FRIENDSHIP SURVIVAL GUIDE

Friendship Survival Guide brings together the evocative talents of Adam Wiltzie and the late Johann Johannsson in a deeply atmospheric and emotionally resonant collaboration. Combining ambient drones, cinematic textures, and minimalist beauty, the album creates an immersive listening experience that reflects both artists' shared gift for crafting expansive and moving soundscapes.

HUSH

VERDI

PHILIP GLASS: FOR CELLO

OLIVER COATES / HISTORY SOUND - O.S.T Decca presents the soundtrack to the 2025 film, The History of Sound. Composed and produced by cellist Oliver Coates, the 27-track album features traditional American roots music with vocal and musical contributions from folk artist Sam Amidon and lead actors Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. An undisputed yet underrated architect of what we now know as modern rock and roll, 1956's Gospel Train was an innovative release for Sister Rosetta Tharpe in more ways than one. For starters, her first release on the Mercury Records label was also her first available from any label on the then-new 12" long-playing format, still the industry standard for vinyl albums today. Most importantly, Gospel Train took Sister Tharpe's distinctive blend of primordial electric guitar-driven blues and traditional gospel and harnessed it's power in a polished studio setting, backed by first-call session musicians including the vocal quartet the Harmonizing Four. The Verve Vault series is all-analog, cut from the original master tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. The Velvet Fog meets The Great White Way! Mel Torme was at the height of his powers on 1960's Swings Shubert Alley, a collection of Broadway standards backed by the renowned Marty Paich Orchestra. This stunning union of musical theatre and jazz is regarded as one of the jewels of Torme's work for Verve Records, and his unforgettable vocal delivery elevates familiar chestnuts from the songbooks of Lerner and Loewe ("On the Street Where You Live"), Rodgers and Hammerstein ("Hello, Young Lovers," "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top") and Cole Porter ("Too Darn Hot"). The Verve Vault series is all-analog, cut from the original master tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

MUSORGSKY: PICTURES EXHIBITION / PROKOFIEV: VISION

PERGOLESI: STABAT MATER & SALVE REGINA

'hush' is Chad Lawson's most intimate and understated work to date - a deeply restorative collection of music born from a singular moment of silence at London's legendary Angel Studios. After the final note of the orchestral recording faded, no one in the room moved or spoke, and in that shared stillness Chad discovered both the spirit of the album and it's name. Rather than offering another solution, ritual, or self-improvement tool, hush creates a place to simply be. A refuge at the end of a day that has taken more than it has given. Embracing restraint and honesty, Chad pares each composition down to only what it needs, allowing space, breath, and silence to become part of the music itself. The result is Chad's quietest recording yet. A beautifully immersive listening experience that leaves listeners feeling lighter, renewed, and gently reminded that even the longest nights eventually give way to morning.

SHINE

55

Sir Stephen Hough's new solo piano album, Stephen Hough's Piano Postcards, explores the world from the perspective of the itinerant pianist sending home musical messages from his voyages. Music from Asia includes "Spring breeze prelude" by Taiwanese composer Deng Yu-Hsien and a piano version of "Aka tombo," a children's song so beloved in Japan that it features in citywide "5-o'clock chimes" across the country. Folk and popular traditions appear in "Cielito lindo" and "Nature boy," while the final group of pieces turns to nature, with works by MacDowell, Schumann and Sinding. Alongside these musical travel diaries, he intersperses new transcriptions of songs from popular films, including arrangements he created for Lang Lang's 'Disney Book' album. This is the first chance Sir Stephen has had to include piano arrangements of songs from Frozen, Coco and Mary Poppins.

Ludovico Einaudi returns with 'The Summer Portraits: Live.' Recorded live in London at the Royal Albert Hall in 2025, this new collection includes favorites from The Summer Portraits as well as much-loved classics such as "I Giorni," "Nuvole Bianche" and "Experience." Pressed on transparent blue & transparent pink color vinyl, 2LP.

CHOPIN: PIANO SONATAS NOS. 2 & 3

SHINE

Exotica showcases the boundary-pushing creativity of composer Mauricio Kagel, one of the most influential figures in avant-garde and experimental music. Challenging traditional musical conventions, the work explores unconventional instrumentation, theatrical elements, and innovative sonic textures, highlighting Kagel's unique vision and enduring impact on contemporary classical music.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - SCORE

