Recorded in London, England with esteemed producer Nicholas Parker and bathed in the acoustics of Saint Augustine, The Tree of Life features the Trinity Choir including choristers from across Canada and members of the Tallis Scholars, the Gabrieli Consort and the Monteverdi Choir. These are magnificent interpretations that Daniel Taylor directs with passion and dedication. These compositions span over two thousand years, from a sixth-century chant to the miraculous works of Parsons and Mouton to the remarkable compositions from today by P�rt, Britten and Tavener. Among the pieces we find the "Seven Antiphons" by Arvo P�rt, disarmingly impassioned, otherworldly; the extraordinary "Hymn to the Mother of God" by John Tavener, and Benjamin Britten's transformative "Hymn to the Virgin". In close kinship with these profound offerings, the restrained ecstasy of "Nesciens Mater" by Jean Mouton, the "Ave Maria" of Robert Parsons and the moving "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" by Elizabeth Poston, bring forth a sense of serene wonder.

THE BREADWINNEROriginal Motion Picture SoundtrackMusic by Academy Award®-winning composer Mychael Danna & Emmy nominated composer Jeff DannaSony Music proudly announces the release of THE BREADWINNER (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with an original score by Academy Award®-winning composer Mychael Danna and Emmy nominated composer Jeff Danna.ABOUT THE BREADWINNER:The Breadwinner tells the story of Parvana, an 11-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy in order to support her family. With dauntless perseverance, Parvana draws strength from the stories her father told her, and ultimately risks her life to discover if he is still alive. Equal parts thrilling and enchanting, The Breadwinner is a timely and inspiring tale about the transcendentpower of stories, and their potential to unite and heal us all.From the creators of the Academy Award®-nominated The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, based on Deborah Ellis’ bestselling novel, is directed by Nora Twomey. The screenplay is written by Anita Doron and Angelina Jolie is among the film’s executive producers.“The Breadwinner was one of the only experiences in my professional career where I’ve had that feeling that I needed to do this project.” says Director Nora Twomey.The track list of THE BREADWINNER (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is as follows:1.    The Land of the Noble2.    Too Old for Stories3.    Photographs are Forbidden4.    Take Me Home5.    The Elephant King6.    Food Makes Things Better7.    Parvana Cuts Her Hair8.    Look at Him Smiling!9.    Who Is Hungry?10.    The Red Cloud11.    Sulayman Defies the Elephant King12.    Trek to the Prison13.    Three Things for the Quest14.    The Tank Graveyard15.    Halo Around the Moon16.    Sulayman Milks a Goat17.    Pursuit in the Desert18.    Sulayman's Horse19.    Goodbye Shauzia20.    Let Parvana Go21.    The Prison22.    Raise Your Words23.    The Crown Sleeps (Original song by Qais Essar, Felicity Williams)

