Harpist Anne-Sophie Bertrand presents Amalie's Cosmos, an evocative journey through the salons of 19th-century Europe. At the heart of Berlin's vibrant cultural life in the early 19th century stood Amalie Beer, a wealthy patron, intellectual, and matriarch of one of Europe's most influential musical families. While history often remembers her son, Giacomo Meyerbeer, as a towering operatic figure, it was Amalie's salon that cultivated artistic, scientific, and political discourse, supported composers, and encouraged the careers of remarkable women such as Fanny Hensel and Pauline Viardot. Amalie's Cosmos revives the spirit of these Berliner salons through a carefully curated programme of works that echo their creativity and curiosity. From the intimate lyricism of Fanny Hensel and Glinka to the exotic colours of Debussy's Estampes, the virtuosity of Parish Alvars, and the contemporary homage to Paganini by Nimrod Borenstein, the album traces a delicate thread through time, place, and influence. The result is a shimmering musical tapestry that celebrates memory, artistry, and the enduring power of the salon as a space for inspiration and dialogue.

This first volume of The Complete Alkan Organ Works presents Joseph Nolan's recording of Charles-Valentin Alkan's major works for organ and pedal-piano, performed on the restored Stahlhuth-Jann organ of St Martin's Church, Dudelange. The release includes the 11 Grands Pr�ludes and Handel transcription Op. 66, the Petits Pr�ludes sur les huit gammes du plainchant, and the Impromptu on Luther's "Ein feste Burg", Op. 69. The booklet outlines Alkan's background, his distinctive position in 19th-century French music, and the technical demands of these rarely recorded pieces. It also documents the instrument's history and Nolan's long-term commitment to the project.

A compendium of North German organ baroque on 22 CDs with a total playing time of over 24 hours. Between 2005 and 2013, organist Friedhelm Flamme recorded the complete organ works of 38 composers, thus providing an almost complete overview of the oeuvre of this genre. In the 230-page booklet (German and English), the histories of the organs, including their dispositions, are described in detail. Short biographies of the composers and explanations of the recorded works round off this unique edition.

A fascinating and still enigmatic figure, Anna Bon di Venezia was one of the few professional female composers of the 18th century to secure a place in European courts. A virtuoso, singer, and composer, her career unfolded across Venice, Bayreuth, and Nuremberg, where she published her three collections of works between 1756 and 1759. Little is known about her: the only definitive biographical details come from the dedications and title pages of her publications. Anna studied under Candida della Piet�, a viola teacher and former student of Antonio Vivaldi. Even in her early years, she was recognized as a talented musician and soon distinguished herself as a composer. The collection presented here, Six Sonatas for Harpsichord, op. 2, was published in Nuremberg in 1757 during Anna's stay at the court of Bayreuth. The sonatas are dedicated to Ernestina Augusta Sophia, Princess of Saxe-Weimar, who was Anna Bon's pupil before marrying the Duke of Hildburghausen. Annarosa Partipilo excels in her meticulous performance, playing a late 18th-century fortepiano.

The Swiss-Franco-American virtuoso, C�leste-Marie Roy, elevates the sonorous splendour of the bassoon to vibrant new heights with her flexible tone, technical finesse, and striking interpretation of melodious and highly virtuosic works from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The organ works of Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, constitute one of the most important contributions to the literature for the instrument by any composer since Messiaen. Stylistically, his music unites the French cathedral tradition of composers like Langlais, Dupre and Guillou with the concern with counterpoint and logic heard in Reger and later German figures. Ruoff uses the unparalleled resources of the modern symphonic organ not produce music of freewheeling energy and uncompromising power. (Volumes 1-5, TOCC 0567, 0596, 0610, 0672, 0709)

