SPONSORED: Ensemble. Unjustly Neglected - In this specially extended feature, Armstrong Gibbs' re-discovered 'Passion according to St Luke' impresses Roderic Dunnett.
All sponsored features >>

DISCUSSION: Composers Daniel Schorno and John Dante Prevedini discuss creativity, innovation and re-invention with Maria Nockin, Mary Mogil, Giuseppe Pennisi and Roderic Dunnett.

ECHOES OF OBLIVION: Between August 2022 and May 2023, Robert McCarney's regular series featured little-known twentieth century classical composers.

August 2022 New Releases

Browse a selection of new recordings

Here is our list of new releases, as of 8 August 2022, ordered by release date.

Our regular writers will receive an email about this list, and will be asked to choose which items they would like to review. If you have submitted details of an album and it is chosen for review, we will request a review copy from you, your label or its UK distributor.

The list has been prepared quickly. Apologies for any omissions, or if the information is not up to our usual standards. Please let us know if you find any mistakes.

Unless otherwise specified, each item is a single CD.

Extra information about some new releases can also be found here.

11 NOVEMBER 2022

Matthew Kaner: Chamber Music
Mark Simpson, Guy Johnston, Benjamin Baker & Daniel Lebhardt, Goldfield Ensemble
Delphian Records DCD34231
Release: 11 November 2022
Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner's compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work. Extended solo works for basset clarinet and for cello are presented by stellar soloists Mark Simpson and Guy Johnson respectively. Violin-and-piano duo Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt, fresh from their triumphant Delphian debut '1942': Prokofiev – Copland – Poulenc, are joined by cellist Matthias Balzat in Kaner's evocative and playful Piano Trio, while clarinettist Kate Romano leads the Goldfield Ensemble in a nocturnal diptych for clarinet quintet.

Venables, Howells: Requiem
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas
Delphian Records DCD34252
Release: 11 November 2022
Conductor Benjamin Nicholas draws parallels between the familiar English choral sound of Howells and that of contemporary composer Ian Venables. Venables' Requiem has already been warmly received by critics in a 2020 recording with just organ accompaniment. Now, Nicholas and his Merton College choir present it in an orchestrated version made specially for this recording. The Howells items here are also premiere recordings: new instrumental accompaniments to two of his Four Anthems, in arrangements by Howells scholars Howard Eckdahl and Jonathan Clinch, illuminate and intensify his rich choral writing like back-lighting on a stained-glass window, and they are complemented by the first recording of Howells' original orchestration of The House of the Mind – a chance to hear one of his major underperformed works, introspective yet dramatic.

La Notte: Concertos and Pastorales for Christmas Night
Bojan Čičić (violin) / Illyria Consort
Delphian Records DCD34278
Release: 11 November 2022

4 NOVEMBER 2022

David Garrett - Iconic
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 11 November 2022
Inspired by the legendary violinists whose dazzling showpieces and heart-melting melodies Garrett fell in love with as a child, Iconic includes more than twenty tracks featuring music by Bach, Dvořák, Gluck, Kreisler, Mendelssohn and Schumann, among many others. Garrett is being joined in duet arrangements by his former teacher Itzhak Perlman, star tenor Andrea Bocelli, flautist Cocomi, and trumpeter Till Brönner.

28 OCTOBER 2022

Tudor Music Afterlives
Ensemble Pro Victoria / Toby Ward
Delphian Records DCD34295
Release: 28 October 2022
Following the freshness and vigour of their quincentenary portrait celebration of Robert Fayrfax, Ensemble Pro Victoria's second Delphian album brings a similar boldness of approach to a wider-ranging collection, charting some rarely explored territory from a time of great religious, societal and musical change. Broken fragments of huge pre-Reformation works, preserved only in lute tablature; the first reconstruction and recording of some of the earliest Anglican psalm settings ever written; French chansons and motets once popular in England; improvisatory organ verses within Lady Mass movements by Ludford; and an English-texted version of a much-loved Tallis anthem that shows it in a quite different light: these forgotten 'afterlives' of earlier Tudor music help build a much more complete picture of music in sixteenth-century England.

In the stillness: Christmas music from Merton
The Girl Choristers and Lower Voices of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas
Delphian Records DCD34262
Release: 28 October 2022
In the stillness of a midnight stable, a babe is born … In the stillness of an Oxford chapel on a winter's afternoon, a girl's voice sings. The newest star in Oxford's – and Delphian's – choral firmament, the girl choristers of Merton College have been singing services under the directorship of Benjamin Nicholas for less than five years: in their debut album recording, supported by the lower voices of the Chapel Choir, they tell once more in music from across the centuries the timeless Christmas story of light, hope and joy for a troubled world.

phillip golub: filters
greyfade (vinyl + digital)
Release: 28 October 2022
A beautifully meditative and architectural set of loops for solo piano, filters is the solo debut of pianist & composer phillip golub (born 1993). approaching the concept of endless repetition through the prism of his radiant pianism, golub's loops unite the austerity of the systems-based with the infinite variety & imagination of live performance.

7 OCTOBER 2022

Beau Soir: Debussy, Poulenc, Ravel, Satie
Maciej Kułakowski, cello; Jonathan Ware, piano
Delphian Records DCD34277
Release: 7 October 2022
Acclaimed young cellist Maciej Kułakowski (Lutosławski International Cello Competition 2015, First Prize; Queen Elisabeth Competition 2017, Laureate) is partnered by pianist Jonathan Ware in an all-French recital programme that mingles the familiar with the reimagined. Elements of 'Spanish' style, blues and jazz, and the ironic humour of the Parisian café, encountered in sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc and Ravel (Kułakowski's cello rendering of the latter's second violin sonata), are echoed in a brace of shorter works that includes several further transcriptions: of three short pieces by Debussy and of Satie's Trois Gnossiennes.

Víkingur Ólafsson
From Afar
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 7 October 2022
Deutsche Grammophon proudly presents From Afar, a personal love letter to life and music by one of the most critically acclaimed classical artists of our time, Víkingur Ólafsson. In his most ambitious album to date, Ólafsson delivers a new album full of beautiful arrangements with the repertoire mirrored on both grand piano and upright piano. 'Throughout the album, there are intimate conversations and messages from afar – closely knit canons, transcriptions and dedications, as well as distant echoes of nearly forgotten, ancient melodies," says Ólafsson.

Adrian Williams: Symphony No 1; Chamber Concerto: Portraits of Ned Kelly
English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods
Nimbus Alliance NI6432
Release: 7 October 2022
Symphony No 1 - 'The first movement is perhaps the most straightforward, being basically founded on two themes, the first of which appears on violins and violas at the outset and which is used whole or in part throughout the entire symphony. It appears triumphant near the very end of the finale together with that movement's own unique themes. The shorter scherzo is fairly rumbustious and virtuosic, harmonically dominated by major 2nds and 3rds and combinations of these. At about this time I saw the harrowing images of the wild fires in Australia, so much tragic loss of life, loss of habitat, the koalas rescued, many of which were so badly burned they were unable to survive. These images so affected me that the emotional impact found its way into the third (slow) movement, which I see as an extended lament or memorial. I felt the impulse to include two long, still sections featuring basses; the deathly, lifelessness of the forests after the fires. The Finale needed an injection of energy from its opening bars. I knew I wanted the movement to reach towards a tumultuous conclusion and this would be a slow process of development from a wistful solo violin theme, the forward energy being held back for some 6 minutes, thereafter inching its way to a point of no return.' - Adrian Williams. Portraits of Ned Kelly, Chamber Concerto: 'This remarkable work grew from Adrian Williams' friendship with, Sidney Nolan, the great Australian painter. They were neighbours in the Welsh Borders region for most of the last forty years. Williams was given the invitation to use the piano at Nolan's house, The Rodd, now the home of the Sidney Nolan Trust. The Chamber Concerto is a musical response to Nolan's most famous series of paintings, which depict scenes from the wild life of Australian bush-ranger, Ned Kelly, an outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer who rampaged across Australia in the years prior to his arrest and execution in 1880. While the work is not strictly programmatic, the musical action does correspond in large part with the story of Kelly's adventures, including his early criminal endeavours, his fierce encounters with the police, his capture, trial and execution. Kelly was the only member of his gang to survive their final encounter with law enforcement due to his use of a homemade set of body armour, which Nolan depicts to great effect in his images of Kelly. Williams' music almost always has a virtuosic edge to it, but the demands placed on the musicians in this work are truly extraordinary, yet it is incredibly rewarding to play. In this sense, Williams' designation of the work as a concerto is both telling and apt is it demands that everyone in the ensemble contributes their utmost in rhythmic precision, agility, accuracy in extremes of register and lyrical storytelling. A useful comparison might be made with Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel. Williams' work is darker, stranger and funnier than Strauss's with a pronounced surreal quality, but like its predecessor, it also becomes deeply poignant in its final pages.' - Kenneth Woods

Rebecca Clarke and William Busch piano music - first recording
Simon Callaghan
Lyrita SRCD408
Release: 7 October 2022
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) and William Busch (1901-1945) were unlikely friends with Busch often visiting Clarke's house. Busch first mentions Rebecca Clarke in his diaries on 26 October 1927: 'Went to a Gordon Byron concert – Brosa, Rebecca Clarke and John Slater, violin, viola and flute respectively – and heard new and old works – nothing particular. Then to CMC at the Court House. The Brosa Quartet played the String Quartets by Bax, Honegger and Hindemith.' There are 22 more references to Clarke until 1937. Busch performed Clarke's music in August 1932, when he wrote 'Broadcast from London Regional – I read Rebecca Clarke's piece from the Manuscript.' They certainly talked a lot about music, and Busch played through her piano pieces as she composed them. On 30 August 1932 – William gave the first performance of Clarke's Cortege, then his own 'Gigue'.