SCORE SOUNDTRACK FOR THE THIRD INSTALLMENT OF THE EMMY AWARD WINNING AND CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED LIMITED SERIES FARGO AVAILABLE AUGUST 4Music by Emmy® and Grammy® nominee Jeff RussoSony Music proudly announces the release of the score for the third installment of the critically-acclaimed limited series Fargo, on August 4, 2017. The series, which was nominated for 16 Emmy® Awards earlier this month, airs on FX in the U.S. and is produced by MGM Television and FX Productions. The score features music by Jeff Russo who recently received a third Emmy® nomination for the series for Music Composition for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special (Original Dramatic Score).ABOUT SCORE COMPOSER JEFF RUSSOTwo-time Grammy®-nominated and three-time Emmy®-nominated musician Jeff Russo has become a prominent composer, songwriter and arranger in the film and television industry. Jeff also composed the score for Starz’s original drama, Power, from executive producer, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and completed co-composing the WGN America drama, Manhattan with cellist Zoë Keating.In addition to composing music for film and television, Russo still plays music with his rock band. He is a founding member, lead guitarist and co-songwriter of two-time Grammy® nominated, multi-platinum selling rock band, TONIC. Their debut album, “Lemon Parade,” posted three singles in the U.S. Mainstream rock Charts’ Top 10, with “If You Could Only See,” rocketing to number one. In 2003, the band received two Grammy®-nominations, one for “Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal” for “Take Me As I Am,” and one for “Best Rock Album.”Russo composed the score for Spike’s television mini-series drama, Tut, starring Ben Kingsley, and co-wrote the original score for A&E Network’s The Returned, again, teaming with Zoë Keating. In 2013, he also worked on several feature films, including Shoreline Entertainment’s Watercolor Postcards, starring Laura Bell Bundy, and the independent feature, Free Ride, starring Anna Paquin, Cam Gigandet and Drea de Mateo. Russo’s work can also be heard in films and television shows such as Marvista Entertainment’s film Bad Behavior; the independent feature About Cherry; Lifetime’s Meet Jane; the pilot for ABC’s Charlie’s Angels; Showtime’s Shameless episode, “It’s Time to Kill the Turtle”; ABC’s My Generation and The Unusuals; a documentary featuring interviews of the original students and teachers of the 1967 “Third Wave Experiment,” Lesson Plan; and ABC/Bad Robot’s main title song for What About Brian with Low Stars. Russo has also contributed to the score for Showtime’s Weeds; a rap song for ABC’s hit-series Castle; score for NBC’s Smash; and NBC’s final season of Crossing Jordan and debut season of The Bionic Woman, both under renowned composers, Wendy & Lisa. Tonic’s music has also been featured in films such as, Universal Pictures’ American Pie and Dimension Films’ Scream 2.In addition to scoring film and television, Russo has composed music for the New York Ballet Company Cedarlake Ensemble.About his work on Fargo, the composer said: “Writing for Fargo has allowed me to push the envelope creatively. It’s a composer’s dream job to be tasked with creating themes, motifs and melodies for such interesting and deep characters with such incredible stories.”The track lists are as follows: Fargo Year 3 (Music from the MGM Television/FXP Television)1.    Fargo Main Theme (Choir)2.    Gloria's Theme3.    Nikki, Ray and AC4.    For Nikki5.    The Russians6.    Horn Heavy7.    Year Three Murder8.    The Meeting9.    Minsky (I Can Help)10.    Nikki In Tub11.    The East12.    Poor Meemo13.    The Robbery14.    Orchestra for Nikki15.    Varga16.    Wrench and Swango17.    Wrench and Nikki Steal a Truck18.    Fingerprint Scanner19.    The Russians (Alternate Version)20.    Fargo Main Theme (Season 3)21.    Ship Of Fools - Noah Hawley & Jeff Russo

Roman J Israel, Esq.Original Motion Picture SoundtrackMusic by James Newton HowardStarring Oscar winner Denzel Washington (Fences),Golden Globe winner Colin Farrell (The Lobster, In Bruges) & Carmen Ejogo (Selma)Denzel Washington stars as Roman Israel, a driven, idealistic defense attorney who, through a tumultuous series of events, finds himself in a crisis that leads to extreme Action.ABOUT THE COMPOSEROne of the most versatile and respected composers currently working in film, James Newton Howards career spans over thirty years. He has composed music for over 120 films, including the Academy Award-nominated scores for Defiance, Michael Clayton, The Village, The Fugitive, The Prince of Tides, and My Best Friends Wedding, and Academy Award-nominated songs for Junior and One Fine Day. Howard also received Golden Globe nominations for his massive orchestral score for Peter Jacksons blockbuster remake of King Kong, his provocative symphonic score for Defiance, and his songs from Junior and One Fine Day.Howard won the 2009 Grammy Award for his co-score with Hans Zimmer for The Dark Knight, and received Grammy Award nominations for music from Blood Diamond and his song from One Fine Day. In addition, he won an Emmy for the theme to the Andre Braugher series Gideons Crossing, and received two additional Emmy nominations for the themes to the long-running Warner Bros. series ER and the Ving Rhames series Men. In 2008, World Soundtrack Award named him Film Composer of the Year for his work on the films Charlie Wilsons War, Michael Clayton and I Am Legend.1     Supreme Court of Absolute Universal Law       2     Just Continuances          3     Roman Walks Home         4     George Pierce Offices          5     Nonprofit Talks      6     The Brief       7     Maple Glazed Donut             8     The Drop     9     The Real Enemy Within  10     Roman's Judgment     11     It's All in the Rearview Mirror      12     To Make the Call      13     Are You Okay Mister?   14     Guard! Guard!    15     Filing the Brief

