... Feeling, Taste & Science... : The Viola da Gamba Music of Carl Frederick Abel presents Richard Boothby and Fretwork exploring the work of Carl Friedrich Abel, the German-born composer and viola da gamba player who became a central figure in London's musical life from 1759 until his death in 1787. The programme draws on solo works from the Drexel Manuscript, three sonatas with harpsichord, and a fugue believed to have been composed for Abel's close friend Thomas Gainsborough. Countertenor Iestyn Davies joins for Abel's only known aria. Two of the three sonatas included are recorded here for the first time, having been discovered in a castle in Poland.

This album, Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony, Op. 58 presents the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León under music director Thierry Fischer in one of the composer's most ambitious works. Recorded at the Jesús López Cobos Symphonic Hall, Valladolid, in July 2025, Fischer's approach treats the four-movement symphony as a single dramatic arc, shaped by the persistent return of the Manfred motif through scenes ranging from Alpine wandering to the subterranean palace of Arimanes. Neither a numbered symphony nor a symphonic poem but a hybrid of both, the Manfred Symphony is the largest symphonic work Tchaikovsky ever completed, in both duration and the scale of it's orchestral forces.

I breathe is a new album of choral music by Welsh composer Nathan James Dearden, released on Signum Records, bringing together works written over the past decade. Performed by the Choir of Royal Holloway, Kantos Chamber Choir and National Youth Choir of Wales under conductors Rupert Gough, Ellie Slorach and Tim Rhys-Evans respectively, the collection spans pieces written for the ensembles that shaped Dearden's own musical development, from his teenage years in the National Youth Choir of Wales to his role as Composer-in-Residence with the Choir of Royal Holloway. Highlights include Three Motets, written for choir and cello, and the title track i breathe, a meditation on landscape and stillness setting poems by Ken Jones, Paul Chambers and Arwyn Evans.

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.

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 Complete Alkan Organ Works, Volume II continues organist Joseph Nolan's survey of the music of Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888), recorded on the Stahlhuth-Jann organ at Eglise Saint-Martin de Dudelange, Luxembourg. The programme presents the thirteen pieces of the 13 Prieres, Op. 64, the first six of the 12 etudes pour les pieds seulement - works of considerable technical demand written for pedals alone - and the Benedictus, Op. 54. Volume I of the cycle received five-star reviews from The Guardian and The Critic UK, and was named Album of the Week by Slipped Disc

The Promise: Jazz Inspired Music for Advent and Christmas brings together two distinct programmes by English composer Will Todd, performed by St Martin's Voices and the Will Todd Ensemble under director Andrew Earis. The centrepiece is The Promise, Todd's third large-scale jazz oratorio, commissioned by the Soochow University Alumni Choir and premiered in Taiwan in December 2025, setting Advent and Christmas texts alongside an original lyric by the composer. The album also presents a new recording of Todd's popular jazz carol arrangements, originally commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields in 2012 and reissued here in updated editions, with St Martin's Brass.

The Grammy Award-winning Phoenix Chorale's Promised Land, led by Artistic Director Christopher Gabbitas, surveys two and a half centuries of American choral music, from African American spirituals and Shaker hymns to works by Eric Whitacre, Caroline Shaw, and Frank Ticheli. Arrangements by Alice Parker, Shawn Kirchner, Moses Hogan and others sit alongside original compositions, unified by themes of freedom, longing, and collective resilience. Voices long overlooked by history, among them Shaker eldress Hannah Cohoon and nineteenth-century songwriter Matilda Durham, are restored to the concert repertoire in this rich and purposefully programmed celebration of America's choral heritage in it's 250th anniversary year.

Taking it's title from a legendary 1728 encounter between violinists Pietro Locatelli and Jean-Marie Leclair, whose contrasting styles were memorably described as angelic and diabolical, Hell's Angels traces the cross-pollination of French and Italian baroque technique through sonatas by Vivaldi, Leclair, Guillemain, Marcello and Mascitti. At the heart of the programme is Vivaldi's rarely heard early Sonata RV 820, it's final movement completed by Adrian Chandler following the loss of the original manuscript. Two-time Gramophone Award winners La Serenissima bring their characteristic authority to over 80 minutes of music spanning some of the most demanding chamber writing of the period.

The King's Singers: Live at Christmas captures the celebrated vocal sextet in a live performance recorded at Temple Church, London, on 16 January 2026. Spanning nine centuries of music, the programme moves from medieval plainchant and O Antiphons through Renaissance polyphony to beloved modern carols and seasonal pop, including world premiere recordings of newly commissioned arrangements. Throughout the concert, the singers perform from several different areas of the church, creating varied acoustic effects. Contributions from both longstanding collaborators and the singers themselves reflect the group's ongoing commitment to expanding the choral repertoire.