Face To Face - Alex Heffes
Platoon PLAT14823
Release: 7 October 2022
Face To Face is an album by Alex Heffes featuring collaborations with Matthew Barley, Tunde Jegede, Kawesa, Yasmin Levy, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Regina Spektor. Each track was improvised from scratch on the day of recording and features Alex on keyboards with one guest. Sessions were recorded in a series of spectacular locations including the giant 'Turbine Hall' of the Tate Gallery in London at night time (Matthew Barley), an empty glass roofed warehouse in the Bronx (Regina Spektor), Abbey Road's legendary Studio 2 (Tunde Jegede) and on a hilltop overlooking Uganda's capital city Kampala (Kawesa). Alex comments: 'For years people asked me many variations of one particular question: 'Where does your inspiration as a composer come from?' This inspired me to make a record - one that was entirely improvised - nothing prepared in advance. I chose six inspiring collaborators to record in six inspiring locations. My task: to commit to whatever happened in that space on that day, and make a piece of music. Face To Face is my answer to this question.' Why now? The 2022 mix celebrates 10 years since the original release. The album has been fully re-mixed and mastered in stereo and Dolby Atmos to immerse the listener even more vividly into the atmosphere of the original sessions. The bonus track 'Helios Rising' has been newly included on the 2022 mix from the Abbey Road / Tunde Jegede sessions. Face To Face was recorded and mixed by Grammy winning engineer and producer Peter Henderson and was captured on photo and film by photographer Rama Knight.

Maya Magub - Canons
Telemann: Six Canonic Sonatas; Mozart: Canons and Puzzle Canons
Maya Magub, Ben Jacobson, Marianne Thorsen, Jonathan Morton, Jonathan Moerschel, Richard Harwood
CRD Records CRD3542
Release: 7 October 2022
Maya Magub writes about Canons: 'The Covid-19 pandemic impacted the arts in many diverse ways, not all detrimental. History has always seen the arts flourish in times of hardship, and this was no different, spawning some incredible innovations out of necessity. Soon after news of the virus' spread came to light, the movie studios here in Los Angeles found a solution to the restraints of lockdowns and social distancing by helping players like me to set up temporary home studios. Miraculously, we were able to record full movie scores remotely, and I found myself learning basic engineering skills. Many late nights wrestling with unfamiliar technology were soon rewarded by the opportunity to listen back immediately to my – and only my – playing; an amazing journey of self-discovery as a player. With this new skill-set that had become part of everyday life for many musicians, I was excited to realise that it was possible to play 'together' with other musicians, despite not sharing a physical space, by recording separately. It suddenly occurred to me that the perfect fit for this 'remote chamber music' was the musical canon. As people all over the world were struggling, and failing, to play together in real time over the Internet, they found themselves plagued by echoes and delays. What could be more perfect than a musical form that itself seems to have evolved out of a long echo?! The musical canon needs an even greater time separation between identical lines, demanding that one voice must literally lead, and the next react to what has already been played. I realised that canons could be a great way to collaborate. And if I was not in the same room as another player, why not collaborate across continents as well as across my own city? This was an opportunity to play with some of my favourite players in the world! In our new age of Zoom, this process became more like sending a 'musical letter' by mail, each of us recording as a leader and then waiting to follow and be inspired by another player in the next canon. The project evolved into a truly creative collaboration, with emails and internet calls across time zones about musical ideas as well as the technical process of recording. I remember discussing tempo preferences from my car, and emails about 'alternating trills' at a particular cadence point... I even received a photo of a moose slipping on an icy road in Norway on the wintery day that Marianne returned her microphones to the hire company! Our patience for the much slower pace of recording was rewarded by the delight of 'opening' a new performance from another musician, and the luxury of time to fully absorb it and respond. With the constraints of recording in separate spaces and very different acoustics came the opportunity to position microphones very closely. Without using too much of each performer's live acoustic and through close microphone positioning, we were able to capture a very 'real' and immediate sound which communicates vividly and could later be put into the same virtual acoustic or musical 'space'. And with that came extra silver linings: such as the ability to virtually 'walk off stage' (through fading out and speaker panning) during the unending 'puzzle' canons! The final bonus was being able to mix in Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio. We were suddenly able to make a huge feature out of our necessity to record separately, and it brought the project together in a remarkable way. With different voices seeming to appear from many different directions, there was now a whole extra dimension to the project that we had not envisioned at the start, and one that makes so much sense of the music; it's hard to imagine a more fitting marriage of musical form and technical innovation. It was the most extraordinary and delightful experience to listen to Neil Stemp's spatial mix for the first time and to be able to untangle each individual line so beautifully within the broader, more vertical structure. We had a lot of fun experimenting with virtual positioning of the many different voices in the multi-part canons and seeing how this affected the listener's perception of the music.'

30 SEPTEMBER 2022

A Percussionist's Songbook
Joby Burgess
Signum Classics SIGCD722
Release: 30 September 2022
This disc is a collection of specially commissioned 'songs without words' from John Metcalfe, Tunde Jegede, Dario Marianelli, Yazz Ahmed, Graham Fitkin, Dobrinka Tabakova and Gabriel Prokofiev for 'percussionist extraordinaire Joby Burgess' on his fifth album for Signum. Scored for a huge range of percussion and electronics, the Songbook is inspired by texts from the poetry of Robert Graves and Birago Diop to novels by Michael Ondaatje and Isaac Asimov, American philosopher Michael Sandel, songwriter Peter Gabriel, United Nation population growth statistics and Saudi Arabian folk tales.

Charlotte Sohy, compositrice de la Belle Epoque
La Boîte à Pépites BAP01.03 (3 CDs)
Release: 30 September 2022
'La Boîte à Pépites' (The Jewel Box) is a new label, dedicated to raising the profile of women composers – many of whom have never been recorded or whose works have been lost over time. The label's first album features first recordings of the Piano, Chamber & Orchestral works of Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955) in a 3 CD set, released on 30th September.

Franz Schubert: Music for Piano Duo: Fantasia, Variations; Trout Quintet
Spina - Benignetti Piano Duo - Michele Benignetti and Eleonora Spina
Ulysses Arts UA22030
Release: 30 September 2022
Laureates of numerous international music competition, the Duo performs regularly throughout worldwide. Highlights include recitals for live shows 'Génération Jeunes Interprètes' and 'Génération France Musique - le Live' at the Auditorium of the Maison de la Radio in Paris, broadcasts for France Musique national radio, recitals for the 'Jeunes Talents' concert series in Paris and at the Osaka Izumi Hall in Japan, a South African tour including the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, and their Mexico debut at the CENART Blas Galindo Auditorium in Mexico City and at Teatro de la Ciudad in Celaya. Their last tour in South Africa saw them playing to full venues in Johannesburg, Grahamstown, Hermanus, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, and several other cities. To quote the Potchefstroom Herald, 'their two pianos recital will be long-remembered'. In 2019, Eleonora and Michele performed in Australia, with recitals in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Bateman's Bay. In New Zealand, they performed at the Turner Center Kerikeri, Globe Theater Palmerston North, Wanganui Royal Opera House, and in Wellington, in China at the Guangzhou Opera House, Tianjin Grand Theatre, Shandong Grand Theatre, Nankai University, La Plantation Beijing, and Dalian Grand Theatere. Eleonora and Michele are both professors at the Cité de la Musique et de la Danse in Soissons, France. The are regular invitees to give masterclasses in Italy, China, at the Colombes Summer International Academy in Paris, at the Summer Music Academy of Flaine (France), at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music in Melbourne and at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The Spina - Benignetti Piano Duo are Official Yamaha Artists and have been sponsored by them since 2017.