Lang Lang & Shao Sophie - Howard Shore: Two Concertio - Howard Shore: Two Concerti is an album of specially commissioned concertos in celebration of Chopin's music, by one of today's most renowned film composers. - One of today's most prolific and accomplished composers - Howard Shore's compositions are performed in concert halls around the world by the most prestigious orchestras and his numerous film scores are heard in cinemas across the globe. - Most well-known for his score for the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Hobbit" series, these scores have garnered him three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, as well as numerous critic's and festival Awards.

Music by Danny Elfman + an original track by Jónsi. Based on the Best Selling Dave Eggers Novel. The Circle is a gripping modern thriller, set in the not-too-distant future, starring Emma Watson (“Harry Potter”), Tom Hanks (“Sully”) and John Boyega (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”). All tracks composed by Danny Elfman with the exception of track 18. "Simple Gifts" by Jónsi of Sigur Rós

No musician of our time is more closely associated with the Brahms piano concertos than Rudolf Buchbinder. The patrician Austrian pianist, who even possesses copies of the composer’s autograph scores and piano parts, stated that “it requires a whole lifetime to become intimate with Brahms’s sound world and achieve the maturity that gives you new freedom as a performer”. He represents the living proof of that assertion. Buchbinder’s interpretations are further claimed to be “a modern-day point of reference” to quote the leading American critic Jed Distler on his first recording of Brahms’s piano concertos in the late 1990s.Sony Classical releases the live recordings of Brahms’s two masterpieces for piano and orchestra – one from the composer’s firebrand youth, the other from his mellow maturity – which Buchbinder, approaching his 70th birthday, made with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by his dear friend and esteemed collaborator Zubin Mehta. Mehta, whose ties with Brahms’s adopted home of Vienna are nearly as deep as the soloist’s, has cited Brahms as one of the two composers (Richard Strauss being the other) whose works, more than any others, inspired him to become a conductor.In 2015, Buchbinder and Mehta united to perform Brahms’s piano concertos with the quintessential Brahmsian orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a veritable summit meeting of great interpreters of these concertos. The reviewer for Vienna’s Kurier wrote of these performances, “what Rudolf Buchbinder, the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta delivered at the Musikverein already deserves the accolade ‘milestone’. Here were a phenomenal piano virtuoso, a no less outstanding orchestra and a deeply knowledgeable conductor collaborating to perfection and producing an image of Brahms that does honour not only to Vienna.”

Anne Dudley is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres, but she is perhaps best known as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and as a film composer. Her soundtrack to the Phil Collins vehicle Buster won a Brit Award shortly after her out-coming as a composer. In 1998 Dudley won an Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for “The Full Monty”. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of “Les Misérables”, also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.

Lucas Debargue's debut album is a live recording at the Salle Cortot in Paris and documents his first concert in his hometown after the competition.The centrepiece of the programme recording is Ravel’s monumentally challenging Gaspard de la nuit, one of the most difficult piano pieces in the repertoire, which Debargue performed in the second round of the competition. It caused a sensation with audience being thrilled by his interpretation and compared Lucas' playing to have a "confidence worthy of Richter" (The Spectator 2015).The recording further includes works by Domenico Scarlatti; Chopin’s sublime Ballade No 4; Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz; and smaller works by Grieg (Lyric Piece Op 4, No 3) and Schubert (Moment musical Op 94, No 3)

J.D. Souther's mellow country twang and classic pop sensibility made him a go-to songwriter for many notables including Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles.