Marking Finzi's 125th birthday, tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale present all three of the composer's Hardy song cycles alongside five world-premiere recordings of early unpublished songs, sourced from manuscripts held at the Bodleian Library. Till Earth Outwears, A Young Man's Exhortation, and Oh Fair to See together span Finzi's career from teenage sketches to his final completed song, setting texts by Hardy, Ivor Gurney, Edmund Blunden, Christina Rossetti, and Chaucer. Over 70 minutes of music, this is the only recording to bring all three cycles together with the addition of previously unheard works.

Tenebrae - The Journey marks the choir's 25th anniversary with a programme built around the theme of passage and transformation. Conductor Nigel Short pairs three new commissions-from Jason Max Ferdinand, Joby Talbot, and Joanna Marsh-with established works by Eric Whitacre, John Tavener, Max Richter, and others. Sarah Henderson's piece, winner of Tenebrae's inaugural Undiscovered Voices composition competition, also features. Recorded in February 2026, the album demonstrates the choir's characteristic blend of precision and warmth across repertoire spanning gospel-inflected anthems, intimate meditation, and large-scale choral drama. Music, as Short puts it, that rewards attentiveness-the more you listen, the more you hear.

The fourth instalment in The Mozartists' projected seven-volume series, conducted by Ian Page, pairs two turbulent minor-key symphonies by Kraus and Haydn with operatic scenes featuring soprano Alexandra Lowe. Kraus's rarely heard Symphony in C minor, which Haydn predicted would be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries, sits alongside Haydn's own celebrated Farewell Symphony. Lowe brings both fire and pathos to arias from Antigona by Traetta and La finta giardiniera by Mozart, and to the climactic scene from Benda's melodrama Medea, a work Mozart so admired that he briefly hailed it as the future of opera.

This album brings together piano sonatas by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Schumann that reflect a specifically German approach to the form, distinct from the Viennese Classical tradition. Pianist Tianxu An explores works composed within a 26-year span, a period in which composers redefined the sonata through structural experimentation and greater performative expression. Central to the recording is a focus on the composers' detailed markings, including dynamics, pedalling, and phrasing, and how these shape interpretation in performance. Recorded in 2024, the release presents An's considered engagement with this repertoire and his interest in it's intellectual rigour and expressive breadth.

For so many, coming out is framed as a kind of reckoning-a threshold one must cross, as if queerness begins in secrecy and only later earns the right to be spoken aloud. That narrative suggests burden before freedom, fear before love. But why should love require courage simply to exist? Such is the world we've inherited. For centuries, desire that fell outside society's narrow definitions was forced underground, met with shame, exile, or silence. In that silence, letters became a refuge: fragile but fearless vessels for truths that could not be safely expressed aloud. The Secret Letter re-imagines a program of the same name performed by Cantus in the spring of 2025, weaving music together with excerpts from letters by Marcus Aurelius, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others. These interludes offer fleeting access to private moments of longing, devotion, and vulnerability, while the surrounding music expands and amplifies their emotional terrain, carrying forward their tension, tenderness, restraint, and release. Letters are remarkable things. They are both private and exposed, meant for a single reader yet capable of outliving both the writer and recipient. Passed between trembling hands, they hold confessions, desires, and love stories told in ink rather than whispers. The Secret Letter bears witness and celebrates queer love that has always existed-persistent, imaginative, and worthy of song-and that even in secrecy, has found ways to speak, to sing, and to survive.

Strange Loops presents clarinettist Mark Van de Wiel with colleagues from the Philharmonia Orchestra in three works spanning over two centuries of chamber music. The album centres on the first recording of Anna Clyne's Strange Loops, written in 2020 and exploring repeating and transforming musical patterns. It is paired with Ruth Gipps's Rhapsody, a single-movement work highlighting the clarinet's lyrical and colouristic qualities, and Carl Maria von Weber's virtuosic Clarinet Quintet, composed for Heinrich Baermann. Recorded at Garsington Studios in 2024, the programme reflects van de Wiel's longstanding commitment to both contemporary and established clarinet repertoire.

This album brings together major choral works by Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar, reflecting the richness of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British music. At it's centre is Parry's de Profundis, a large-scale setting of Psalm 130, widely admired by contemporaries for it's emotional depth, contrapuntal mastery, and expressive journey from penitence to hope. Parry's anthem God Is Our Hope and Strength complements it with a grand, confident vision of choral architecture and spiritual assurance. Elgar is represented by the intimate partsong The Snow and the charming Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, inspired by Alpine landscapes and folk traditions, capturing a more personal and lyrical side of his art.

