That Baïlèro, a shepherd’s song from the highlands of Auvergne sung in the Occitan dialect of the area, should become a favorite with singers ranging from Victoria de los Angeles to Sarah Brightman by way of Renée Fleming and Karita Mattila, is all because of Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret. As a budding composer in Paris in the 1900s, Canteloube was unable to interest himself in the various musical cliques and currents. Instead he looked for inspiration in Auvergne in central France where he was born, starting to collect the songs of the farmers and shepherds that lived in the mountainous region. But he did so as a composer rather than a musicologist, and between 1923 and 1954 he published a total of thirty Chants d’Auvergne, arranged, harmonized and sumptuously orchestrated. The result is, one might say, idealized folk music: Canteloube largely respects the melodic line of the originals, but adds instrumental introductions, interludes and postludes, and gives an important role to the woodwind section. For the present disc, Carolyn Sampson and Pascal Rophé have selected 25 of the songs – ranging from love songs and lullabies to working songs and laments. They perform them together with Tapiola Sinfonietta, bringing sparkle to Canteloube's luxurious scores halfway between the impressionism of Debussy and the bucolic lyricism of d'Indy.

“Venzago amazes us with his idiosyncratic and wholly novel performances of Bruckner. The sound of his Bruckner is thrillingly lean...His intelligent conducting focuses our attention on the chamber-music aspect of Bruckner's music.” –Pizzicato. In this Vol.2, Venzago devotes himself to the beginnings of Bruckner's symphonic output, the so-called “No. 0” and the 1st.

Sebastian Fagerlund’s orchestral music, which has held a central position in his work, is known for its pounding rhythmic energy and the quiet, gripping intensity of the more static passages. The flute concerto ‘Terral’ was written in close collaboration with Sharon Bezaly. Referring to a land breeze in Spain, ‘Terral’ is like a constant variation in a transparent and airy soundscape reminiscent of the soil taking on a new appearance when blown by the wind.

Strings to the Bone for string orchestra features Fagerlund’s typically intense and virtuosic writing as well as elements of the musical heritage of Ostrobothnia. Finally, the Chamber Symphony came to existence thanks to his collaboration with the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre Orchestra, where John Storgårds has been principal guest conductor since 2015. According to the Finnish daily Hufvudstadsbladet, this work shows “a thematically consistent symphonic construction with an authentic symphonic tension integrated into the dramaturgical gesture”.