite Prelude. Aaron Jay Kernis's Before Sleep and Dreams is a 5-movement suite from 1990, which depicts in music the process of putting a small child to bed. It's precedents are Schumann's Kinderszenen and Children's Corner by Debussy. It is a delightful and touching work. Finally, Andrew Armstrong's own composition, She Fell for a Flyfisher, is a beguiling, sparkling miniature.

On Woven, the ensemble Wild Roses twines together anonymous music from the British medieval and renaissance eras with early works pulled from the folk tradition. This music was the fabric of society, created from handed down music and woven into early counterpoint, like thread across the warp of a medieval weaver. Traveling from the 1100s to the end of the 1600s, and from the reign of King Henry I to Charles II, this program is a wonderful musical time machine.

During the period of lockdown in 2020, tenor recipient of a BBT Fellowship in 2022, Alessandro Fisher and his wife spent many hours in their garden. A heightened awareness of the beauty of nature, the flowers in their garden and the changes to the garden as winter moved to spring, and then to summer formed the basis of this beautifully curated recital. All the songs are about flowers, the language of flowers, and flowers as a tokens of love. Above all, the album is about the way songs of the many composers on this album reference deep human emotions and the role of flowers in these emotions. Where words fail, the language of flowers and nature take over. Nature regenerates, life continues, though for some composers, the short-lived glory of flowers is also an allegory for loss, or indeed the transience of romantic love.

The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam embark on a traversal of the three string quartets of Tchaikovsky. This first volume contains Nos.1 & 2. No.1 has one of the most famous movements in chamber music; the beautiful Andante cantabile slow movement. The second quartet, though less popular, is a step forward for the composer. He said that it "was my best work, no other piece has poured forth from me so simply and easily. I wrote it in almost one sitting." The album concludes with the much loved Lensky's Aria from Eugene Onegin in a new arrangement for string quartet by David Faber, cellist of the Dudok Quartet. The album concludes with the much loved Lensky's Aria from Eugene Onegin in a new arrangement for string quartet by David Faber, cellist of the Dudok Quartet.

Fenella Humphrey's new album is a characteristically searching and original one. "This album grew out of a longing to keep performing music that I was gifted, arranged or first discovered during the spring of 2020." An album conceived during the uncertain months of the first lockdown, it is a portrait of an artist alone, with music for inspiration, sustenance and company. As with her previous Rubicon albums, the virtuosity on display is stunning.

Marcin Swiatkiewicz is recognized as an outstanding harpsichordist of the generation. In 2015, his album of harpsichord concertos by Johann Gottfried Mu�thel won the Diapason d'Or, and was followed in 2017 by the multi award-winning album Cromatica. His recording of Biber's Rosary Sonatas with Rachel Podger and David Miller won a prestigious Gramophone award. Composed in the late 1730's, Bach's Goldberg Variations confront performers with formidable technical challenges. Marcin Swiatkiewicz deftly tackels these supreme examples of Bach's compositional genius and prowess as a keyboard virtuoso.

Recorded live, these superb performances of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas from Chloë Hanslip and Danny Driver rightly received critical acclaim when released as individual recordings. They are gathered for the first time in a limited edition set which includes the original booklet notes. For lovers of great chamber music, these performances are essential listening.

What is Tango? It is joy, sadness, humor, passion or intimacy. Above everything, it is music with a capital M. It is music of the immigrant. Music which has undergone many transformations, beginning with it's roots in Angola, which was later influenced by the Italian canzonetta, the klezmer, the French chanson, and Jazz. In the early 20th century, it seduced Europe after it's arrival in Paris. Tango speaks of the honest, sometimes rough and simple lives of the people. Tango is the soundtrack of their lives. Maria Martinova fell under the spell of Tango whilst a student and has been an advocate of this music for many years. Her album includes music not just by Piazzolla, but a selection of other composers too. This is a personal and passionate album that will seduce the listener in the way only Tango can.

Josef K�mpfer was a cavalry officer in the Hungarian army. A self-taught double bass virtuoso, he led a nomadic life, moving through musical circles at the highest levels in Austria, Germany, Paris, London and St. Petersburg. His specially-made and extra large instrument was known as 'Goliath' and it astonished audiences wherever he performed. His star burned brightly but mysteriously K�mpfer, his compositions and Goliath vanish from the musical scene as quickly as they had burst onto it. It is thought that he ended his days as an Imperial Court musician at the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg. This fascinating and somewhat shadowy figure from the 18th century musical world is brought to life by Russian double bassist Grigory Krotenko on this skillfully curated album featuring Mozart's delightful concert aria 'Per Questa bella man' for baritone, double bass and orchestra alongside works by Hoffmeister, Sperger and Vanhal.

Violinist Chlo� Hanslip and pianist Danny Driver have received critical acclaim for their musical partnership both on stage and in the studio. Gramophone described Volume 1 of their Beethoven sonatas cycle as 'engaging and accomplished... they create a world in which you want to spend time.' On Volume 2 they perform the Violin Sonata No.4 and it's sister work the 'Spring' Sonata alongside the stormy and dramatic Sonata No.7