This album features some of the most beloved works from the piano repertoire, all united by a common theme of distant reminiscences of lost happiness-either directly expressed in the titles of the pieces or subtly woven into the music, as in Schubert's Sonata in A Major, written just months before his death. It is both a tribute to Beethoven's style and a quintessential example of Schubert's unique blend of intimate emotions, expressed through lyrical motifs. While the virtuosic pianism is never absent, it takes a back seat to the emotional depth and expressiveness at the heart of the work. The cycles of Leos Janacek were composed during the darkest period of his life. His On an Overgrown Path memorializes his daughter, who tragically passed away, while In the Mists with it's transparent texture and innovative harmonies captures the internal void and confusion of the composer. Schumann's Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) evokes the perspective of an adult looking back with nostalgia, longing for the simplicity and innocence of childhood. The music, with it's straightforward and sometimes naive language, mirrors the idealized view of the past. Min Jung Lee, a versatile and sensitive artist, delivers a deeply evocative interpretation. In her delicate readings, she perfectly captures the essence of these compositions, painting a misty portrait of the personal experiences of the composers, transposed into musical form on the staff.

Around the World in 17 Christmas Songs Everything glows and sparkles, festive aromas fill the air, and in the distance, you can hear carol singing- Christmas is a feast for all the senses. Though decorations and culinary preferences around the globe may differ, there is one thing that always fits right in at Yuletide: the radiant sound of brass music. We were invited to present the annual Berliner Philharmoniker Christmas Family Concert in 2023 and decided to take the audience on a musical journey to the countries the Berlin Philharmonic Brass ensemble members come from. Each of us chose a favourite song from his or her home country, which meant we all discovered music we may never have had a chance to hear otherwise. To arrange the pieces, we turned to a good friend who has been arranging for us for many years-Joshua Davis, principal trombone of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. He knows us well and, exclusively for us, he has made each Christmas song an individual showpiece-some traditional, some more jazzy, and others new and surprising. The buzz generated by this Family Concert was such that we were inundated with requests to record the pieces. To our delight, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings agreed to produce an album with us, and we are happy and proud to present to you Frohe Weihnachten! For this release, we have augmented our original song selection with further beautiful discoveries from countries like Greece, Ukraine, and Poland. Now that this very special Christmas

Bernhard Lang's Monadology XXXVI is a radical "meta-composition". It deconstructs Chopin's Op. 10 �tudes through granular analysis, loops, and virtual remixing-destroying and reassembling the score into new sonic textures. The cycle consists of 12 Et�den. The last three are dedicated to Daan Vandewalle, the internationally acclaimed pianist renowned for his mastery of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, who now brings them to this album.

The album consists of five triptychs written for solo guitar in the 20th century by composers representing various areas of musical culture. The album opens with a work by Tansman, which references the compositions of Fr�d�ric Chopin. Rodrigo's composition strictly follows his characteristic musical language, based on stylizations of dances and motifs drawn from Spanish tradition. Torroba's suite is a tribute to the music of the Castilian region, an emotional, virtuosic work with playful elements. The miniatures by Henz, with their dreamlike, meditative character, bear the mark of the versatile German composer's personal style, whose musical language combines elements of expressionism, twelve-tone technique, neoclassicism, and tonality. The final work on the album is by Barrios Mangor�, the Paraguayan guitarist and most prominent composer of his country, whose piece borders between the sacred and the profane, containing elements of Baroque virtuosity. Andrzej Grygier is one of the most outstanding classical guitarists of his generation, a laureate of prestigious guitar competitions worldwide, and this album confirms his virtuosic skill and musical sensitivity.

INVISIBLE LIGHT presents six compositions, each representing a different facet of the compositional work of David Evan Jones (b. 1946). Four of the six compositions are scored for traditional Korean instruments and two for Western instruments.

MADLANDS marks the PENTATONE debut of pianist and composer Yang Bao, offering a stunningly beautiful and audacious journey into what it means to be human amid the rising tides of artificial intelligence and ecological upheaval. Written for piano, six strings, and a palette of analog synthesizers-including the Korg PS-3300 and MiniMoog-Bao's eleven compositions reimagine identity and belonging in a world where human, machine, and nature coexist in delicate, suspenseful symbiosis. The album opens with a powerful trilogy-The Riddle, Baby Beast, and Hold Your Breath-where classical form meets electronic sound, creating a visceral, futuristic landscape. Across works such as Human and I and First Run, Bao blurs the boundaries between organic and artificial, past and future, transforming music into an immersive, living environment. Drawing on his visual art practice, Bao pairs this sonic vision with his striking artwork, reflecting the duality between the visible and the invisible. MADLANDS is an album for the future-a contemplative, bold, and deeply human exploration of consciousness, connection, and the fragile beauty of a world in flux.