Beethoven's three Sonatas Op. 10, written between 1796 and 1798, mark a decisive step from the Classical clarity of Haydn and Mozart toward a bolder, more individual language. Each sonata displays a distinct character: the C minor No. 1 combines tragic urgency with structural concentration; the F major No. 2 reveals Beethoven's emerging humor and rhythmic invention; and the expansive D major No. 3 unfolds an unprecedented emotional and architectural scale, crowned by the visionary Largo e mesto. The unifying rhythmic motif of "short-long" pulses through the set, foreshadowing the composer's later dramas. Performed on an 1820 Conrad Graf fortepiano, Roberto Prosseda's interpretation restores the music's raw contrasts, speaking timbres, and anti-rhetorical gestures that modern pianos often smooth away. In his personal note, Prosseda explains how returning to these works on a historical instrument transformed his understanding of Beethoven's expression. The fortepiano's transparency, differentiated registers, and responsive mechanism invite a freer phrasing and more rhetorical, speech-like delivery. He aims not for novelty but sincerity-seeking to rediscover familiar music through it's original sound world. Prosseda is one of Italy's leading pianists with a distinguished career, celebrated for his complete Mendelssohn and Mozart recordings and for reviving the pedal piano. This Beethoven Op. 10 album follows his acclaimed Op. 2 set for Challenge Classics, continuing his exploration of early Beethoven on period instruments.

Bach's Cello Suites are his only works for solo cello but are central to the repertoire and remain unequalled in their expressive musical depth. Dor Gidon Amran, the virtuoso mandolinist who has recorded his own unique arrangement of Paganini's 24 Caprices on Dynamic (CDS8038), has now arranged Cello Suites Nos. 1-3 for the mandocello. This is a baritone instrument of the mandolin family, but much larger than a mandolin, whose strings are tuned exactly like those of the cello. Being played with a plectrum, the mandocello belongs to a very different sound world to the cello, offering a unique perspective on these great works.

The arrangement of Albeniz's piano works for solo guitar, multiple guitars, and even guitar plus a melody instrument has a long tradition, beginning with Francisco Tarrega and Miguel Llobet as well as many other legendary guitarists. The arrangements and versions recorded here are not actually original arrangements but are compiled from a multitude of existing templates and suggestions from recordings.

With this highly virtuosic program, Volker Hemken demonstrates a wide spectrum of tonal possibilities for the bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet, as well as a great stylistic diversity in the works, almost all of which are composed for the soloist.

Performer and scholar Vania Dal Maso has constructed an innovative programme exploring music for stringed keyboard instruments from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Based on the study and interpretation of sources, both on the instruments' construction and musical interpretation, she explores the profoundly different sounds and tone-colours of the clavichord, hammered clavicymbalum and clavicytherium. The music ranges widely in forms and genres from across Europe, including music sourced from the oldest-known manuscript for keyboard instruments - the Robertsbridge Codex (c. 1320) - to create the widest possible stylistic panorama of keyboard music of the time.

David Matthews and Peter Sheppard Skaerved have been collaborating on a series of works for violin and viola for many years now, with Matthews setting Sheppard Skaerved formidable technical challenges, and Sheppard Skaerved surprising Matthews by finding a way to overcome the difficulties in his path. Behind all the pyrotechnics, this partnership is generating one of the largest, and most musically rewarding, body of compositions for violin and viola by any living composer. Many of Matthews' pieces record his experience of nature or offer tributes to friends, with the works heard in this third volume also tracing a journey from darkness to light.

In 2001, under the umbrella title la Serenissima, Richard Rijnvos started a series of compositions dedicated to the city of Venice. This multi-year 'work-in-progress' currently includes seven compositions, the most recent two of which are the subject of this recording. Jan Hage is particularly known as an advocate and sought-after performer of contemporary organ music. In 2006 he received the silver medal of the Parisian Societe Academique Arts Sciences Lettres for his services to French organ culture. Jane Chapman is one of Britain's most distinguished classical harpsichordists. Her repertoire stretches from early music to contemporary avant-garde. Described in The Independent on Sunday as "Britain's most progressive harpsichordist", and in the Guardian as "a fearless contemporary music performer" she is at the forefront of creating and inspiring new music for harpsichord.