Tracklist: 1 Come What May
2 Something in the Dark
3 This House
4 Let's Take a Walk
5 Dance Real Slow
6 Show Me What You Mean
7 Horses in Blue
8 Need Somebody
9 Downtown (Before the War)

A Gramophone Recording of the Month - January 2018

Russian trained & based Currentzis and his Russian band bring a genuine authenticity to this iconic cornerstone of the Russian repertory. Teodor Currentzis feels a very strong attachment to the music of Tchaikovsky – he’s one of Teodor’s “Top 3” – along with Mahler and Mozart. Not only does he share Tchaikovsky’s Alma Mater of St Petersburg Conservatory – where the composer’s legacy is naturally still strongly felt - but the composers’ hometown of Votkinsk lies a mere 250km from Perm – the Perm Tchaikovsky State Opera House taking its moniker from its famous ‘forebear’. Naturally Currentzis has gravitated to the mighty sixth symphony – undoubtedly Tchaikovsky’s greatest and most poignant symphony. The composer entitled the work "The Passionate Symphony", employing a Russian word, Pateticheskaya, meaning "passionate" or "emotional", that was then mistranslated into French as pathetique, "evoking pity", yet the mistranslation survived subsequent productions in every country but Russia. The composer led the first performance in St Petersburg in October 1893, nine days before his death.

-----

REVIEW:

Only the most exalted of comparisons to this performance suggest themselves: Bernstein (DG), Cantelli, Karajan (take your pick), or Mravinsky (DG): all hewn out of different performing traditions while sculpted in relief from them, though none save Mravinsky executed to the present, uncanny degree of controlled ferocity.

– Gramophone

Currentzis and his Siberian shock troops have done wonders. The recent trend has been away from overly subjective interpretations. This is thrown out of the window in this remarkably unsettling rendition. When so many other recordings of this symphony are available at the push of a few buttons, it’s only right that today’s interpreters should approach it only if they have something new to say. Currentzis definitely does.

– Times (U.K.)

MAX ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

As a brand name, the Vienna New Year’s Concert can trace back its origins to 31 December 1939. In other words, the concert initially took place on the last day of the year. By 1941, however, it was being held on 1 January, when the Vienna Philharmonic established a tradition that continues to flourish to this day.

The list of names of leading conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concerts reads like a veritable who’s who of great maestros: including Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Mariss Jansons, and Franz Welser-Möst.

It is not least thanks to this illustrious succession of great conductors that the Vienna New Year’s Concert remains unique, ushering in the New Year in a way that has often been imitated but never equalled. Its universal popularity is undoubtedly due to the direct – or deferred – live broadcast from the flower-filled Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. The first broadcast went out on Eurovision in 1959, the first colour relay in 1967. Now the concert is shown in countries throughout almost the entire world.

It continues to be works by members of the Strauss family – Johann Strauss Father and Son as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss – that are central to this media event. Old favourites from their output are heard alongside others that have never been recorded or are only rarely heard; all of them programmed around two fixed points in the concert: the Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March.

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24 bit High Resolution Audio.

Misha Dichter was born in 1945 in Shanghai, where his Polish parents had fled to by way of the trans-Siberian railroad in order to wait out the war. In 1947 the Dichter family moved to Los Angeles where Misha began studying piano. His first significant teacher was Aube Tzerko, who had studied with Artur Schnabel. “He literally started me from scratch,” Dichter recalled. But the hard work finally paid off when he was accepted into Rosina Lhévinne's class at the Juilliard School.

“In the fall of 1965 I saw a poster in the Juilliard coatroom announcing the third annual Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow,” recalls Dichter. “I had just lost a few local competitions in Los Angeles, so I thought, why not just go for the big one?” The young pianist’s Silver Medal victory in 1966 led to a contract with RCA Victor, for whom he made the three acclaimed albums reissued here, and to the international career of this “most polished pianist” (High Fidelity).

It was inevitable, perhaps, that Dichter’s début release for the label would be given over to the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Concerto, the same work that catapulted the competition’s first winner Van Cliburn to international stardom. Dichter was to perform the Tchaikovsky at Tanglewood, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf, so RCA duly set up recording sessions.

Dichter’s second RCA Victor album juxtaposed selected Brahms piano pieces with Stravinsky’s 3 Movements from Petrushka, and with his third RCA release, the pianist devoted himself to Beethoven and Schubert. Arthur Rubinstein approved of Dichter’s Schubert, to the extent that he famously invited his younger colleague to his Paris home, where a film crew captured Dichter playing Schubert’s B-flat Sonata D 960 in Rubinstein’s presence. Dichter holds an equally special affinity for the A major Sonata D 959 – “it still represents to me what paradise looks and sounds like.”