A rarely heard, fascinating solo instrument and an internationally multi-award-winning performer: on the new GENUIN album "From Keys to Strings", we are presented with an exciting combination! For her prizewinner production from the 2023 ARD Music Competition, harpist Tjasha Gafner has put together an unusual program in which she arranged works for her instrument. These are pieces that Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart originally wrote for keyboard - or, in the case of Johann Sebastian Bach, for lute (or a lute-harpsichord?). The clarity and transparency of both transcription and interpretation by this outstanding young harpist provide surprising insights and new listening experiences!

With his eighth album MORLA, ECHO award winner Tim Allhoff shows curiosity, self confidence and a stylistic diversity that reflects his various musical influences. For many years he has been one of the most important pianists on the German scene. The magazine JAZZTHING calls him the "Piano Shooting Star of the Republic" and the SuDDEUTSCHE congratulates him, with this release, on his "ascent to the top class of solo pianists". In his new Album MORLA, Allhoff takes the opportunity to reflect on the origins and course of his artistic work as a pianist and composer; the resulting collection of compositions evokes a variety of contrasting moods, reminiscent of a photo album - an album that exhibits different stages of his artistic career and the melting pot of the musical genres that is Tim Allhoff.

In the 'glory days' of the 1970s recording industry (and, incidentally, the time of CRD Records' foundation), there was a rush to record the classical canon. Naturally, as a pioneering label, CRD was at the forefront of this trend and had the privilege to work with Paul on the complete piano works of Faure and Ravel, amongst others. Today, hidden corners of classical continue to be unearthed and we are encouraged to rethink genre boundaries as we elevate long-disregarded voices. Meanwhile, there is another important venture at play: the careful curation of a composer's works. This is the bent of this release. Frederic Mompou's piano works have been well-covered, not least by the maestro himself in his own performances recorded in Barcelona in 1974. So why record this repertoire again 50 years later? From our perspective, it is a fitting choice as we celebrate 50 years as a label championing classical repertoire through the performances of world-class artists. But there has to be something more than that. Such is the accessibility of music today and the desire to reach virality that we seem to have forgotten how, for it's originator, it could be a definitively private and intimate exploit. Paul invites us to listen to Mompou's' rehearsal of own'. He encourages us, as Mompou did from the outset, to listen for the silences and peer deeply into the shadows. In a world in which our attention is constantly divided, perhaps now more than ever such albums are needed. Emma Pauncefort & Tom Pauncefort

A unique recital on record of complementary bagatelles and sonatas from two distinct periods in Beethoven's life, in a new recording by a modern master pianist. Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is 'a storyteller', remarked Jeremy Nicholas in his Gramophone review of the Chopin sonatas on Piano Classics. He went on to praise 'nigh-on ideal' playing in the Second Sonata: 'unforced, rhythmically buoyant [and] texturally translucent'. The German pianist now illuminates four works of Beethoven with the same qualities. The Sonata Op.31 No.3 and Bagatelles Op.33 both date from what would prove to be a transitional point in Beethoven's career, around the year 1802, as he was stretching his wings and his capabilities. They achieve striking and often sudden contrasts of expression within both expansive sonata-form structures and the miniature sketch-form of the bagatelle, which Beethoven effectively invented from scratch with this set. 'Schmitt-Leonardy's superb technical and musical command holds unflagging interest' through the variation sets of Brahms, according to Jed Distler in another Gramophone review. Such command is a prerequisite for addressing the late masterpieces of Beethoven, so often recorded, and to which Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy brings his own, individual musical intelligence. Twenty years elapsed between those earlier pieces and the Sonata Op.110, during which time Beethoven's thinking inevitably underwent a sea-change. By this point he was striving ever more keenly to achieve the expression of transcendence in music, and the Sonata's ineffable opening phrase seems to distil that search into an unforgettable gesture. The Sonata is also marked by the composer's intensifying preoccupation with Baroque-era counterpoint, which gives the most haunting life to the finale's semi-autobiographical narrative of vitality lost and regained. The Bagatelles Op.126 are trifles in name only, contemporary with the Ninth Symphony, sharing the Olympian humour of it's Scherzo and the span of the Diabelli Variations. Each one captures a mood as intense as it is fleeting. They are perhaps comparable in this way with the sonatas of Scarlatti, such as those played by Schmitt-Leonardy on another Piano Classics album: 'one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer's desk in years.' (Gramophone)