Coleridge-Taylor
Chineke! Orchestra
Chineke! Records
Release: 30 September 2022
Coleridge-Taylor is Chineke! Orchestra's first release on Chineke! Records, a new partnership with Decca Records. This 2-CD collection of works by the celebrated British composer includes his Violin Concerto (with soloist Elena Urioste), Ballade in A Minor, and African Suite. 'Chineke! exists to try and redress the balance of who plays and does not play in classical music,' says Chi-chi Nwanoku.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Complete Piano Trios and Triple Concerto
Trio Wanderer - Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, violin; Raphaël Pidoux, cello; Vincent Coq, piano; Gürzenich Orchester Köln / James Conlon
harmonia mundi HMX2932100.04 (5 CDs)
Release: 30 September 2022

23 SEPTEMBER 2022

Chad Lawson
breath
Decca Records US
Release: 23 September 2022
Prolific pianist and composer Chad Lawson invites you to breathe in, calm the mind, and release what you do not need. On his luminous new album breathe, Lawson expands on the intentionality he brought to his 2020 effort You Finally Knew by delivering an exquisitely crafted and genre-transcending body of work. Partly informed by his work as creator and host of the 'Calm It Down' podcast, breathe ultimately establishes Lawson as an essential voice exploring the intersection of music and wellness.

Lisa Batiashvili
Secret Love Letters
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 23 September 2022
'What would human life be like', asks Lisa Batiashvili, 'without this range of emotions and feelings which we feel cannot be shared with anyone?' Her new album celebrates the fine art of concealment, of holding private passions just beneath the surface until they erupt. In this, her first recording with a US orchestra, she is joined by The Philadelphia Orchestra and its inspirational Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin – with whom she has performed live many times – as well as by young Georgian pianist Giorgi Gigashvili. Together they embark on a journey that spans Szymanowski, Chausson, Franck and Debussy.

greg davis: new primes
greyfade (vinyl LP + digital)
Release: 23 September 2022
new primes is an exploration of the compositional properties of prime numbers from vermont-based electronic musician greg davis. the album makes use of custom-written software to translate prime number sequences into a mesmerizing universe of sound. paring his sound materials down to their most basic — a network of pure sine tones — davis creates a collection of pieces ranging from the almost-tonal to the harmonically alien.

Lucie Horsch
Origins
Decca Classics
Release: 23 September 2022
From Charlie Parker to Piazzolla — the recorder as you've never heard it before! Origins is a collection of music rooted in folk cultures from all around the world, personally sourced and curated by Lucie Horsch, presented here in newly commissioned arrangements and transcriptions for the recorder. The tracks feature a variety of supporting musicians, including the trailblazing genre-bending collective Fuse Ensemble, a quintet from the GRAMMY Award-winning Dutch orchestra LUDWIG; acclaimed Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe; bandoneonist Carel Kraayenhof; and Kora player Bao Sissoko.

17th Century Sonatas from the Düben Collection
Spiritato
Delphian Records DCD34276
Release: 23 September 2022
Rich period string playing compliments dazzling performances from the boys on natural trumpets in this collection of sonatas compiled by three generations of Capellmeisters at Sweden's wealthy and fashionable Royal Court. As the professor of musicology at Uppsala University (where the Duben Collection is now housed) writes in his album booklet note, this collection of manuscripts shows unrivalled scope and ambition. From much-loved Buxtehude to less familiar names such as Clemens Thieme and Andreas Kirchhoff (both with premiere recordings), this is a real chocolate box collection full of delights and surprises.

The Mysterious Motet Book of 1539
Siglo de Oro / Patrick Allies
Delphian Records DCD34284
Release: 23 September 2022
In the late 1530s, Milanese composer Hermann Matthias Werrecore assembled a collection of sacred music and sent it across the Alps to the publisher Peter Schoeffer in Strasbourg. In making the journey from staunchly Catholic Milan to newly Protestant Strasbourg, the repertoire in question became cross-confessional. What was the purpose of publishing a motet book in a German imperial city where Latin choral singing no longer took place? Siglo de Oro have collaborated with Dr Daniel Trocmé-Latter (University of Cambridge) to showcase works from this puzzling volume, setting motets by Nicolas Gombert, Jacquet of Mantua, Jacques Arcadelt and Adrian Willaert alongside less familiar names such as Simon Ferrariensis and the enigmatic Johannes Sarton. The resulting recording exhibits the combination of meticulous musicological research and finely crafted, sonorous singing that their previous Delphian albums have led us to expect.

Esther Birringer: Debussy
Images I & II; Ballade; Masques; Arabesque No 1; Clair de lune; Nocturne; L'isle Joyeuse
Esther Birringer, piano
Rubicon RCD1097
Release: 23 September 2022

Sibelius Symphonies 5, 6 & 7
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Owain Arwel Hughes
Rubicon RCD1073
Release: 23 September 2022

Christopher Tin: The Lost Birds
Decca Classics
Release: 23 September 2022
The Lost Birds is a soaring elegy for the loss of bird species due to human activity. Composed and conducted by Christopher Tin and featuring Voces8 and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tin's new requiem is a celebration of birds—as symbols of beauty, hope, peace, and renewal—but it also mourns their absence.

Elliott Jacqués
Finding Beauty
Decca Classics
Release: 23 September 2022
Decca Records is pleased to announce the signing of composer pianist, Elliott Jacqués. Elliott comes from a highly successful jazz background and these influences can be heard in his forthcoming album Finding Beauty. 'I wanted to create a beautiful world of melodies that we can all come to for reflecting. It's a place that we can all find within, a place of pure happiness, a place we can call home," says Elliott Jacqués. (digital only)

The Playhouse Sessions - Bjarte Eike & Barokksolistene
Rubicon RCD1096
Release: 23 September 2022
Since the release of the chart topping Alehouse Sessions in 2017, and a world wide tour, Bjarte Eike and the Barokksolistene have created a new album which moves the alehouse project on from dour Puritanism of Cromwell's Commonwealth, to the hedonistic Restoration of Charles II, and the Glorious Revolution that saw William III and Mary II replace the unpopular James II. Think of these back rooms as a very English mix of Shakespeare, commedia dell arte, juggling with music by Purcell, folk tunes, and sea shanties. After the misery of the Commonwealth and Cromwell's dictatorship, the public were in the mood to party!

Domingo Hindoyan - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Debussy, Dukas, Roussel
Onyx ONYX4224
Release: 23 September 2022
Domingo Hindoyan's first recording as Chief Conductor of the RLPO: Debussy: Jeux & Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune; Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane Suite No 2 (Act II); Dukas: La Péri

Matthew Locke: Psyche
Ensemble Correspondances / Sébastien Daucé
harmonia mundi HMM905325.26 (2 CDs)
Release: 23 September 2022

Isabelle Faust plays Bach (Part I)
harmonia mundi HMX2904032.40 (8 CDs + 1 DVD) (reissue)
Release: 23 September 2022

22 SEPTEMBER 2000

Walton: The Complete Façades
JoAnn Falletta
Naxos 8.584378
The recording features narrators soprano Hila Plitmann, bass-baritone Kevin Deas and American Public Media Public Radio host Fred Child, with the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players. This first-ever recording of the complete Façades introduces material never heard before and marks the 100th anniversary of William Walton's youthful masterpiece. The Façades are a unique collaboration between the young Walton who was 18 and had just left Oxford in 1920, and the avant garde English poet, Edith Sitwell, who was the sister of Walton's good friend at Oxford. The 20 poems, plus an opening Fanfare, set to music by Walton were considered innovative and revolutionary new works and proved to be Walton's first great success. Falletta, who comments that 'nothing like it had ever been created before,' calls Edith's use of language 'extraordinarily rich and varied, ranging from the comic to the mundane to the haunting, poignant and sheerly beautiful,' and the music as 'stunningly colorful vignettes that reflected the meaning and the rhythm of the poetry.' She adds 'Walton and Sitwell treated the words as rhythmic sounds, enjoying their meaning but also reveling in the techniques of assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme.' The original Facades were premiered in the Sitwell drawing room in 1922. Fifty-seven years later, Walton, in celebration of his 75th birthday, revisited Façade and added 8 new movements to the collection. The expanded Façade 2 was premiered in 1979 at the Royal Albert Hall, at a time when Walton had become one of the most lauded composers of the 20th century. The new recording, which marks the 100th anniversary of the 1922 premiere, concludes with four world premieres including the first recording of Small Talk (1922), and three numbers, Daphne, The White Owl and The Last Galop, that were composed in 1977 but never previously performed. Sitwell envisioned the poems as being read by a single narrator and recited them herself in the original performances, using a megaphone from behind a curtain. After reading the poems Falletta noted that they used a variety of characters, and felt it would enhance the performance by having them read in different voices. Falletta describes the three narrators, two-time GRAMMY Award-winning soprano, songwriter, and actress Hila Plitmann, acclaimed bass-baritone Kevin Deas, and Fred Child, host of APM's Performance Today, the most popular classical music radio show in America, as a 'dream team,' with each using Sitwell's exact words with their own interpretations.

