Unpublished works for Piano now recorded! Worldpremieres.

The album Melancholia presents songs and piano mazurkas by Polish composers, Chopin, Paderweski and Szymanowski. There are only 19 songs officially verified as Chopin's works, all of them inspired by lyrics of his contemporaries poets. Most of Chopin's vocal compositions were published after his death and combined as Op.74. The poetry of Adam Mickiewicz inspired Ignacy Jan Paderewski to work on a cycle regarding love, longing and passing of the time. Six songs were created between 1887-1893. Paderewski died in New York after having a remarkable European and American career as an outstanding pianist, composer, philanthropist and politician. The Twelve Kurpian Songs, by Karol Szymanowski demonstrates the composers fascination in simplicity, vitality and energy, going side by side with an expression of the Kurpian dialect. In the cycle, Word Songs to words by Julian Tuwim, the listener can hear a fantasy world, hidden between music lines and lyrics by Julian Tuwim. Word Songs were composed in the summer of 1921, Karol dedicated them to his sister - Stanislawa Korwin-Szymanowska, who was also the first interpreter of these vocal works.

The album Concerto Ostinato is a trilogy project written between 2014 and 2016 which includes two concerti for solo instrument and orchestra and a double concerto, for guitar, piano and string orchestra. The project originates after the composition of the double concerto extending in a concerto trilogy where guitar and piano should have been the protagonists. The original idea was however later modified when composer Francesco Di Fiore decided to explore a music form that reached the peak of its spread in the Baroque period. Di Fiore decided therefore that the most appropriate solo instrument for the Concerto Ostinato was the harpsichord rather than piano. The single titles suggest different characters of these three works: while the first explores five possible forms of ostinato, Quattro Canti proposes two different listening keys and, eventually, Tre Paesaggi attempts to describe the power of nature.

Musical covers have a long tradition and the programme of this CD makes this clear. The cover artist even at the end of the Renaissance was not as well known as the original artist. Was it a tribute when the lesser gods of music used their famous colleagues as the starting point for new compositions or was this considered a lack of originality or inspiration? What can one say about real plagiarism? In those days author's copyright were not an issue. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c1525-1594) is above all known as the master of sacred music and a figurehead of the Counter-reformation, however, early in his career, a selection of four-part secular madrigals were published. In the preface to his collection of motets (Cantica Canticorum, which he dedicates to Pope Gregorius XIII), Palestrina appears to be hypocritical, writing in 1584, that he felt ashamed to have been occupied with something as frivolous as madrigals previously. This however didn't stop him from publishing a new collection of four-part madrigals two years later. In the end it never resulted in a whole collection of fivepart madrigals but throughout his life Palestrina often contributed to other collections of madrigals. Two of the five-part madrigals attracted particular attention and became hits: Vestiva i colli and Io son ferito, the latter being the madrigal central to this CD. Io son ferito was first published in an anthology of madrigals, the Terzo libro delle Muse (Venice 1561). In this collection, Palestrina's madrigals are represented more than those of any other composer. In fact Io son ferito was added to at least five other anthologies, even after Palestrina's death. Numerous Italian and many foreign musicians took note of the piece. Orlando di Lasso used the madrigal as a base for his Missa Io son ferito (Munich 1589). Palestrina himself made a cover of his own madrigal in a mass in his posthumously published eleventh collection of masses, however, it was named Missa Petra Sancta, without referring to the original text. Monteverdi's Mantuan colleague Amante Franzoni and the Roman, Giuseppe Giamberti are two of the lesser known composers that offered their take on Io son ferito. The South German organist Christian Erbach even combined both of these popular pieces together in his Ricercar noni toni sopra le fuge io son ferito, hai lasso e vestiva i colli. As is the case with many madrigals, the lyricist of Io son ferito is unknown. The question is also whether or not the text (a lament of an abandoned lover) was the reason for it's popularity. Maybe it is due to the relative simplicity and the balanced harmonic structure of the musical setting which asks for more and more ornamentation. Due to the addition of often very virtuoso ornaments (diminutions), many instrumental arrangements of the last decade of the 16th century paved the way for Baroque music by pushing the typical Renaissance polyphonic structure into the background so that one voice would become overladen with ornaments.