The illustrious French organ tradition is celebrated in this album of Toccatas and Meditations, including masterpieces drawn from across the repertoire. Charles-Marie Widor was the founding father of the French Organ School, and his Toccata from Symphony No. 5 is a cornerstone of the organ repertoire. The Meditation by his contemporary Louis Vierne is among the highlights of Romantic organ works. Durufle, Boellmann and Guilmant are also represented, as is a beautiful Ravel arrangement. They're played on the magnificent Grenzing organ at Bauernkirche Iserlohn by Dariia Lytvishko - a Ukrainian-born virtuoso and one of the most lavishly gifted organists of her generation.

Ahead of the 80th birthday of one of Britain's most singular compositional voices, this double album presents the complete organ works of Michael Finnissy a body of music as rich in intellectual depth as it is in imagination. Performed with careful nuance by acclaimed American organist Forrest Eimold, these works span over six decades and chart the evolution of a composer constantly challenging himself to think beyond presumed forms. At the heart of the collection are Finnissy's four Organ Symphonies: bold, searching works that pay homage to and wrestle with the legacies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, while also evoking the French organ tradition of Vierne and Widor. "Why even write a Symphony?" Finnissy asks in a personal note for this release. "To explore and learn. To challenge oneself with the abiding presence of awe-inspiring history... to locate a rhetoric which fearlessly approaches the 'higher world of knowledge.'" From the youthful drama of�... ere the set of sun... �(written as incidental music for�MacBeth�in 1965) to the industrial solemnity of�Blackburn�(2022), the album presents not just a body of work but a kind of inner autobiography. The�Hymn-Tune Preludes - transformations of Sacred Harp and Norwegian folk melodies - offer a striking contrast: intimate, harmonically volatile, and unhitched from convention. Even the earliest works here, like the student piece�Xunthaeresis, reveal the seeds of a language already driven by risk and complex expression. Forrest Eimold, a formidable interpreter of 20th and 21st century keyboard music, brings dazzling technique and interpretive depth to this music. His command of registration, colour, and pacing allows each piece - from the vast landscapes of the symphonies to the epigrammatic preludes - to speak with clarity and conviction. Recorded on a range of instruments, including the organ of the UK's Blackburn Cathedral, this is a release release which anchors Finnissy's contribution to the organ repertoire as one of bold imagination and philosophical depth. It also continues Metier's retrospective celebrations for Finnissy's 80th year, with further releases to follow.

Bach - Berio - Boulez: Marek svejkar's bold and brilliant debut The clarinet is one of the instruments with the broadest spectrum of sonic possibilities in terms of it's range of dynamics and pitches. It received the greatest attention during the era of Classicism both in solo parts in concertos and in the roles of a chamber music partner and an orchestral instrument. It had to wait until the 20th century for works featuring it's unaccompanied solo voice in it's full range of colours. Outstanding among the composers who created such works are two figures who fundamentally shaped musical thinking in the latter half of the 20th century: Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez. Commemorating the 100th anniversaries of both men's birth, this recording covers their complete music for solo clarinet. Berio and Boulez sought new ways to organise music in time and space, and both took inspiration from poetry. Boulez gave symbolic expression to their quest: "It must be our concern... to jettison the concept of a work as a simple journey starting with a departure and ending with an arrival." One of the things that inspired Berio's idea of "polyphonic music for a monophonic instrument" were works by J. S. Bach. One of them, Partita in A minor for solo flute, is heard on this recording in juxtaposition with the modernism of the 20th century. The clarinettist Marek svejkar is a laureate of the Premier Prix from Paris's prestigious Conservatoire National Superieur, and he has been a winner of international competitions including events in Markneukirchen, Germany, and in Carlino, Italy. He has appeared as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic and with Jiri Belohlavek, and having participated at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, he is now enrolled at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome under the tutelage of Alessandro Carbonare. The elite circle of European clarinettists is now within Marek svejkar's reach.