16 SEPTEMBER 2022

Lang Lang
The Disney Book
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 16 September 2022
The most unforgettable songs from Disney's iconic films, reimagined by the greatest living pianist, Lang Lang's The Disney Book tells the story of a century of magical, joyous entertainment for all. Join Lang Lang on an uplifting, virtuosic journey to experience beloved songs from Disney films with collaborators from across the globe, including Andrea Bocelli, Sebastián Yatra, and Jon Batiste, performing hits from Snow White, Encanto, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio, and many more. Releasing at the start of the worldwide Disney centenary celebrations.

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula
Early Opera Company / Christian Curnyn
Chaconne (Chandos Early Music) CHSA 0406(2) (2 SACDa)
Release: 16 September 2022
The countertenor Tim Mead leads an all-star cast in the Early Opera Company's recording of Handel's Amadigi di Gaula, conducted by Christian Curnyn. The opera was first performed, in London, in 1715, in the first season under the reign of George I, at the King's Theatre on the Haymarket. The complex, twisting plot features the lovers Amadigi and Oriana, imprisoned by the sorceress Melissa (who seeks Amadigi's love). His ally Dardano turns against Amadigi, his former friend, when he realises that they both love Oriana and he sides with Melissa. Her plans are repeatedly foiled, and true love triumphs at the final curtain! Amadigi is considered the finest of Handel's early London operas in terms of musical sophistication, theatrical pacing, and a perfectly balanced exploration of the interconnected relationships, motivations, and emotional divergences among just four dissimilar yet equally arresting characters.

The Psalms
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge / Andrew Nethsingha
Signum Classics SIGCD721
Release: 16 September 2022
Continuing their critically-acclaimed recording series on Signum, the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, and Director of Music Andrew Nethsingha are releasing a new album of Psalms. As one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world, The Choir of St John's are known by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and recordings. Since the 1670s the Choir have produced a distinctively rich and warm sound, together with expressive interpretations of a broad repertoire.

Michael Hersch: The script of storms
New Focus Recordings (digital only)
Release: 16 September 2022
The album features two works by Hersch: cortex and ankle based on texts by Christopher Middleton, and the script of storms based on texts by Fawzi Karim. Hersch's work has been described as 'so sincere in his darkness, and so sophisticated in his expressivity, that he can make the morbid magical' (New York Magazine). Composer Georg Friedrich Haas has written that Hersch 'is the explorer of an unconditional, radical expressivity that reveals the human abyss without any palliation.' In the eleven-movement cortex and ankle, Hersch engages texts of British poet Christopher Middleton (1926-2015), a poet Hersch worked extensively with from their initial meeting in Germany in 2001. Hersch avoids 'word painting' with Middleton's poetry, and instead uses the text to create anchor points for his creative process rather than infer any literal interpretations. In the case of cortex and ankle, the texts evoke a foreboding 'overall trajectory of descent' into oblivion. Performed by Netherlands-based Ensemble Klang, cortex and ankle features acclaimed soprano Ah Young Hong who has been a powerful muse in much of Hersch's recent vocal writing including his 2012 chamber opera On the Threshold of Winter, the 2015 song cycle a breath upwards, and in the 2016 debut performance of cortex and ankle. Ensemble Klang's tradition of performing without a conductor, along with their unique instrumentation of saxophones, trombone, keyboards, percussion, and guitar in cortex and ankle makes for a creative environment of heightened innovation and collaboration. The second work on the album, the script of storms, sets texts of Iraqi poet and painter Fawzi Karim (1945-2019), another artist that Hersch has worked closely with. Hersch has described Karim's world as 'a remarkable and disquieting place; a landscape of empathy, beauty and often unspeakable horror' (PN Review). Deeply influenced by a childhood steeped in conflict and political coups, Karim's work often evokes a sense of graphic brutality but with an intense feeling of love for humanity. The visceral nature of Karim's creativity is not only present in the text for the script of storms, but in several paintings printed alongside the album's liner notes. Hersch's the script of storms is performed by Ah Young Hong and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by conductor Tito Muñoz. 'Empathy can only occur when artists like Middleton, Karim, and Hersch help us to see into the pain through their work, and those collective challenges they stare in the face—challenges that face all of us in one form or another, at one time or another,' said soprano Ah Young Hong. 'The recording truly captures the intensity, fearlessness, and importance of these powerful artists.'

9 SEPTEMBER 2022

Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Song
Decca Classics
Release: 9 September 2022
Song, the new album from cellist Sheku-Kanneh Mason, features music from across the entire spectrum of classical, folk, jazz and pop – all personally curated by Sheku. The eclectic mix of styles are tied together by one thing – the unique singing voice of Sheku's cello.

Antonio Vivaldi: Il Mondo al rovescio - Concerti con molti istromenti
Gli incogniti, Amandine Beyer
harmonia mundi HMM902688
Release: 9 September 2022
Vivaldi's concerti con molti istromenti are true precursors of the symphony in their amplitude and audacity. In these pieces, the 'Red-haired Priest', a creator of boundless imagination, amused himself by devising literally unheard-of combinations of timbres. In the famous concerto Il Mondo al rovescio (The world upside down), he invited flutes, oboes and harpsichord to double violin and cello in a colourful whirlwind of parallel octaves. This recording by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti provides an opportunity to discover these incredibly modern compositions.

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 4 & 8; Méhul: Symphony No 1; Cherubini: Lodoïska Overture
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
harmonia mundi HMM902448.49 (2 CDs)
Release: 9 September 2022

Hollywood Soundstage
Sinfonia of London / John Wilson
Chandos Records CHSA 5294 (Hybrid SACD)
Release: 9 September 2022
Sinfonia of London and John Wilson present an album that celebrates the golden age of Hollywood. Sinfonia of London rose to fame in the 1950s as the leading recording orchestra of the day, appearing in the musical credits of more than 300 films, including the 1958 soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann for Hitchcock's Vertigo. It was reformed by John Wilson in 2018, initially as a recording orchestra, and is made up of some of Europe's finest orchestral musicians. Their recording of Korngold's Symphony in F sharp won the orchestral award of the magazine BBC Music and drew critical acclaim worldwide. The Overture from The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, which opens this latest programme, is an excellent demonstration of Korngold's rich, chromatic soundworld, one that set the blueprint for the Hollywood sound for countless composers who followed. Although the songs were written by Harold Arlen, it was Herbert Stothart's score for The Wizard of Oz that won the Oscar, and it is his suite from the movie that features here. There are also Suites from Max Steiner's Now, Voyager and Franz Waxman's Rebecca (here receiving its première recording). Shorter pieces by David Raksin, Frederick Loewe, Johnny Mandel, and Alfred Newman complete this rewarding programme.

Debussy Piano Duets
Louis Lortie, Hélène Mercier
Chandos Records CHAN 20228
Release: 9 September 2022
Regular duet and two-piano partners, Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie have returned to the studio for this all-Debussy programme. The album features duets written by the composer himself – such as the Petite Suite, the Six Épigraphes antiques, and the Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire, as well as a number of arrangements of his solo piano pieces (the Première Arabesque, La Fille aux cheveux de lin, and the Ballade slave). The album ends with André Caplet's monumental arrangement of Debussy's best-known orchestral work, La Mer. Stripping the work of its orchestral colours, this two-piano version allows the listener to appreciate more easily Debussy's ground-breaking harmonic innovation. The album was recorded in the concert hall at Snape Maltings, in Suffolk, using a pair of Bösendorfer 280 VC grand pianos.

Andrew McIntosh: Little Jimmy
Yarn/Wire percussion and piano quartet - Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos
Kairos 0022000KAI
Release: 9 September 2022
Andrew McIntosh (born 1985) is a composer, violinist, violist, and baroque violinist who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts, with musical interests covering a broad spectrum including historical performance practice, improvisation, microtonal tuning systems, long-form works, and the 20th-century avant-garde. He holds degrees in violin performance, composition, and early music performance from the University of Nevada, Reno, CalArts, and the University of Southern California, and principal teachers included Phillip Ruder, Martin Chalifour, Mark Menzies, Lorenz Gamma, Sue Feldman, Marc Sabat, and Wolfgang von Schweinitz. He also co-directs Populist Records, a label dedicated to new music from Southern California. As a composer he often works with forms and ideas found in nature or in other artistic disciplines, working in instrumental, vocal, and fixed media forms, and was described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as 'a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West". His compositions have been featured at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Gaudeamus Festival, Hamburger Klangwerktage, Moments Musicaux Aarau, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemasse Muzik, Miller Theatre, National Sawdust, Issue Project Room, Monday Evening Concerts, and Tectonics Festival Glasgow. The individual musical personalities of performers he writes for are a central consideration in his work, and he has worked particularly closely with the musicians of Wild Up, the Formalist Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and soprano Estelí Gomez. Recent commissions include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry opera company, Yarn/Wire, the Calder Quartet, and violinists Ilya Gringolts, Movses Pogossian, and Marco Fusi.

Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries
Rachel Barton Pine, Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward
Cedille Records
Release: 9 September 2022
This recording features Florence Price's Violin Concerto No 2

Ravel: Complete for works for violin & piano
Elsa Grether, violin; David Lively, piano
Aparte AP295
Release: 9 September 2022

Alistair White: Rune
Métier (Divine Art) MSV 28626
Release: 9 September 2022
This unique and intriguing work is one of four 'fashion/operas' by Scottish composer Alastair White (born 1988) following the highly acclaimed releases of ROBE and WOAD. As with the whole cycle of works, White's opera is advanced not only in its musical sound-world but also in his self-penned librettos which transform the story into surrealist and impressionist poetry.

Dorone Paris: Coal
Noam Dorembus, saxophones
Métier (Divine Art) MSV 92109
Release: 9 September 2022
Dorone Paris is a composer and saxophone player specialising in New Music and Avant Garde performance. Being raised in Israel influenced her political ideas and affected her musical creativity, aesthetics and philosophy. In the words of the composer, Coal explores the vast colours and possibilities of saxophones by examining and channelling the compounded challenges of the last several years: from a climate crisis to a global pandemic to the possibility of an international nuclear war.

Robert Saxton: Portrait
Métier (Divine Art) MSV 28624
Release: 9 September 2022
These works by Robert Saxton were written between 2013 and 2019 and represent his continuing journey of exploration in modal and harmonic structures; complex in structure but creating no jarring modernist difficulty for the listener. A mix of orchestral, chamber and vocal works, it features top performers including world-renowned baritone Roderick Williams and equally famous (and now film star) Clare Hammond.

Rodney Lister: Faith-Based Initiative
Métier (Divine Art) MSV 28618
Release: 9 September 2022
Though the works on this album are varied in genre, from vocal to string quartet, they share a common theme, explicit in the song cycle Friendly Fire and implicit in the other works; that theme embodies grief, personal or for the plight of people blighted by war; hope in the backing of action by faith. This album offers a view of a composer whose output is both lyrical and abstract, with a poetic command of foreground and background, consonance and dissonance.

Kevin Raftery: Second Child
Métier (Divine Art) MSV 28600
Release: 9 September 2022
This 'Second Child' album follows Kevin Raftery's first portrait recording for Métier, which included his First String Quartet and other chamber works. Here his Second Quartet is partnered with choral works (both sacred and secular), and works for solo piano, violin duo and ensemble. Raftery's music may be mildly dissonant at times and harmonically adventurous, but is always brilliantly constructed: new music which is a joy to hear.

2 SEPTEMBER 2022

In London Town
Benjamin Sheen, organ
Walton, Ireland, Elgar, Bingham, Whitlock, Preston, Tallis, Howells, Andrew Carter
CRD Records CRD3541
Release: 2 September 2022
Benjamin Sheen, Sub-Organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford and Organ Tutor at Oxford University ,has established himself as a leading concert and liturgical organists on both sides of the Atlantic. Described as a 'brilliant organist' by The New York Times, he is the 2013 winner of the Pierre S. du Pont First Prize in the inaugural Longwood Gardens Organ Competition, and that same year received Second Prize and the Jon Laukvik prize at the St. Albans International Organ Competition. He holds degrees from Oxford and New York's Juilliard School, is a prizewinning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and the 2011 recipient of the Worshipful Company of Musicians' Silver Medal. As a concert organist, Benjamin Sheen has performed throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, Singapore, and South Africa. In 2019, he made his concerto debut with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra alongside solo recitals in Christchurch and Wellington as well as throughout Australia. He has performed with notable orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia in the UK, and made guest appearances playing and directing with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York City. He has made several appearances on BBC radio and television and New York's classical radio station WQXR in a complete performance of J.S. Bach's Clavier-Übung III.

Rachmaninoff & Brahms
Yuja Wang, Andreas Ottensamer, Gautier Capuçon
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 2 September 2022
Pianist Yuja Wang, clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer, and cellist Gautier Capuçon have earned a reputation as a 'super-trio,' having given performances worldwide that reveal the instinctive, almost telepathic bond of musical communication that exists between the three players. Works by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Johannes Brahms includes visionary interpretations of Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata Op. 19, Brahms' Cello Sonata No.1 Op. 38, and Brahms' Trio for piano, clarinet, and cello Op. 14.

Talich Quartet
Antonín Dvořák: String Quartet in F major op.96, B179 'American' - 8 Waltzes op.54, B101
La Dolce Volta LDV101
Release: 2 September 2022
The internationally renowned Czech string quartet, the Talich Quartet, release their first album with their new configuration of players and following the death of their founder Jan Talich in 2020. The album features Dvořák's 'American' Quartet and eight Waltzes which were originally written for piano yet Dvořák only transcribed two for string quartet. Jiří Kabát, a violist and friend of the Quartet, has transcribed the remaining six and they are recorded here for the first time. The Quartet's founder, Jan Talich, died in early 2020 after dedicating nearly 60 years to the Quartet. His son, violinist Jan Talich Jr., joined the Quartet in 1997, alongside violinist Roman Patočka and violist Radim Sedmidubský and together they recently welcomed cellist Michal Kaňka, formerly of the Pražák Quartet. This album will be the first recording with this new line-up.

Moonstrike
Apollo Chamber Players
Azica Records ACD-71352
Release: 2 September 2022
MoonStrike is a universal celebration of storytelling, space, and folk song, realized through new works by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. Tate's title work, MoonStrike, is narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington, the first American Indian citizen to fly in space. All three works were commissioned by Apollo Chamber Players as part of its 20x2020 project, launched in 2014 with a mission to commission 20 new multicultural works before the end of the last decade. The New York premiere of MoonStrike will take place on Thursday, March 9, 2023 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon's In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020) is inspired by her upbringing in the Great Smoky Mountains and incorporates the sounds and colors of the region. Higdon shares, 'The resonance of that area led me to choose, for my first opera, Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain. The struggles of survival in Appalachia, the majesty of its natural features, and the sonorities of the mountain's music, color the quilt of that opera and of this string quartet.' Next is the title work, MoonStrike (2019), by Chickasaw composer and U.S. Cultural Ambassador, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate. The work honors the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing through American Indian moon legends as narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington. Tate explains, 'American Indian legends are very colorful and have a tendency to take twists and turns within the narrative. Regarding the Moon, it is very consistent that the traditional tales involve trickster characters and competitions for ownership of this precious object.' MoonStrike features three diverse American Indian legends, and is bookended with an arrangement of a Calusa Corn Dance. Rome Prize-winning composer Pierre Jalbert's L'esprit du Nord "Spirit of the North" (2019) is a three-movement work that fuses three French-Canadian folk songs with his unique, contemporary musical language. The first movement, 'Chanson de Lisette,' is a playful theme and variations, while the second movement, 'Cantique (Canticle),' contains two religious folk tunes: a Passion and a tune entitled 'Les Pélerins.' The third and final movement, 'Fiddle Dance,' was inspired by the French-Canadian fiddling tradition.

Mozart: Violin Concertos Vol 2
Francesca Dego, violin; Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Roger Norrington
Chandos Records CHAN 20263
Release: 2 September 2022
Following their critically acclaimed first volume of Mozart's violin concertos (CHAN
20234), Francesca Dego and Roger Norrington complete the set, once again with outstanding support from a reduced Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This cycle not only represents the first time Sir Roger has
recorded these concertos, but the present album is also his final recording project. All five concertos were written before Mozart was twenty; nevertheless, his rapid development as a composer is evident in the
progression from the first to the fifth, which has an unusual Adagio section within the first movement, an extensive slow movement, and of course the extensive 'Turkish' episode in the final movement (probably based on Hungarian folk music). Whilst given on modern instruments with metal strings, these
are performances immersed in Norrington's lifetime of experience in period performance practise.

The Crown: Heroic Arias for Senesino
Randall Scotting, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Laurence Cummings
Signum Classics SIGCD719
Release: 2 September 2022
This is countertenor Randall Scotting's debut album on Signum, accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Laurence Cummings. Randall is recognised for winning over audiences with his vocal beauty and dramatic interpretation. Having become sought after by some of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, recent performances include the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. A distinctive period-instrument ensemble, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment believes in questioning, challenging and trailblazing. They have worked with the likes of Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Mark Elder and Vladimir Jurowski.

