Dmitri Shostakovich is one of the indubitably great composers of the 20th century and left works of greatness in every genre, from the symphonies to opera, film- and light music, concertos, and, of course, chamber music. This collection offers a great overview of his contributions to that genre. It features a few favorites, like Rudolf Barshai's Chamber Symphony (arranged from String Quartet No.8), String Quartet No.1, and the Piano Quintet to lesser-known gems and rarely heard works for two pianos like the tiny, witty Tarantella or his dramatic, cinematic Concertino. It is capped with Alfred Schnittke's tribute to the master, the Prelude in Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich.

Rheinberger's chamber music work bears witness to his deep roots in the classical tradition, particularly in composers such as Mendelssohn and Brahms. His compositions are characterised by clear formal structures, melodic elegance and harmonic richness.

Once the darling of opera audiences, Wolf-Ferrari's compelling chamber music has been lost to time: a great reason to resurrect these particularly sonorous jewels from the rich MDG archive, performed with immense musicality, perfect technique and immaculate balance by artists of the highest calibre. This new edition also gives behind-the-scenes insights with entertaining, sometimes very illuminating anecdotes by Werner Dabringhaus.

Ancient traditions, folklore, landscapes, and the natural world are central themes in the music of the distinguished Chinese composer Xiaogang Ye. This new album, performed by the Fidelio Trio and friends, spans over three decades of Ye's chamber works from 1989 to 2023. Known for his vast range of compositions, Ye's deep connection to his Chinese heritage is particularly evident here. His intricate use of instrumentation, rhythmic and melodic motifs, and dramatic forms come to life in these intimate settings. The album features a variety of ensembles and instruments, including the evocative traditional Chinese instrument, the pipa in Gardenia, highlighting Ye's ability to blend traditional Chinese elements with Western classical music. Each piece, from the lyrical Piano Trio Op. 59 to the vivid Nine Horses Op. 19, showcases Ye's mastery of timbral colour, rhythmic interplay, and melodic expression, offering listeners a fresh perspective on ancient myths and tales through a modern lens.

Van Bree, Rontgen & Coenen: Dutch Chamber Music

Mikhail Volchok was born in 1950 into a family of pianists at the bitter end of the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union. He attended the Moscow Conservatory. Moving to the U.S. many years ago, he concertized as a pianist. He later began composing as well. This album features some of his piano and chamber works.

Frederick Paul Naftel's new album showcases his eclectic compositional style through a diverse collection of works. 3 Premiere Recordings: Aphoristic Impressions, composed in 2023 for American pianist Haley Myles, captures the essence of various landscapes through five short piano pieces. These pieces evoke images of the underwater church at Dunwich, Suffolk, the eruption of an Icelandic geyser, the indigenous wildlife of the Australian outback and Uluru/Ayers Rock, a peaceful night-time portrait of a Japanese garden, and Whirlpool Rapids Gorge on the Niagara River. Naftel's String Quartet No.2, composed during the initial Coronavirus pandemic, reflects the era's tumultuous nature. Unlike his first quartet, this single-movement piece is divided into five sections with an epilogue. The music oscillates between tranquil static passages and furious, violent sections, marked by intervals of a major 7th and minor 2nd. The Lento opening flows serenely but mysteriously, evolving through a relentless Allegro feroce, transitioning to an Adagio Sostenuto reminiscent of plainsong, and culminating in a powerful and enigmatic epilogue featuring recorded cello pizzicato. The Folksong Suite for String Orchestra and Timpani draws on six English and Scottish folksongs, including John Peel, Early One Morning, Ca' the Yowes, Loch Lomond, Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron, and Lincolnshire Poacher. Legacy Recordings: Pascal's Victim for Tuba Quartet, composed for the North West-based Tubalate, features three movements based on the Gregorian Chant Victamae Paschali. Each movement uniquely fragments the theme, particularly in the slow second movement, where a short melodic motive is varied by gently shifting harmonies. Song of Songs: Rhapsody for String Orchestra and Harp is an ethnic-flavoured rhapsody based on Hebraic chants and original material, featuring melodies like "Yigdal" and "Hatikvah." This piece evokes imagery suited for films set in Biblical times or perhaps documentaries about the Middle East. Villancico for Guitar and Small Orchestra bridges the music of the Spanish Renaissance and Joaquin Rodrigo in a charming and lyrical Rondo form, while Aubade Pastorale for String Orchestra is a short tone poem depicting a hazy day in the English countryside, using original themes inspired by the English Pastoral School, particularly Ralph Vaughan Williams. Frederick Paul Naftel, born in Manchester in 1956, is an eclectic composer drawing inspiration from diverse sources such as landscapes, nature, and historical events. His compositions span various styles and formats, creating distinct moods and atmospheres. His repertoire includes Concerti for Orchestra, Symphonies, chamber music, and vocal works. Notable works include the Double Concerto for Bass Tuba and Contrabass Tuba, the Bass Clarinet Concerto, Aubade Pastorale, and the Sanctus for female voices, strings, and piano. He received an award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation in 2020 and was runner-up in the King Lear Arts Competition. Naftel is currently working on his Third Symphony, dedicated to Sir James MacMillan, and future orchestral works. Naftel's music has been praised for it's eccentricity, individuality and distinctive voice in contemporary music.