The Detmold Horn Players, led by Michael H�ltzel, their legendary founder and director as well as influential teacher, present Hubertusmesse (St. Hubert's Mass), one of the very first recordings by the Detmold-based audiophile label MDG. The outstanding sound, technical craftsmanship, and, above all, musical quality of these sensational works for parforce horns, including several historical hunting fanfares from Bohemian, French, and Austrian traditions, are something quite extraordinary and vouch for the consistency with which MDG has been inspiring music lovers and sound enthusiasts around the world ever since.

Saxophone Varie, Vol. 2

Recorded live in concert at the Krematoriet, Stockholm, on 12 October 2024. Recorded by Adam Forkelid. Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann, 4ohm Berlin. Photos by Joona Toivanen (front cover) and Fredrik Gille. Cover design by Jonas Holmberg

... So what, then, did Winterreise mean to us? At the risk of stating the obvious: it was a journey - albeit a journey with no real destination. The depth of this Everest-like score offered new insights and fresh layers with every reading. Consequently, there was never - and still isn't, despite years of preparation and live performances - a real sense of completion, no point at which we could say we were "finished" studying each lied. And perhaps the Wanderer's journey is also without destination. A physical trek through a cold and indifferent, if not openly hostile, nature, it is also a psychological path through the difficult phases of processing loss - a process that, in truth, never completes. The traveler clings to the pain inflicted by a society that rejected him and continues to reject him, like the barking dogs announcing his passing, finding refuge only in the suffering of memory and in each weary step through the snow

A famous Beethoven work and a Reicha premiere in the hands of exceptional performers. Just like the well-known drama of Beethoven's life, the biography of Anton Reicha would also make an exciting film, but this recording mainly shows us the friendship of the two great composers at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. They were born the same year, and from their first encounter as 15-year-olds in the Bonn court orchestra, they became close friends. They studied together at the university in Bonn, and they both became friends of Haydn. Their music also shared similarities mainly during Reicha's period in Vienna. It was while Reicha was in Vienna that he wrote his only piano concerto and that Beethoven wrote his fifth and most famous work in the genre. Both concertos are in the "heroic" key of E flat major. While Beethoven's "Emperor Concerto" is a mainstay of the piano literature, this is the first complete recording of Reicha's concerto. Missing pages from the solo part were first discovered in 2018. Jan Bartos is a highly acclaimed interpreter of Beethoven, and here he is following in the tradition of his teachers Ivan Moravec and Alfred Brendl. The wonderful playing of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which has Beethoven's blood in it's veins, gives the live recording from the Prague Spring Festival the hallmark of authenticity. Playing the meticulously detailed accompaniment in the studio recording of Reicha's concerto is the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Bartos's partner at the helm of both orchestras is Petr Popelka, today undisputedly a world-class conductor who has the rare ability to breathe meaning and life into every note. The friends Beethoven and Reicha are symbolically reunited after more than two centuries on a single album in special musical company.

GENUIN and Schola Heidelberg present world premiere recordings in Dolby Atmos on a new album featuring works by the internationally awarded composer D�niel P�ter Bir�, who teaches in Norway. The elite Heidelberg choir and the ensemble aisthesis, specializing in contemporary music, acquaint us with Bir�'s imaginative and multi-layered music, which reflects the thought-world of the eminent Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza in sound and pours it into new contexts. A listening experience spanning cultures and epochs!

Upon Wings of Words is a setting of Emily Dickinson for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Dickinson continues to inspire composers over 130 years since her death, and here it is the tense, springy rhythms of her poems that Read Thomas responds to.

The new album of saxophonist Asya Fateyeva, with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, presents a brand-new version of the hit Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, arranged by composer Wolf Kerschek. The recording is complemented by Christmas music arranged for saxophone and the vocal ensemble Niniwe Vocal Art.

Carl Reinecke's works are living proof that conservatism and originality are not mutually exclusive. His work rests on the shoulders of previous generations and nowhere does it depart from the harmonic or formal conventions that were part of the curriculum at conservatoires in the 19thcentury - and yet we will encounter a personality who did not hide behind formulae, but to a certain extent between the lines and in the details. In his oratorio Belsazar, premiered in 1859, he indulges extensively in the tension between God-fearing Israelites and the brutally blasphemous Babylonians. Some twenty years later, he produced a successful 'Concert Piece for Choir and Orchestra' in which vocal movements and instrumental interludes are combined in a novel way to create a unique and unusually poetic sequence of enchanting Sommertagsbilder (Pictures of a Summer's Day). It is an experience in changing moods