Emma Johnson - Songs of Celebration
Works by Emma Johnson, Jonathan Dove, J S Bach, with John Lenehan, piano; Gloucester Cathedral Choir/Adrian Partington
Nimbus Alliance NI6431
Release: 2 September 2022

100 Years of Japanese Song - Japanese Journey Vol 3
Charlotte de Rothschild, soprano; Adrian Farmer, piano
Nimbus Records NI6343
Release: 2 September 2022
Japanese Journey Three takes us from North Island to South Island, and from ancient to modern poetry, as Charlotte de Rothschild skilfully takes us through the cultural landscape of Japan. Charlotte is still the only western performer to sing in perfect Japanese. This release is made available to support a three-week, 19-concert tour of Japan when Charlotte and Adrian will perform to more than 14,000 people. 'I never imagined, when I learnt my very first Japanese song Karatachi no hana - Quince Flower – by Yamada Kohsaku in 1991, that thirty years later I would be bringing out my fourth album of these beautiful songs. This release, like the others, is a mixture of 'kakyoku', the Japanese equivalent of Lieder or Chanson, and of 'douyou', popular songs that are sung in schools and then throughout life. It has truly been a wonderful journey of discovery and the songs on this CD show that the art of composition of these western-style songs continues on into the present day.' Charlotte de Rothschild

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 9 and 18
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano; Freiburger Barockorchester
harmonia mundi HMM902332
Release: 2 September 2022

1 SEPTEMBER 2022

Saint-Saëns: Cello Sonatas
Andrea Favalessa, cello; Maria Semeraro, piano
Brilliant Classics 95421
Release: 1 September 2022
Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Camille Saint-Saëns enriched the cello repertoire with two important compositions his Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (Op.33) and his Cello Sonata No.1 in C minor (Op.32), which he dedicated to cellist Jules Lasserre. The writer Emile Baumann hailed this first Cello Sonata as 'a unique work', a masterpiece. It was composed in the autumn of 1872, and its first public performance – with J. Reuschel on cello and the composer at the piano – was given on 26 March 1873 at the Salle Érard in Paris. The work is divided into three movements: the first and third have a tragic character, while the second offers an oasis of quiet serenity. The work opens with a dramatic Allegro in sonata form. The second movement stems from an organ improvisation performed by Saint-Saëns at Saint-Augustin. The final movement takes up the tumultuous and agitated character of the first and ends in an unrelenting race. Some 30 years separate the Cello Sonata No.2 in F (Op.123) from its predecessor. The fruit of laborious work, it was completed in early 1905. Saint-Saëns, adopting a typically self-deprecating tone – or perhaps merely to manage expectations – wrote to his publisher Jacques Durand on 16 March 1905, 'Naturally the Second Sonata will not measure up to the First: when La Fontaine published his second collection of fables, everyone declared it inferior to the previous one.' The Sonata is structured in four movements, the first in sonata form with contrasting heroic and lyrical characters throughout. The second movement is a Scherzo with eight variations, each with its own identity while maintaining a link to the theme, one of them in the form of a fugue. The third movement is, in Saint-Saëns' words, 'a romance that will delight cellists', and he wrote of its concluding section, 'the Adagio will bring tears to sensitive souls'. The sonata ends with a playful, light Rondo in which both piano and cello engage in technical virtuosity and imitative games.

Hindemith: Complete Music for Piano Duo
Brilliant Classics 95756
Release: 1 September 2022
This record contains the complete works for piano duo (piano 4-hands and 2 pianos) by Paul Hindemith (1895–1963). While Hindemith was foremost a violist, not a pianist, he knew his way around the piano, and this familiarity is reflected in his compositions for the instrument, all of a decent technical level and featuring great originality of expression. Even if he doesn't immediately spring to pianists' minds, he deserves to be included – alongside Debussy, Schönberg, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók and Prokofiev – in the small group of innovators who significantly enhanced the piano repertoire in the early 20th century, Hindemith in particular with his Suite 1922, three solo piano sonatas and Ludus Tonalis. Hindemith's compositions for piano duo, while few in number, are significant and spread across the span of his career, providing snapshots of his various compositional phases. While the Walzer
of 1916 are an output of Hindemith's early training in composition, by 1921 his Ragtime (wohltemperiert) already reflects an early- mature period during which he sought to define a personal style of his own that could be openly abrasive and irreverent. The final three works, on the other hand, present a fully mature composer with a gift for balanced construction: his piano reduction of the Mathis der Maler Symphony (1934), itself a condensed predecessor of the opera of the same name, and the two Duo Sonatas, for piano 4-hands (1938) and for 2 pianos (1942). The collection of 8 Walzer were composed at the height of World War I, and there is a clear feeling of mournfulness in them, the seventh in particular written in a spiky, polytonal and polyrhythmic language that is both innovative
and tragic. Ragtime (wohltemperiert) epitomises the biting parodies and derisivecaricatures that were all the rage in the art world in the early years of the Weimar Republic. The final three compositions leave that sarcasm behind. In his Symphonie 'Mathis der Maler' he transfers the full multi-layered density of his majestic symphony's orchestral writing to the keyboard with painstaking accuracy. The two duo sonatas are no less impressive in their variety and compositional richness.

Pietro Alessandro Yon: Complete Organ Music, Vol 2
Tommaso Mazzoletti organ
Brilliant Classics 96202 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 September 2022
A New York Times profile of Pietro Yon (1886- 1943) portrayed him as an adopted New Yorker who moved in high-society circles and enjoyed ragtime and vaudeville, and he welcomed the likes of Caruso and Toscanini to his home as friends. When he died in 1943, the world-famous conductor numbered among the 1300 mourners at St Patrick's, where the Italian émigré Yon had become director of music in 1929. Yon's music has a post-Romantic, mid-Atlantic flavour reflecting his background without belonging to a single 'school'. He composed over 70 Mass settings and major works, including the oratorio The Triumph of St. Patrick which premiered at Carnegie Hall. Among his most popular works at the time was a Concerto Gregoriano for organ and orchestra, later rearranged for organ and piano and then solo organ, in which version Tommaso Mazzoletti performs it here. CD1 concludes with a pair of Easter-themed works, while CD2 features Christmas music including an Advent Suite, some gentle pastorales and finally the Gesù Bambino song which travelled the world in performances and recordings by Luciano Pavarotti, as well as countless other arrangements such as the solo- organ version played here. This album marks the climax of a seven-year project in which the Italian organist Tommaso Mazzoletti has become the world's foremost exponent of his countryman's music. As Mazzoletti remarks in his booklet essay, Yon knew exactly what his audiences enjoyed, and was prepared to experiment, rediscover and astonish. 'As a performer and composer who played the organ for concerts as well as church services, he had the flair of an entrepreneur and a personality that I have always found to be particularly appealing. All his compositions are highly refined, but also imbued with a poetic, melancholy vein. Yet for all the skill and creativity that they unquestionably reveal, there is also a touch of humour that is utterly engaging.' This album was recorded on a new organ by the Brondino Vegezzi-Bossi firm, installed at St.Paul protestant church in Gland, Switzerland and inaugurated in 2021 by Mazzoletti as the church's titular organist. The booklet also includes a full specification and photographs of the organ.

Isabella Leonarda: Complete Trio Sonatas
Ensemble Giardino di Delizie, Ewa Anna Augustynowicz
Brilliant Classics 96421
Release: 1 September 2022
Born into a noble family, Isabella Leonarda (1620- 1704) entered the Ursuline Convent in the Piedmontese city of Novara at the age of 16. Having taken holy orders she lived there for the rest of her life as a religious sister, later its director of music and Mother Superior. She evidently showed musical promise from an early age, as the first of her published collections of music dates from as early as 1640, when she was just 20 years old. Following the Brilliant Classics portrait of Isabella Leonarda's vocal output from Cappella Artemisia directed by Candace Smith (96626), the all-female ensemble of Giardino di Delizie presents a set of 11 Trio Sonatas which was published in 1683 as the composer's Op.16. Isabella dedicated it to the Virgin Mary with a devotional preface: 'If these pieces do not please the World, I shall be content if You like them, because You appreciate the heart above the intellect.' In fact, Isabella's music greatly pleased the rest of the world at the time: according to one French collector, 'All the works of this illustrious and incomparable Isabella Leonarda are so beautiful, so charming, so brilliant, and at the same time so knowledgeable and so wise ... that my great regret is not to have them all.' While the Sonatas do not exhibit the bold contrasts or rich harmony of her contemporary Corelli, they nonetheless rise above many other contemporary examples of the genre, not least in the improvisatory freedom of their writing, especially in the slow movements. They are written for two violins, violone and organ continuo, which makes them all trio sonatas in which the the violins. violone parte dialogues on equal terms with the violins.