Flores de Musica pera o instrumento de tecla & harpa is the only known work of Portuguese composer Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. Printed in Lisbon in 1620 and boasting more than five hundred pages, Coelho's Flores de Musica is one of the largest music works printed in the seventeenth century. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of it's original publication, a new edition in three volumes has been published with the research being used to inform this major new recording series. Harpist and soprano Maria Bayley and clavichordist Marco Orsini-Brescia lend their artistry to this latest chapter in an ambitious recording project.

The fourth and final volume in Gilbert Rowland's acclaimed Froberger series completes the landmark recording project on specialist early music label Athene. This double album is the latest instalment of Rowland's authoritative traversal of the complete Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger - a composer of profound influence whose innovations shaped the very form of the Baroque suite later adopted by Bach and Handel. Praised for it's "glorious sound" and "energy and a good forward drive", the series has garnered widespread critical recognition. Recorded in the sympathetic acoustic of Holy Trinity Church, Weston, in October 2024, the album reunites Rowland with engineer John Taylor, whose audiophile-standard production has underpinned the previous volumes. Rowland's playing combines historical insight with expressive vitality, delivering performances marked by "impeccable clarity, flawless articulation, and period-perfect embellishments". His interpretations illuminate the elegance and inventiveness of Froberger's writing, making this collection an essential reference for enthusiasts and scholars of early keyboard music. This release is a vital addition for fans of Froberger, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and historically informed performances, offering both continuity for collectors and a compelling entry point into one of the Baroque's most fascinating keyboard oeuvres.

An interpreter portrait of one of the most important German organists and composers in the second half of the 20th century

Prof. Erich Beurmann donated 70 instruments to the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts. Among them are a large number of harpsichords, clavichords, and fortepianos: from an Italian harpsichord dating from 1540 to a Steinway concert grand piano from 1871. A significant portion of these instruments are kept playable so that the music of various eras can be reproduced on the instruments of the time. Susanne Von Laun regularly plays instruments from this collection in concerts and on guided tours. The artist, who was awarded the Muzio Clementi Award in 2005, selected five instruments for this CD (a square piano from 1777, three fortepianos from 1795 to 1820, and a Broadwood grand piano from 1841), which can now be heard on CD for the first time.

This arresting new album presents a major addition to the solo flute repertoire, bringing together the visionary artistry of flautist�Noemi Gyori�and the intricate, evocative music of composer�Sinan Savaskan. Spanning nearly five decades of Savaskan's compositional output, the album explores the full expressive range of the flute it's lyric warmth, it's structural clarity, and it's capacity for sonic transformation-often in dialogue with subtly woven electronic elements. At the heart of the album lies�Sonata '... una rilettura indipendente', a five-movement tour de force that is both architectural and deeply intuitive. Conceived as part of the composer's epic cycle�Many Stares through Semi-Nocturnal Zeiss-Blink, this work embodies Savaskan's radical approach to form and harmony an evolving narrative shaped by transformation, resonance, and reflection. Written specifically for Noemi Gyori, the Sonata draws upon her exceptional virtuosity and interpretative insight, and represents a rare synthesis of structural rigour and emotional intensity. Alongside the Sonata are three additional works, each revealing a distinct facet of Savaskan's sound-world.�The Sleep of Reason, for solo flute, offers a tightly coiled musical meditation, born from a nocturnal journey and haunted by socio-political undercurrents and subconscious recollections.�Always at Dusk, No.3, for alto flute and electronics, distills a fleeting emotional memory into an atmosphere of suspended time, echoing the concept of�duree�rather than chronological sequence. Finally,�Pas de Deux for One, originally composed in 1978 and revised in 2023, draws from Savaskan's background in dance and experimental film, resulting in a vivid theatricality that unfolds through extended techniques and shifting gestures. The electronics, composed entirely from transformations of flute sounds, serve not as backdrop but as an active, organic extension of the instrument's breath, resonance, and timbral possibilities. Whether experienced through speakers or headphones, the recording invites deep listening preferably in dim light, as Gyori suggests offering an immersive sonic space where listener, performer, and composer meet. An album for connoisseurs of contemporary music,�Sonata '... una rilettura indipendente'�is a profound collaboration between two artists whose shared sensitivity reshapes what solo flute music can mean today.