Following their critically acclaimed recording of the Faust Symphony (BIS-2510), the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, conducted by Gergely Madaras and joined by the Choeur Symphonique de Namur, now presents Liszt's Dante Symphony-a work reflecting his profound engagement with Dante's Divine Comedy. Initially planned in three movements-Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso-the Dante Symphony was ultimately cast as two symphonic poems with a choral conclusion. The Inferno opens with a stern trombone theme beneath Dante's gate inscription, moves through lyrical episodes evoking Paolo and Francesca, and ends in demonic frenzy. The Purgatorio, serene and simple, contains a central fugue evoking souls striving toward paradise, leading without pause into the choral Magnificat. Liszt's treatment of tonality anticipates Mahler and Nielsen, while his use of the tritone and whole-tone scale confirms him as a composer ahead of his time. This recording also includes the symphony's original conclusion, later abandoned at Richard Wagner's insistence. The programme concludes with John Adams' orchestration of La Lugubre Gondola II, a visionary late work inspired by a funeral gondola procession on Venice's Grand Canal. Adams' arrangement honours the structural, stylistic, and poetic dimensions of Liszt's original, placing it's Romantic language within a modern soundscape.

The Individual and the Entire Tissue was commissioned by Figura Ensemble for Figura Festspiele 2024 and is based on poems from Third-Millennium Heart by the Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen. Drawing on his decades of experience in Denmark's music scene, Jakob Davidsen has crafted a unique musical meditation on the relationship between the individual and the surrounding world: part song cycle, part musical theater, part cabaret, the seven-movement work is structured with two expansive outer movements framing five shorter central movements. Each of the middle movements draws inspiration from a composer, a specific work, or a musical genre, while the outer movements are shaped directly by the poetry itself. Through this architecture, the work creates musical connections that mirror it's central themes of inner and outer relationships. Bringing Davidsen's musical vision to life are frequent collaborators soprano Signe Asmussen and performers from Figura Ensemble, DR Big Band, New Jungle Orchestra, and Davidsen's own Kammerat Orkester, creating a distinctive, richly varied, and responsive sound world. Founded in 2010 by pianist and composer Jakob Davidsen, Jakob Davidsens Kammerat Orkester is one of Denmark's leading ensembles exploring the borderland between improvisation and composition. Known for it's innovative approach to crossover music, the orchestra has performed widely in Denmark and abroad, received a Danish Music Award Jazz for Special Release of the Year in 2012, and was honored by the Danish Arts Foundation for the interdisciplinary project Lend Art Your Ear. The ensemble has collaborated with numerous international artists and has developed a particularly close artistic partnership with Figura Ensemble in recent years.

In addition to the popular potpourri overture to Johann Strauss II's operetta The Gypsy Baron (1885) and the musical joke Perpetuum mobile, the programme of the new CD from BR-KLASSIK features mostly lesser-known, yet no less rousing, compositions by the 'Viennese Waltz King,' all of them studio productions. Johann Strauss II inherited his father's entrepreneurial passion and artistic mastery. He succeeded in further refining and expanding the repertoire, particularly in the form of the grand concert waltz. This CD features the Revolutionary March, Op. 54 (1848), as well as Perpetuum mobile - A Musical Joke, Op. 257 (1861), and the Intermezzo from the operetta 1001 Nights (1871/1906). The waltz Carnevalsbilder, Op. 357 (1873), and the fast polka Vom Donaustrande, Op. 356 (1873), are both based on melodies from the operetta The Carnival in Rome. The waltz Nordseebilder, Op. 390 (1879), the overture to the operetta Der Zigeunerbaron (1885), and the Csárdás from Strauss's only opera Ritter Pásmán (1892) are also included, as is the musical prelude Klange aus der Raimundzeit, Op. 479 (1898). The CD also has several surprises in store (as bonus tracks)!