The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838-1919) not only shared a teacher - Eduard Marxsen - with Brahms; both composers, who remained friends in later years, 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 fourth Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty, of Brahmsian richness and Schubertian spontaneity.

Bridging Tradition and Innovation: This album redefines lute music by blending the instrument's rich historical sound with electronic textures. A Fusion of Acoustic and Electronic: Bergmuller merges the lute's intricate, classical tones with subtle electronic layers?. For both contemporary and classical music audiences.

The first time Margarita Hohenrieder heard the Finnish pianist Antti Siirala, she was a member of the jury for the International Beethoven Competition in Vienna in May 1997. Many years later, Antti Siirala was appointed Professor for Piano at the University of Music and Theatre Munich - a happy coincidence that gave both the opportunity to make music together. The very first time they played together, we sensed a special musical relationship: a similar ideal of sound and a very deliberate way of listening to one another. Embarking with a fellow-musician on an artistic journey - such as making Mozart sound convincing on modern instruments, searching for the right tempo, rhythm, vivid phrasing, thrilling dynamics - is a highly creative process and certainly an inexhaustible source of inspiration. As an exciting contrast to their Mozart interpretations, they offer the South American sounds and rhythms of the bandoneon and the typically wistful melodies of the tango Cristian en el Cafe Tortoni Buenos Aires by Francoise Choveaux - a quite different but equally stimulating challenge. Hohenrieder also was introduced to the great bandoneon player on our recording, Sebastien Innocenti, by Francoise Choveaux. Margarita Hohenrieder is always treading unusual paths. Together with her friend, the painter Bernd Zimmer, she holds creative performances: "2 left hands," in which Bernd Zimmer creates a picture with his left hand while Margarita Hohenrieder plays works exclusively for the left hand. The well-known jazz musician Ingfried Hoffmann, Hjalmar Hegi Ragnarsson from Iceland and Francoise Choveaux wrote compositions especially for this performance. The cover of this CD and the booklet feature the painting "Ast", 2022 by Bernd Zimmer. The tango "Cristian en el Tortoni Buenos Aires" is dedicated to Margarita Hohenrieder.

R-O-R refers to the chemical compound ether, when two elements come together to create entirely different matter. This ethereal compound also gives it's name to the collaboration between Icelandic musicians Gy�a Valt�sdottir and �lfur Hansson, whose new album AUGA brings together the two musicians in a unique new work of cosmic alchemy. � On AUGA the two musicians combine like electrons to create an expansive sound-world that feels like entering the landscape of a dream. The elements here are both earthly and alchemical: evocations of rain, geology, wind entangle with the oneiric and celestial. �lfur's self-made synthesiser soars and segues with sparkling harmonic threads of Gy�a's cello, creating a tapestry in which matter entwines with a luminous sense of the spectral. � AUGA is a new direction borne from a long history of collaboration between the two. Both have worked on each other's previous solo projects, with Gy�a playing cello on �lfur�s album Arborescens, and �lfur working on arrangements and production for Gy�a's albums Evolution and Ox. A deeper collaboration began, however, when Gy�a and �lfur created the Icelandic Music Award nominated track 'Morphogenesis' for Gy�a's album Epicycle II. Partly created out of improvisation and partly composed in writing, and appropriately named 'Morphogenesis' for the biological process that causes an organism to develop it's shape, this explorative collaborative process set the path for the deeply symbiotic creation of AUGA. � The resulting album is an elemental dreamscape of long-form music informed by the astral and eternal. The music made between the two has the quality of a kind of primordial plasma, with contours of melodies arising from thin air and swiftly shapeshifting into whorls of formlessness. On 'Petrichor', a track named for the scent of falling rain, a dew-drop string melody merges with the geological bedrock drones of �lfur's synthesizer. Elsewhere, the chemical evocations of tracks like 'Esters' and 'Onium Ion' take us on a spectral atomic journey through hydrogen and halogen, and the deep tremors of 'Vacuum' transport us through a sense of expansive geological deep-time. � Speaking about the collaboration, Gy�a says; ROR is a realm which I love entering. When me and �lfur improvised for the first time together many years ago, we immediately went to this place, which was so clear, strong and familiar; like it had always been there, right behind the veil, and we were simply finding it again. I could never go there by myself, but when our tones met, we went there instantly. I love this realm, it is timeless, colourful and textural - a poetry of pure vibration. � The music of R-O-R is a hologram made from two different beams of expression, forming a whole where sometimes neither instrument can be differentiated from the other. Carbon, silicon, horse hair and wood melt into one projection; a wormhole where both image and form, emptiness and void emerge in a dance of opposites. Gestures echoing into one another. AUGA is an ever evolving nebula of sound.