This arresting new album presents a major addition to the solo flute repertoire, bringing together the visionary artistry of flautist�Noemi Gyori�and the intricate, evocative music of composer�Sinan Savaskan. Spanning nearly five decades of Savaskan's compositional output, the album explores the full expressive range of the flute it's lyric warmth, it's structural clarity, and it's capacity for sonic transformation-often in dialogue with subtly woven electronic elements. At the heart of the album lies�Sonata '... una rilettura indipendente', a five-movement tour de force that is both architectural and deeply intuitive. Conceived as part of the composer's epic cycle�Many Stares through Semi-Nocturnal Zeiss-Blink, this work embodies Savaskan's radical approach to form and harmony an evolving narrative shaped by transformation, resonance, and reflection. Written specifically for Noemi Gyori, the Sonata draws upon her exceptional virtuosity and interpretative insight, and represents a rare synthesis of structural rigour and emotional intensity. Alongside the Sonata are two additional works, each revealing a distinct facet of Savaskan's sound-world.�The Sleep of Reason, for solo flute, offers a tightly coiled musical meditation, born from a nocturnal journey and haunted by socio-political undercurrents and subconscious recollections.�Always at Dusk, No.3, for alto flute and electronics, distills a fleeting emotional memory into an atmosphere of suspended time, echoing the concept of�duree�rather than chronological sequence. The electronics, composed entirely from transformations of flute sounds, serve not as backdrop but as an active, organic extension of the instrument's breath, resonance, and timbral possibilities. Whether experienced through speakers or headphones, the recording invites deep listening preferably in dim light, as Gyori suggests offering an immersive sonic space where listener, performer, and composer meet. An album for connoisseurs of contemporary music,�Sonata '... una rilettura indipendente'�is a profound collaboration between two artists whose shared sensitivity reshapes what solo flute music can mean today.

Following on from his JS Bach Complete Organ Works collection performed on the organ at Trinity College Cambridge, David Goode returns with an album of organ works by WA Mozart. It is well known that Mozart highly esteemed the organ as an instrument (for example, his famous 'King of Instruments' remark) and enjoyed improvising at length. However, this sadly did not translate into writing for the instrument. Organist David Goode explores these works, and those which even may not have been intended for organ, and discusses in his programme notes how best to render them for two hands and feet, and how to register them suitably. Praise for David Goode on Signum Classics: ?�BBC Music Magazine "This series is notable for the flair, clarity and spontaneity that Goode brings to this timeless music"�- Gramophone Magazine

Whilst working on The Faerie Bride for the Aldeburgh Festival - a cantata based on the Welsh legend of Lyn y Fan Fach - I became fascinated by the rich and elusive world of Welsh folk music. Some of the tunes I discovered found their way into the cantata, but I inadvertently found myself arranging others for solo violin. Many welsh folk tunes and airs are very ancient, stretching back to the time of Henry V, whilst others are more recent, being written in the 17 and 1800's. But no matter when these melodies originated, most Welsh folk songs fall into three main categories: songs of love, songs of nature, and songs of battle. The songs in this arrangement explore a broad range of subjects including unrequited love, loss, friendship, infidelity, and even one about a cat who's lost it's fur! � Gavin Higgins

Dacw 'Nghariad (there is my love) is a beautful Welsh folk song that I discovered whilst working on a cantata for the Aldeburgh Festival based on the Welsh myth of Lyn y Fan Fach. The song is about longing; longing for something that is unreachable and distant, for the moment at least. � Gavin Higgins