Humor, romance, drama, myths and fairytales: all this can be found in the poems of the collection 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn'. Mahler was quite fond of these poems and used more than twenty of them in his compositions. The alternation between transcendent, sometimes religious songs, rough, poignant and jovial soldier songs, comic fables and folk tunes, all in an overarching and ever recognizable Mahlerian idiom, makes these songs so appealing to perform and to listen to. Though very famous in their orchestral versions, Mahler composed most of them originally for piano and voice. These primary versions don't get performed as often as the orchestral ones do, but here they are performed beautifully by Esther Kuiper, Sven Weyens, and Maurice Lammerts van Bueren.

Schumann wrote 26 songs and called them “Myrten,” which means “Myrtles,” as a wedding gift to Clara Wieck. Schumann, who grew up between piles of books in his father’s bookstore, had developed a diverse taste in literature, and in Myrten his choice of poetry is not only adventurous, but above all remarkable. All texts of the cycle are in German, but three of the poets are English, Scottish or Irish: Lord Byron, Robert Burns, and Thomas Moore. Most English texts Schumann used for his Myrten were translated by Wilhelm Gerhard, a German salesman and poet, who lived in Leipzig and was friendly with many leading poets and composers. The other poems are written by Goethe, Ruckert and Heine, who are each represented in several songs. Only one text, which inspired Schumann to write one of his most beloved songs, was written by Julius Mosen: Der Nussbaum.

Satie: Works for Piano

Douwe Eisenga: Piano Concerto, String Quartet "Rose Road", C

The Brunsvik String Trio, named after Beethoven’s “Eternal Beloved” Josephine Brunsvik, presents this recording of his five String Trios in celebration of 250 years since the great composer’s birth. These works display everything we love about Beethoven in full color; drama and passion interspersed with piercing sorrow and soulful reconciliation, expressed within the parameters of the classical period. How Beethoven extended the medium of music as a tool to express what cannot be said with words is already palpable, even in the opus 3 and 8 which are both in the form of Serenades; music for entertainment! Beethoven himself declared his opus 9 as his finest compositions at the time of their publication. They are in every sense equal to his String Quartets; awe inspiring music that transports the listener to a world of magic and draws out emotions from the depth of our being.

The Danzas Caribenas CD contains a selection of the numerous elegant danzas, waltzes, pasillos, danzons, mazurkas and polkas from the Caribbean. The danza is generally considered to be the most exquisite and poetic form of 19thcentury Caribbean art, with the first danza being published in Havana in 1803. Traditionally, the danza consists of two or three sections. The first section can be traced back furthest in history, with it's origins in the English country dance of the 16th century. In 18th century France, country dance became contredanse, from which the cotillon and the quadrille developed. The contredanse was very much en vogue in the French colony of Saint Domingue, as Haiti was then called. After a slave rebellion in 1791, numerous French colonists fled to the Cuban province of Oriente, taking their contredanse with them and sowing it's seeds in the fertile Cuban soil. The enrichment of Hispano-Cuban culture with French colonial music at the end of the 18th century was a critical factor - the spark that induced the birth of the Caribbean danza. Henceforth, the French contredance with it's more northern and restrained character became the introduction part of the danza, while the following parts evocate the emotional exuberance of passionate Latin-Iberian chants and of African rhythms. This CD album includes danzas composed by Ignacio Cervantes from Cuba and the Curacaon composers Jan Gerard Palm, Jules Blasini, Joseph Sickman Corsen and Jacobo Palm.

Composers of Chopin's own time, but above all those of the next generation, adapted the works of Chopin. In particular the mazurkas were much-desired material for transcriptions. The influence of Chopin on Polish composers was great, but internationally his influence also made itself felt. Schumann and Liszt were among the most important of Chopin's admirers, and unreservedly acknowledged his influence on their own work. This album means to illustrate the rich piano repertoire which in one way or another gives tribute to the work of the iconic piano composer Frederic Chopin, with the emphasis on works where the composer explicitly states that his Polish predecessor was the source of his inspiration.

Jazzettes

Arnold & Britten: Works for Violin & Orchestra (Live)

Schubert: Muziek voor piano

Senhora del Mundo: Early Music from Spain, Portugal & the Ne