Concerto Copenhagen's musicians present six new "Brandenburg Concertos" - based on Bach's organ trio sonatas?. J.S. Bach's six organ trio sonatas represent some of his most imaginative and attractive music - by transforming the format through an orchestration inspired by the original Brandenburg Concertos, Concerto Copenhagen is offering a unique new orchestral repertoire. Oboist Antoine Torunczyk has created these six new Brandenburg Concertos with special focus on varying instrumental mixes and sizes - including flute, recorder, oboe d'amore, oboe da caccia, viola d'amore, natural horn, violoncello da spalla, bassoon.

RVB Quartet They bring a mix between rock and jazz which results in a refreshing sound. Interaction, improvisation and groove are the main ingredients that ensure vibrant compositions and crisp live performances. Hamabiwa The quartet feels like kings when they can play like children and let loose on their instruments. Hazel, Bibi, Marius (the little one) and Walt are the inspiration for this album.

This CD is the result of the 12th International Competition "Franz Schubert and Modern Music" (FS & MM), which took place in February 2025 and was organised by the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. The Trio Bronte won 1st prize in the piano trio category with the repertoire on the recording. The Trio was founded in Berlin in 2022 and consists of German-Italian violinist Chiara Sannicandro, Bulgarian pianist Lili Bogdanova, and American cellist Annie Jacobs-Perkins. After playing together for only a few months, the Trio Bronte won 1st prize at the 2023 Ilmari Hannikainen International Piano Chamber Music Competition in Finland. The trio grew up surrounded by the passionate and turbulent novels of the Bronte sisters and named themselves after them, inspired by their passion for storytelling, their intelligence and their sociability.

When Deutschlandfunk and Musikfest Bremen first approached me to produce a CD with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, I faced the unique challenge of choosing a programme that resonated strongly with me and had a significant historical connection. Although I am half German and half Italian, I was quickly drawn to the personal ties I have with French music. I wanted to present works by young composers that had a strong impact on the history of music and pieces that offer the audience a rich, diverse soundscape. Therefore, I chose two French composers who are personally significant to me for various reasons.

HC25024 Schelb II "My encounter with Josef Schelb's music can be best described as a feeling of extraordinary joy. One hears such expressive sounds, paired with carefully harmonised structures. In addition, there is always a wonderfully playful approach to the various forms and to the peculiarities of some specific moments, as can also be found in Richard Strauss and Sergei Prokofiev. Definitely a musician's composer!" (Leo Siberski)

A Due Liuti (Thierry Meunier and Jean-Marie Poirier) offer a selection of pieces from the Elizabethan period and beyond. A good number of theses duets are unpublished and recorded here for the first time.

Linnea Jonsson