Barbara Hannigan, a Grammy award-winning artist at the forefront of creation, leads an ensemble of outstanding young musicians from the Royal Academy of Music and The Juilliard School. Since 2002, the Academy and The Juilliard School, both international leaders in their field, have enjoyed a special and fruitful friendship based on 20 years of performances, exchanges and recordings. In this latest collaboration, Hannigan directs students from both institutions in an all-Stravinsky programme, including the Octet, Dumbarton Oaks, Ragtime and Three Japanese Lyrics. Recently appointed the Reinbert de Leeuw Professor of Music at the Academy, Hannigan conducts this transatlantic group in a wonderfully intelligent and engaging programme of Stravinsky's most iconic ensemble repertoire.

Johann Anton Andre (1775-1842), the scion of a Huguenot family that emigrated to Germany at the end of the seventeenth century, is known among musical experts primarily as the first publisher of an extensive edition of Mozart's works, but hardly as a composer. On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Johann Andre Music Publishers in Offenbach, the firm founded by Andre's father in 1774, this first ever production of works by Johann Anton presents a series of chamber music works from around 1800. They reveal a young, openminded talent who developed an original personal style before the consolidation of what was to become known in music history by the epochal term "Viennese Classicism": a craft honed on models by Mozart and Haydn meets elegance and subtle irony, an inheritance from Johann Anton's French ancestors.

Hans Winterberg, born in Prague in 1901, studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky and Alois Haba. He worked as a conductor, pianist and composer until the annexation of the Czechoslovak Republic by Nazi Germany in 1939. As the scion of a Jewish family that had lived in Prague for centuries, he survived - after forced labor and deportation to Theresienstadt - through a series of miracles. After the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia, he moved to Germany. His compositional legacy, locked away for years in a German music archive, has only been rediscovered in recent years. Winterberg combines various influences in his music to create an original and exciting personal style. He takes up stylistic elements of Janacek but is also influenced by the Second Viennese School and French Impressionism. He saw himself as a bridge-builder between the cultures of Eastern and Western Europe. Eda records dedicates a focus to this most important Czech-Jewish composers of the generation of the so called "Terezin composers" alongside Ullmann, Krasa and Haas. Further chamber music recordings and the complete works for piano with pianist Jonathan Powell will follow.

The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838-1919) not only shared a teacher - Eduard Marxsen - with Brahms; both composers use a very similar musical language, one which is richly melodic and effortlessly contrapuntal. The musicologist Wilhelm Altmann wrote that 'Thieriot's chamber music is without exception noble and pure. He writes with perfect command of form and expression' - as the works on this third Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty.

The exploration of the music of the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896-1967) on Toccata Classics continues with this first recording of two more of his seven string quartets. Flury was himself a gifted violinist, and these works - written for personal pleasure and for musician friends - observe the classic definition of the string quartet as a conversation between four equal partners, with Flury's many years of practical music-making producing quartet-textures that are thoroughly idiomatic, even masterly. Both works speak a rich late-Romantic language similar to that of composers such as Korngold, Schmidt and Zemlinsky and encompass a gratifying range of emotions, from touching introspection to bucolic cheer.

An album of world premiere recordings of works written to accompany poems by celebrated Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Desmond Earley and the University Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin release their fourth album on Signum Classics. Following their EP "Ireland is My Home" which was Scala Radio's Album of the Week, this new album aims to encapsulate the influence of singing and music in Joyce's work. A tenor himself, it was Joyce's wish that his words be set to music, and through commissioning new works, the choir are proud of their unique connection to Joyce's Dublin story. "It is a pleasure and honour for us to be the first choral ensemble to wrap James Joyce's 'suite of songs' in an Irish choral voice" - Desmond Earley (Artistic Director)

Our knowledge of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji is based more on his reputation than on his work. A marginal figure in twentieth-century music, he is renowned for the length and complexity of his compositions. After forbidding the performance of his music, he earned a small income through his writings as a critic and essayist of great wit. His best-known works are for solo piano, many of which have been released by BIS. This disc presents first recordings of his music for chamber ensemble and chamber orchestra plus several world premiere recordings of art songs, including a new arrangement and the first completion of a fragment. The American collective Wild Beautiful Orchestra, made up of instrumentalists and singers renowned for their versatility and enthusiasm, and it's founder, conductor Chappell Kingsland, together with flautist Sharon Bezaly in the longest work, present this programme featuring previously unreleased music by the maverick composer. There is no doubt that this extraordinary variety will expand our collective appreciation of Sorabji's genius and that this album will serve as an entry point to his unique musical imagination.

Ruth Gipps made her musical talents apparent from an early age, and they were encouraged by her very supportive mother. She entered the Royal College of Music in 1937, aged 16, studying oboe and piano, in addition to composition (with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob). Whilst at college, she performed Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, and her tone poem Knight in Armour (CHAN 20078) was presented by Sir Henry Wood at the Last Night of the Proms in 1942. As the war continued, Gipps left London to become principal oboe with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, where she also performed as pianist and had several of her works programmed. Returning to London after the war, Gipps found fewer opportunities as a performer, and less interest in her orchestral scores. She concentrated on composing more chamber music, alongside a successful teaching career. This album of her chamber music for oboe (and cor anglais) features works composed from 1938 to 1990, representing Gipps's entire compositional life. In demand as a soloist all over Europe, Juliana Koch was appointed Professor of Oboe at the Royal College of Music, London, in 2018 and is Principal Oboe of the London Symphony Orchestra.