Living up to it's reputation of presenting music that is out of the ordinary and off the beaten track, SOMM Recordings is releasing Wood on the Tracks with Cellophonics, four of the UK's finest cellists who have been expanding the repertoire with a growing list of exciting new works and rediscovered lost masterpieces. The quartet-Christopher Allan, Adrian Bradbury, Ian Burdge, and Ben Rogerson-having gathered a whole concert's worth of commissions and discoveries, was invited by SOMM to record this debut album. Wood on the Tracks includes first recordings of works commissioned from Simon Baggs, Guy Barker, Roderick Elms, Julia Simpson, and Rowland Sutherland-recorded in the presence of the composers-and forgotten gems by William Alwyn, York Bowen, and Marie Dare. The works by Alwyn and Bowen are also first recordings. Amongst the forgotten gems is the first work on the programme, Suite for Four Cellos, by composer-pianist York Bowen (1884-1961). The parts and full score of the suite were discovered in manuscript by Ben Rogerson in the music library of his late grandfather Haydn Rogerson, one-time principal cello of the Halle Orchestra. Another rediscovery is a set of Two Irish Tunes for Cello Quartet by flautist, teacher, and composer William Alwyn (1905-1985). These had their first performance in 1933 in the Lecture Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, where Alwyn was a professor of composition. The third rediscovery comes from the most significant Scottish-born cellist-composer of her day, Marie Dare (1902-1976). Her distinctive set of works for cello includes Six Pieces for Cello Quartet. From these, Cellophonics performs IV. Aria. The first commissioned work on this programme is a Divertimento for Cello Quartet by Roderick Elms, who writes: 'I wanted to explore the wonderfully lush textures available for four cellos, and this approach is evident in the lyrical central section.' This is offset by rhythmic, somewhat jazz-influenced outer sections. A commission from wide-ranging composer Julia Simpson is Mariposa, which traces the incredible four-generation journey of migration made each year by the monarch butterfly, from Canada to the mountains of western Mexico and back. The multi-gifted Rowland Sutherland is a poet as well as a musician, and his poem HOPE-composed in Japanese haibun style-lends it's name and theme to the work he wrote for Cellophonics. The title work, Wood on the Tracks, is by trumpeter and composer Guy Barker, who says it was only after he completed the work that he realized he had written a piece about trains. The program ends with Soliloquy by conductor, composer, and violinist Simon Baggs. He writes, 'Although written for four cellos, the work stands as the utterance of one voice.'

On her Cantaloupe debut, Rebekah Heller explores the full range of capabilities of the bassoon-not just as a solo instrument, but also, through careful and precise multi-tracking, as a percussive and regenerative source of sound that suggests infinite musical possibilities. The album opens with a blistering take on Julius Eastman's legendary The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc, which Heller arranged for ten bassoons based on the painstaking transcription of Eastman's 1981 live performance at The Kitchen (NYC) by cellist and composer Clarice Jensen. From there, Steve Reich's original Cello Counterpoint is reworked into Grand Street Counterpoint-again, for ten bassoons, with bassoon soloist-with Reich himself collaborating as co-producer. Heller also commissioned three composers, all of whom have explored the modern intersection of avant-garde, jazz, experimental, and classical music, to contribute their distinctive voices to the project. Jessie Cox's Sonic Cartographies and Fay Victor's Nurture (for Ingram) both tap into a wellspring of deep inspiration (with Cox drawing from his fascination with sound and movement, and Victor from her poignant memories of jazz musician Ingram Washington), while Green's piece Righteous Rage gives the album it's title: a fiery and fierce exposition on the world we're leaving for the next generation.

SOMM Recordings' Elgar from the Archives series is creating a stir amongst Elgar lovers and historic performance enthusiasts alike, with Music Web International's Nick Barnard remarking, 'SOMM's presentation is it's usual excellent self.' The series draws on the Elgar Archive of producer and master restoration engineer Lani Spahr, and SOMM is now pleased to release Volume 5, which features the oratorio The Apostles, Op. 49 (1903) and the song cycle Sea Pictures, Op. 37 (1899). Since his youth, Edward Elgar had conceived of a large-scale work depicting the disciples of Jesus and their response to the extraordinary events they witnessed. When the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival commissioned him to write a new choral work, he began to compose an intended trilogy. While the third part remains only in sketches, the first two-The Kingdom and The Apostles-are monumental contributions to British oratorio. SOMM's May 2026 release of The Kingdom (ARIADNE 5048-2) featured Sir Adrian Boult conducting The BBC Symphony Orchestra as part of the 1957 centenary celebrations for Elgar's birth. This present live recording of The Apostles is from a BBC Home Service aircheck at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 12 June of that year. This also features The BBC Symphony Orchestra, here conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent-who, along with Boult and Sir John Barbirolli, was strongly associated with the promotion of Elgar's music in the years following World War II. As principal conductor of The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sargent threw himself into celebrating the Elgar centenary, when the BBC broadcast all three of the major oratorios. In addition to The Dream of Gerontius, Sargent considered both The Apostles and The Kingdom to be masterpieces, which should have been much more widely known. About Sargent's 1957 performance of The Apostles, Stanley Bayliss wrote, 'the closing pages are magnificent and give us something that cannot be found even in Gerontius. This was fully understood by Sir Malcolm Sargent, who was the hero of the evening.' Included in this album is a first CD release, newly restored by Lani Spahr, of Elgar's Sea Pictures for contralto and orchestra with Gladys Ripley and George Weldon conducting the then recently formed Philharmonia Orchestra. This was recorded in 1946 for EMI. Elgar was no doubt one of Weldon's favourite composers. In 2008 SOMM first released the Sea Pictures with Gladys Ripley and the London Symphony Orchestra (SOMMCD 073, George Weldon conducts Elgar). This was recorded in 1954 at EMI's Abbey Road and produced by the late Brian Culverhouse.