This album brings together three major orchestral works by John McCabe, composed between 1970 and 2007, and reflecting key strands of his musical thought. Symphony No. 2 unfolds as a tightly integrated single span, notable for it's rhythmic energy, luminous orchestration, and structural clarity. Symphony No. 3, Hommages, acknowledges McCabe's lifelong engagement with the music of Haydn and Nielsen, blending quotation and allusion within a vibrant, tonal framework. The Cello Concerto Songline traces a continuous musical journey, combining virtuosity with introspective lyricism and a finely balanced orchestral palette.

This album explores Gustav Mahler's early songs, tracing the emergence of his distinctive musical voice. Featuring works from his youthful Lieder alongside the complete Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the programme reveals the composer's evolving relationship between song and symphonic thought. Performed by an ensemble of distinguished vocal soloists with pianist Joseph Middleton, the recording highlights Mahler's sensitivity to poetry, emotional nuance, and dramatic storytelling. Rooted in folk-influenced texts, these songs reflect themes of nature, love, memory, and self-discovery, offering insight into the formative creative period that shaped Mahler's later orchestral masterpieces.

Tamsin Waley-Cohen, a violinist of 'fearless intensity' (The Guardian), explores post-1944 solo repertoire, pushing the instrument to it's limits on Soli, her new release on Signum Classics. Bartók's Solo Sonata, an 'Everest' of the violin repertoire, sits at the heart of this recording which also includes Krzysztof Penderecki's Cadenza, and miniatures by Elliott Carter, György Kurtág and George Benjamin. Ms. Waley-Cohen's adventurous and varied career includes performances with the RPO, LPO and BBC orchestras, conductors Andrew Litton and Tamas Vasary, and an "Artist in Residence" association with Orchestra of the Swan. Performances have taken her across the UK, Europe, to the USA and the Antipodes. An in-demand recitalist, Tamsin enjoys a successful performing and recording duo partnership with pianist and composer Huw Watkins. Her interest in contemporary music has led to strong relationships with contemporary composers, including Mr. Watkins', Richard Causton, Joseph Phibbs, and Torsten Rasch.

Pianist Llyr Williams explores Wagner’s rich and evocative sound-world from a less well-known angle. Featuring insightful arrangements of Richard Wagner’s operas by Franz Liszt and Glenn Gould (as well as Williams’ own arrangement of music from 'Parsifal'), at the center of the program is a selection of Wagner’s own piano pieces – many of which were written earlier in his compositional career, hinting at the grand operatic masterworks which were yet to come.

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"Liszt’s transcriptions and fantasies on excerpts from Wagner operas are ingenious works that take you inside the music without the distractions, in a sense, of the orchestra and the voices, or 'Wagner Without Words,' to quote the title of this rewarding album by the splendid Welsh pianist Llyr Williams. Here he plays Liszt’s transcriptions ranging from the short, charming “Spinning Chorus” (from “The Flying Dutchman”) to the mesmerizing “Liebestod” (from “Tristan und Isolde”). Mr. Williams offers several of his own ambitious and impressive transcriptions, including his extended scenes from “Parsifal” and his tweaked version of Glenn Gould’s take on the Prelude to “Die Meistersinger.” There are also some piano pieces by Wagner, including a youthful 26-minute fantasy, a fascinating, if not great, work: you hear the 19-year-old Wagner beholden both to Beethoven and bel canto opera." – Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

London Early Opera continue their new series of Handel's works with the second volume of pieces composed in Italy. Both volumes of Handel in Italy explore the young composer's Italian years through his cantatas, sacred pieces, operatic works and instrumental compositions. Featuring performances from internationally acclaimed soloists, the sopranos Sophie Bevan and Mary Bevan with their uncle, baritone Benjamin Bevan, conducted and conceived by Bridget Cunningham.

The two major organ works on these discs (his longest for organ) show Max Reger at the height of his powers; not only do they sustain a structural coherence over an impressive span, but they show an almost inexhaustible proliferation of invention. As well as the large-scale Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme and the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue in E minor, this 2 CD Set includes a collection shorter preludes and fugues - the Five Easy Preludes and Fugues and two transcriptions of preludes and fugues by JS Bach from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

A unique disc from one of Scotland's most dynamic and versatile groups – the Scottish Ensemble is a tight-knit band of outstanding string players from around Europe who perform regularly together under Artistic Director, Jonathan Morton. This disc – one of their first solo releases following acclaimed discs with artists such as Alison Balsom and Toby Spence – contrasts Vivaldi's timeless Four Seasons with Piazzolla's tango-inspired The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

Combining Vivaldi and Piazzola together like this underlines the meteorological and cultural differences between Mediterranean Europe and the heart of South America. To have them performed side by side creates a fascinating programme of similarities and contrasts.