Inventio - J S Bach, Taneyev
Yulia Berinskaya & Valentina Danelon, violins, Anna Serova, viola
Brilliant Classics 96479
Release: 1 September 2022
The pure polyphonic quality of J.S. Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias cannot be overstated – simple yet bursting with ideas, they offer an agile introduction to late-baroque musical forms and imitative writing in general, while retaining a cantabile feel. These exquisite miniatures, transcendent of the didactic purpose to which they were relegated for too long, provide an orderly and at once concise and comprehensive survey of Bach's soundscape. The purity and density of their musical substance, distilled in a sort of abstract and universal language, has naturally encouraged numerous arrangements from the 19th century onwards for vast array of other instruments. Here we have the two-part Inventions arranged for two violins by the performers, Yulia Berinskaya and Valentina Danelon, where Bach's aim of encouraging 'a cantabile style of playing' through the independence of the parts is admirably achieved in the natural expressiveness of the two stringed instruments. The three-part Sinfonias are given in the existing 19th-century arrangement for two violins and viola by Ferdinand David (1810–73), not only one of the leading violinists of his era but also a musician with very close links to Felix Mendelssohn, a composer who spearheaded a revival of interest in Bach's music. The pairing of these arrangements of Bach with a similarly-scored string trio by Taneyev is an apt one on a deeper level, too. The Russian composer was affectionately known by his composition teacher, Tchaikovsky, as the 'Russian Bach' on account of his deep knowledge and expert application of the art of counterpoint. Taneyev drew on his deep mathematical knowledge to seek out all possible combinations in his compositions, exploring and analysing areas of polyphony like none other in his day. His Trio for two violins and viola Op.21 (1907) offers an original pairing of classical forms and language with his beloved baroque counterpoint, a combination enhanced in places by harmonic solutions and atmospheres typical of late 19th-century Europe.

Franceso Santoliquido: Chamber Music
Gran Duo Italiano & Federica Del Bagno, cello
Brilliant Classics 96589
Release: 1 September 2022
Chamber music aficionados of older generations will remember LPs of Brahms and Beethoven as performed by the Trio Santoliquido. The ensemble took its name from its pianist Ornella Puliti Santoliquido, who herself took the name when she married the composer Francesco Santoliquido. For several decades in the middle of the last century, husband and wife formed something of a power couple on the classical-music scene – especially in the field of chamber music – in Rome. However, Francesco Santoliquido's own music has fallen into almost complete obscurity, a state which this attractive new recording by the established partnership of the Gran Duo Italiano should help to improve. Born in Naples in 1883 and trained in Rome, Santoliquido never espoused even the mild brand of modernism or the neoclassicism of contemporaries such as Casella, Malipiero and Pizzetti, and he issued diatribes against the evils and origins of modernism in the fascist press. Beyond the precepts of a classic-romantic style, then, the individual flavour of Santoliquido's music owes something to his residence in Tunis during the 1910s, and subsequent support of a culture for classical music in north Africa, including the foundation of a concert society and music school in Tunis. Thus the piano music featured here includes a pair of Acqueforti Tunisine, as well as orientally scented nocturnes which were written for his wife to play. The album concludes with Ex Humo ad Sidera, a piece that describes mankind's terrible struggle in rising from the dark, savage state towards Light. The main work here is a traditionally structured Violin Sonata in A minor with a turbulent opening movement, a languid and dreamy Andante and then a stormy finale. It is revived here with tremendous conviction by Mauro Tortorelli and Angela Meluso, who have a string of critically acclaimed albums on Brilliant Classics to their credit, most recently featuring chamber music by Ševčík, Auer and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Tchaikovsky, Arensky, Elgar, Fuchs: Music for Strings
Orchestra Orfeo / Domenico Famà
Brilliant Classics 96609
Release: 1 September 2022
The golden age of string orchestra repertoire must certainly be the period spanning the final decades of the 19th century to the early 20th century. The density of sound, great dynamic range, long phrases and virtuosity that are uniquely possible with this combination of instruments saw it become a particularly cherished ensemble for many of the greatest composers of the day. This same era also witnessed the birth of the Great National Schools and the influence of composers' native folk melodies on their compositional output. Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile (TH 63) is the composer's own transcription of the second movement from his famous String Quartet No.1 (Op.11 / TH 111), prepared for a private concert in Paris (February 1888) with cellist Anatoly Brandukov and the Edouard Colonne Orchestra conducted by the composer. Russian composer and pianist Anton Arensky (1861–1906), who was strongly influenced by Tchaikovsky's style, is particularly known for his Variations Op.35a on a theme by Tchaikovsky. Again, this is an own-arrangement of the second movement of Arensky's String Quartet No.2 in A minor. Written in 1894 on the occasion of Tchaikovsky's death, the work takes as its theme Tchaikovsky's song 'Legend' (Op.54/5), adding seven variations and a coda. Elgar's Elegy for Strings (Op.58) was written in 1909 after the funeral of Robert Hadden – one of the members of the Worshipful Company of Musicians in London – at the suggestion of Elgar's publisher Alfred Littleton and intended as a commemorative piece for future ceremonies. It was first performed in St Paul's Cathedral in 1914, where it is still heard for commemorative celebrations today. Its popularity is justified by the poignant beauty of every single musical phrase. Most famous for his series of serenades for string orchestra, Robert Fuchs (1847–1927) is considered a worthy heir to the Viennese romantic musical tradition. Appreciated by Johannes Brahms, who called him 'a wonderful musician', Fuchs forges a synthesis between the fresh and elegant style of Viennese music and the spontaneity of folk-inspired melodies through an excellent compositional technique.

Bouffil: Clarinet Chamber Music
Luigi Magistrelli, Laura Magistrelli, Cristina Romano, clarinets, Claudia Bracco piano
Brilliant Classics 96611
Release: 1 September 2022
Little is known of Jacques-Jules Bouffil (or Boufil, 1783–1868) before his admission to the newly founded Paris Conservatoire in 1801. There he became a clarinet student of Xavier Lefèvre, apparently making such rapid progress that he was awarded a premier prix on his graduation in 1806 and appointed second clarinet in the Opéra-Comique a year later. In the years following he began to share principal clarinet duties with Charles Duvernoy until eventually (in 1821) succeeding him outright in the post. Enter the Czech-born composer Antonin Reicha, who had arrived in the French capital from Vienna in 1808 fleeing the conflict that had engulfed Europe. A later account of 1837 tells us that while the Théâtre Feydeau was performing Reicha's opera Cagliostro, the composer was approached one day by Bouffil and a colleague, Guénée, both members of the orchestra, asking for composition lessons. Reicha agreed, and his private class soon swelled to include other talented Parisian instrumentalists, Joseph Guillou (flute), Gustave Vogt (oboe), Antoine Henry (bassoon) and Louis Dauprat (horn) among them. The same account goes on to relay that, as the winds had been neglected as solo instruments in favour of strings by composers of the day (Mozart excepted), Reicha had the idea to combine the five principal winds, and after some research he published six wind quintets in succession, performed by Bouffil and the above-mentioned members of his composition studio over three consecutive winters, in the foyer of the Salle Favart. Coached in composition by Reicha, Bouffil wrote primarily for his own instrument and in a Viennese style attractively modulated with a French accent, having both virtuosic and didactic purposes in mind. Both of these sides of his output receive attention on the present album. Scored for clarinet with piano or harp accompaniment, the Duo Op.4 follows classical precedent with a sonata-form Allegro, a brief cantabile slow movement and a brilliant finale. Bouffil's transcription for two clarinets of the overture to Boieldieu's comic opera La Dame blanche would have come easy after countless nights performing the work in the pit at the Opéra-Comique. The three trios from Opp. 7 & 8 have been selected from nine such didactic works by Bouffil. Judging by the technical demands of many of the passages, he had highly advanced students in mind. The trios are structured in four movements, each with a menuet and trio, thus maintaining a tenuous link to the classical style. The three clarinet parts are complementary, with the melody line shared among them.

