Green Shadows presents a portrait of British composer Richard Pantcheff, performed by the London Choral Sinfonia under Michael Waldron, joined by acclaimed violinist Jack Liebeck, narrator Alexander Armstrong, and a distinguished cast of soloists. Inspired by the musical and literary world of Ralph Vaughan Williams while remaining unmistakably individual in voice, Pantcheff's music combines rich lyricism, pastoral colour and emotional depth with a thoroughly contemporary perspective. The program ranges from the reflective title work Green Shadows Fall and the intimate A Prayer for the King's Majesty to the virtuosic Fantasia on Yorkshire Folk Tunes and the elegant Spring Suite for violin and string orchestra, both featuring Jack Liebeck, alongside the radiant Service of Holy Communion, chamber works for oboe, and the evocative narrated concert piece On Hearing the Oxford Bells at Eventide. Following three acclaimed recordings devoted to Pantcheff's music, Green Shadows offers a fresh perspective on one of Britain's most distinctive contemporary composers, performed by the ensemble hailed by Gramophone Magazine as "fast becoming the go-to champions for contemporary British choral music."

This is how I want these Nocturnes to appear before you - like a memory, a dream, or a vision, writes Pavel Kolesnikov. Nurtured since childhood by a deeply personal bond with Chopin, he imagines each piece as a secret world, inhabited by colors, silences, and internal echoes. This is his first album for harmonia mundi: intimately personal, and hauntingly spellbinding.

Nikki and Timothy Chooi are brothers, both Queen Elisabeth Competition laureates, and two of the most internationally active violinists of their generation. Double is their debut recording together: a program of works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Moszkowski, Leclair, Sarasate, and Dvorak for two violins and piano, one of the lesser-documented formations in the chamber music canon. Joined by pianist Eunice Kim, the album spans three centuries of repertoire written for this combination. Between them, the Chooi brothers have performed at Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw, and Suntory Hall, held the concertmaster chair at the Metropolitan Opera, and hold current positions with the Wiener Concert-Verein, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the University of Ottawa. The Chooi brothers are not conventional soloists in any sense - they learned music in the same room, and their work together reflects a shared musical vocabulary built over decades. Timothy performs the 1714 "Dolphin" Stradivarius, once played by Jascha Heifetz, while Nikki performs a 1713 Stradivarius - these two extraordinary instruments, made within a year of each other, lend the duo a unity of color rarely heard in recordings of this repertoire.

Chout - a savage farce - is one of Prokofiev's most unbridled, riotous orchestral pieces, crafted with mercurial inventiveness, it's abrasive rhythms and brilliant colours pervaded by a sarcastic, dark humour. At the head of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Stanislav Kochanovsky here presents the rarely-recorded original full-length ballet. It's companion piece, the Classical Symphony, offers a piquant counterpoint: beneath it's ostensible Haydnesque elegance it exudes Prokofiev's irony and his quirky penchant for displacement.

Now in a complete edition: the five Piano Concertos that represent twenty years of Beethoven's creative effort, and to crown the set, the Choral Fantasy, an early version of the Ode to Joy. On period instruments Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburger Barockorchester, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, rebalance the forces and timbres to restore all the daring that must surely have stunned the works' first audiences.