Sebastián Cruz possesses one of the most distinctive voices in the flamenco world today. He started out earning a living as a slaughterman, but has always had a deep-rooted connection to music and to the natural world of his native Andalusia. His life was changed when, a few years ago, he came across the film"Tous les matins du monde", starring Gérard Depardieu as Marin Marais, with its soundtrack of works by Marin Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe performed by Jordi Savall. From that moment onwards, the music of these pioneering Baroque composers, which had touched him with such unique intensity, filled his mind as he spent time in the Huelva countryside with his beloved greyhounds and horses.

On this album, Cruz explores a century and more of flamenco history, venturing into a new soundworld and creating musical poems that express his innermost being. Open to an array of influences, he pushes the strict boundaries of flamenco tradition with incomparable vocal passion and emotional depth. Sebastián Cruz sees flamenco with his heart and, together with kindred spirit Raúl Cantizano, his friend and musical director, forges breathtaking music that speaks to both body and soul. (Translation: Susannah Howe)

Before the actual recording of the album, which took place in Seville, there was only a working title. The album title"Zarabanda" was created only during the production. The sarabande is a courtly, mostly instrumental dance form of baroque music since the middle of the 17th century. This dance inspired several composers to write expressive compositions and later became a standard movement of the Baroque suite ... but the once frivolous dance became popular in non-courtly circles in the Spanish colonies much earlier, before it made its way back across the Atlantic to Spain. Although the dance was banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity, it has been frequently cited in the literature of the time [e.g. in works by Lope de Vega, who penned some of the lyrics selected for this album].

With incomparable depth and voice, Sebastián Cruz breaks with the strict flamenco tradition and, together with his congenial partner Raúl Cantizano, transcends musical boundaries that have been firmly drawn for over a hundred years. He is assisted by the exceptional guitarists Rafael Riqueni and Alfredo Lagos, as well as bassist Marco Serrato, who, like Raúl Cantizano, enriches this work with very special timbres.

Pianist Geri Allen, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian formed a trio in the 1980s. Haden, world-famous as a member of Ornette Coleman's double quartet and Keith Jarrett's trio with Motian on drums, who in turn is writing jazz history with the Bill Evans Trio, and Allen, who is revolutionizing the jazz world with Steve Coleman, present Bud Powell's groovy classic "Oblivion", Ornette's post-bop icon "The Invisible" and their specially created works that manifest the high art of the trio. "In the Year of the Dragon" in the original artwork by Steve Byram will be only available as LP. The 2023 completely remastered release of the 1989 recording was specially created for 180g vinyl and foil-cut for excellent audiophile sound with the best dynamics.

This album is dedicated to María Antonia Vallejo Fernández (1751-1787), known as La Caramba, a famous Spanish actress/singer. There is probably no comparable ensemble like Forma Antiqva, which has dedicated itself to the incomprehensibly little-known Spanish baroque music and has made rousing compositions known worldwide.

Hans Abrahamsen is one of the most important contemporary composers. Numerous productions have already been published by Winter & Winter and have attracted great attention from the public and the press. "Let me tell you" is one of the greatest worldwide successes in contemporary music. With the WDR production "Left, alone" Winter & Winter continues its canon with Hans Abrahamsen. Ten Sinfonias, Left, alone and Two Pieces in Slow Time can be heard on this album. Ten Sinfonias, recorded under the direction of Peter Rundel, Left, alone under Mariano Chiacchiarini with Tamara Stefanovich on piano and Two Pieces in Slow Time with soloists from the WDR Symphony Orchestra, form an exciting and multi-layered album with important key works by Hans Abrahamsen. A production with the WDR Symphony Orchestra.

For the opening of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, Krzysztof Penderecki set to music the text of the Ekecheiria (Truce) Agreement, agreed in 884 BC to ensure the peaceful running of the Games. In 2022, Munich celebrated and commemorated the 50th anniversary of the "cheerful" Games, which unfortunately ended in tragedy. In this context, Fumio Yasuda was commissioned to once again set Ekecheiria to music as a mirror of those events. The result is seven compositions for voices and bass clarinet based on IOC President Avery Brundage's controversial demand "The Games Must Go On", interspersed with sound bridges entitled "Ekecheiria" by Gareth Davis. Gareth Davis, one of the most outstanding soloists in New Music, meets EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, one of the world's leading vocal ensembles of today. EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, based in London, is directed by James Weeks and draws its voices from the best vocal talent in the UK. Winter & Winter's recorded works with EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble range from Carlo Gesualdo to Michael Finnissy. Gareth Davis is featured on "The Ninth Wave - Ode to Nature," a composition by Fumio Yasuda based on Ludwig van Beethoven.

The Brussels Philharmonic commissions a work from the American musician Uri Caine. Caine receives a "carte blanche". The result is the composition Agent Orange for orchestra and the improvisation artists Dave Liebman on saxophone, John Hébert on double bass, DJ Olive on turntables and Uri Caine on piano – jazz meets symphonic.

Caine: "The work consists of small chapters with different themes that express feelings like anger, frustration, but also peace. The work contains allusions to American music history. I take up the question of what holds the United States together. Someone living in NYC has a different background than someone from Oklahoma or Texas. We look at and judge each other in completely different ways. For me, the music is the only connecting element. I'm convinced of that, both as a musician and as a person."

Since its birth 200 years ago, the accordion has experienced a wild odyssey through the most diverse musical worlds. Teodoro Anzellotti plays a decisive role in its integration into the world of new music. Anzellotti records five works for accordion solo at WDR, which were written on his skin. The pieces reveal the enormous range of the instrument among others composed by Georges Aperghis, awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2022. Anzellotti, born in Italy, raised and residing in Germany, performs as a soloist at the most important festivals and music centers throughout the world. He is engaged by prestigious orchestras as a soloist, winner of international competitions and inseparable from the appearance of the accordion in the classical musical life.

The Spanish baroque ensemble Forma Antiqva rescues forgotten masterpieces. The conductor and artistic director Aarón Zapico opens the musical treasury in the archives of Oviedo Cathedral and presents Spanish masterpieces of the 17th century to the world. Each individual work is a premiere recording, including six vocal pieces by Joaquín Lázaro (1746-1786) — the soprano Jone Martínez brings these love arias about the highest, divine love to life again — and two anonymous instrumental pieces and a violin concerto.

Forma Antiqva, conducted by Aarón Zapico, is one of the most outstanding baroque ensembles in Spain. Zapico places special work on the discovery of Spanish baroque music. The maestro unearths gems and performs them with his ensemble as if the ink were still wet on 17th-century sheet music. Very exciting!

The French pianist Jean-Pierre Collot presents a highly interesting and, at first glance, unusual juxtaposition of the music of Lachenmann (born 1935) with that of Ludwig van Beethoven. Here, Franz Liszt's piano transcription of Beethoven's Symphony no. 6 "Pastoral" is in dialogue with Serynade and Marche fatale by Lachenmann. In this WDR production, Collot comes across as a contemporary painter and creates fascinating timbres and shades of these highly virtuosic masterpieces. This album was created in collaboration with Lachenmann, whose tonal and highly melodic "fatal march" arrived as a shock after his decades of experimentation with extremes of musical possibility. Serynade, the title of his great piano work, is intentionally misspelled, with a y; the shift references the first letter of its dedicatee's name: Yukiko Sugawara, a pianist and Lachenmann's wife.

With its roots in Egyptian and Mesopotamian love poetry and fertility rites, the Song of Songs is the greatest pæan to human love in ancient literature. Its verses describe a love song from man to woman to man, flitting between lover and beloved in a mosaic of iridescent, enigmatic imagery familiar from its co-option into Judaeo-Christian religious traditions and a millennium of European musical settings. Re-reading teh Songs as literature today seems only to emphasize its sharpness and extremity: the inexhaustible overabundance of metaphor and its patchwork construction give it a decidedly modern edge. I designed a set of pieces with a variety of vocal orchestrations, each channelling the canon's intrinsic momentum in different ways: creating proliferating, growing textures, or shifting densities of sound like passing clouds, or folding the canon back on itself into more static or circling formations. I collated the texts from all over the poem, often bringing together related phrases that appear in different chapters of the Song. Each piece takes a nature-image from its text as a basis for its structure and overall character. I imagine each piece as taking place in real-time, like an unedited film. In that time the steady-state textures change gradually: the sun increasingly catches the leaves of teh plans over the eight minutes of the first piece; the wind rises and falls across the span of the second piece, and in the last there are slight, unpredictable fluctuations of gently rustling foliage. - James Weeks

Aarón Zapico and his baroque ensemble, Forma Antiqva, interpret Vivaldi’s concertos with an entirely new approach, on period instruments. Aitor Hevia (violin) slips into various leading parts, mimics birds, a farmer’s boy, from who the storm wants to steal the annual harvest, becomes the game being hunted to death and blusters like freezing wind over the frozen land. Vivaldi, who was born during an earthquake, creates four episodes, each in three parts, corresponding with his poems. Theo Bleckmann and Uri Caine compose these sonnets and present here as a première recording ‘The Four Seasons Sonnets’: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Bleckmann and Caine act as the narrators for Vivaldi’s AudioFilm. The Dutch painter and concept artist Marcel van Eeden is inspired by Zapico’s ‘Four Seasons’ and creates for this musical cycle eight new drawings.

Includes work(s) by Carl Heinrich Biber, various composers.

The ensemble "Die Freitagsakademie" was founded in Bern 1993. The name originates from one of the first establishments of middle-class music life in the Berlin of the 18th century: the FREITAGSAKADEMIEN, founded by Johann Gottlieb Janitsch in 1738. The Berlin society met regularly to make music together in a semi-public or private setting. The Freitagsakademien enjoyed an outstanding reputation and attracted musicians of the most varied origins.