Bonporti: Sonatas Op 4 for for 2 violins and B C
Labirinti Armonici
Brilliant Classics 96623
Release: 1 September 2022
'The playing is of a high order', observed Early Music World when reviewing Labirinti Armonici's debut on Brilliant Classics (95718), with the Op.2 Sonatas of Francesco Antonio Bonporti: 'the overall effect is of a highly professional group at home with the repertoire. So few of Bonporti's works have been recorded to the highest standards; let us hope this is a start of a revival!' The revival hastens on with a third volume of Bonporti from the same performers, all practised Italian musicians specialising in music of the 17th and 18th centuries and who began coming together under the Labirinti Armonici umbrella in 2006. Since then they have hosted many masterclasses in Baroque performance practice, based in the Trento region of northern Italy, as well as giving concerts across the region. Under the directorship of founder Andrea Ferroni, Labirinti Armonici has adopted the cause of Bonporti as a local hero. He was born in the city of Trento in 1672 and died in Padova in 1749, thus almost exactly overlapping with the more famous Cantor of Leipzig; in fact Bach probably knew Bonporti's music, and perhaps adopted the genre of keyboard 'Inventions' from him. Bonporti's own compositional model was clearly that of Corelli, with its technically sophisticated writing for the violin, full of virtuoso touches and flourishes as well as imaginative harmony and lively part- writing. Nevertheless, his output remains under-explored even by modern ensembles, which makes this new recording an attractive acquisition for all devotees of the Italian Baroque. The Trio Sonatas Op.4 were published in Venice in 1703. They are magnificently accomplished exemplars of the genre, graced throughout with subtle touches of individuality such as the dynamic dialogues between violin parts and deftly rounded dissonances. Labirinti Armonici's recordings demonstrate how far performance and understanding of this music has come since the pioneering albums of Bonporti were made more than 60 years ago (led by Carlo Maria Giulini, no less).

Sylvano Bussotti: Complete Music for Guitar
Alberto Mesirca, guitar; Luca Scarlini, voice
Brilliant Classics 96638
Release: 1 September 2022
Sylvano Bussotti (1931-2021) counts among the most original and underappreciated composers working in the second half of the last century. He became famous – notorious – in the 1960s for 'graphic' scores which required considerable realisation on the part of the performer. His early work, however, is invested with a rhythmic regularity, a clarity of phrase structure and a lyricism reminiscent of Luigi Dallapiccola. Pierre Boulez saw Bussotti as an anachronism when they met and (in the composer's recollection 'completely rejected everything that I had written so far, compositions in his view largely influenced by that lyrical mediterranean dodecaphonic style which he particularly detested.' In retrospect Bussotti's music takes its place alongside that of his elder Italian contemporary Bruno Maderna as a oblique and distinctively Italian, discursive and colourful view over the variegated and sometimes alienated landscape of postwar serialism. Beyond The Rara Requiem, recorded by Sinopoli for DG, most of Bussotti's large- scale projects such as a 'Passion according to Sade' have so far failed to find a place in the record catalogues, where he is mostly represented by various pieces with or for the flute. However, Bussotti also wrote prominently for the guitar throughout his career. This new album from Alberto Mesirca is the most complete survey yet recorded, beginning with Ermafrodito (1999), a 'mythological fantasy' for guitar which evokes a magical ballet with a body that gradually emerges in the background and takes over the scene. Bussotti's other substantial work for guitar is Ultima rara (Pop Song), which from the beginning undermines the promised concept of 'last things' with a teasing textual commentary (spoken here by Luca Scarlini) and a playful use of the kind of refrain which extends pop songs beyond the organic life of their material. Shorter pieces include the light-heated and tuneful Popolaresca, as well as a reflective take on neoclassicism, Nuvola Barocca. The album closes with a brief tribute to Bussotti on his 60th birthday from Toru Takemitsu.

Felix Blumenfeld: 24 Preludes Op 17
Mark Viner, piano
Piano Classics PCL10213
Release: 1 September 2022
Felix Blumenfeld (1863-1931) was a virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher whose class comprised the likes of Simon Barere, Maria Grinberg and Vladimir Horowitz. But he was also a composer of an oeuvre of breathtaking beauty, originality and sophistication. Blumenfeld was himself taught as a child by his sister's husband Gustav Neuhaus, father of the de facto founder of the modern Russian piano school, Heinrich Neuhaus. However, it was Rimsky- Korsakov who exercised the most formative influence on the young Blumenfeld, introducing him to fellow Silver-Age composers and to the influential publisher Belaieff, who recognised the young pianist's talent and then issued many of his works. Even in his mid 20s Blumenfeld began teaching at the St Petersburg Conservatoire but resigned in protest at Rimsky-Korsakov's dismissal following the senior composer's support of the protestors killed in the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905. At length he returned to his post but left for Kyiv on the outbreak of the Russian revolution, and became rector of the conservatoire founded by Mykola Lysenko (where he taught Horowitz). Chopin, Wagner and other Romantic-era masters all make their presence felt in the surging melodies and passionate harmonies of Blumenfeld's own music. Published in 1892 by Belaieff and dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov's wife, the Op.17 form a quintessential work of Slavic late Romanticism. They are structured in four books of six preludes, touched with the solemnity of Orthodox chant at points and often aspiring to a grand and tragic idiom despite their relative brevity and tending towards melancholy even in the major-key pieces. The Op.17 Preludes are complemented in this new recording by Blumenfeld's study for the left hand Op.36 – relatively familiar as an example of the technique and widely promoted by the likes of Godowsky and Lewenthal. The Op.24 Etude de Concert is a dazzling accumulation of piano sonority requiring the deftest of hands and care over voicing to bring its towering chords to life.

Bernard Van Dieren: Complete Music for Piano Solo
Christopher Guild, piano
Piano Classics PCL10241
Release: 1 September 2022
The most comprehensive survey ever made on record of the piano output by a highly individual figure on the Dutch and English music scenes of the early 20th century, featuring two world-premiere recordings.
Bernard Van Dieren (1887-1936) was essentially self-taught as a composer, though friendships with Schoenberg, Busoni, Sorabji, Walton and Lambert all obliquely indicate by association both the technical confidence of his work as well as the variegated colours of his harmonic palette. He was born in Rotterdam but fell in love with and then married a pupil of Busoni's, Frida Kindler, who gave the first performances of most of his piano music. Kindler and Van Dieren settled in London, where they joined a distinguished artistic circle including the sculptor Jacob Epstein and the Sitwell family. Van Dieren's devotion to Mediterranean culture and his witty questioning of accepted judgments appealed greatly to the group. He was, for example, one of the first to encourage a re- assessment of the work of Donizetti, Alkan and Meyerbeer. While earlier works such as the powerful Toccata approach Schoenbergian atonality in their tightly woven chromaticism, Van Dieren's world is at root a diatonic one, stretching rather than breaking tonalities with a post-Wagnerian sensibility often comparable to the music of Delius. The composer himself was apparently a pianist of modest ability, but (perhaps not least thanks to Frida Kindler) he writes for the instrument with a formidable array of pianistic technique grounded in his own enduring love of counterpoint. The most straightforwardly appealing music here is a set of 12 Dutch folk melodies on CD2, followed by a charming little prelude written for Frida's birthday in 1934 – his last piano work before his death from a long- standing kidney complaint two years later. The pianist Christopher Guild, renowned for his advocacy of lesser-known pianistic voices, is then joined by Dr James Reid- Baxter for the first-ever recording of the Ballad de Villon, in which Van Dieren originally set a prayer to the Virgin for reciter and string quartet, with the instrumental lines later transcribed for the piano by Philip Heseltine (a pupil of the composer, himself better known as Peter Warlock). CD1 features a set of six densely polyphonic 'Sketches' in the style of Busoni and a Theme and Variations in the grand Romantic manner.

26 AUGUST 2022

Johan Jakob Walther: Scherzi da Violino
Illyria Consort / Bojan Čičić
Delphian Records DCD34294 (2 CDs)
Release: 26 August 2022
Johann Jakob Walther was one of the most significant violinists in Germany in the generation before J S Bach, and Bojan Čičić believes his music should be essential listening for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Bach's polyphonic writing for the instrument. Having built their reputation with a series of Delphian recordings focussing on 'missing link' composers, Čičić and his Illyria Consort are passionate about bringing Walther's collection of Scherzi da violino to the wider audience it deserves.This first complete recording displays the sheer ambition of Walther's opus, with highlights including his demonstration of the violin's polyphonic potential in the D major sonata (No III); the joyful playfulness of the end of No. IV; the inventiveness of the Imitatione del cuccu; and – Bojan Čičić's personal favourite – the dramatic melancholy of the final Aria in E minor.

strengur
Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir
Carrier Records
Release: 26 August 2022
Five Groups of Three Collaborative Pieces, written and performed with Halla Lovísa Loftsdóttir, Davíð Brynjar Franzson, Lương Huệ Trinh, Kent Olofsson, and Mirjam Tally. For the project, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir asked each collaborator if they were willing to explore modulating the traditional roles of performer and composer, by performing and visualizing a performance of a score created by her gut strings – the very same technology they had to consider as they in parallel-composed a separate set of written solo works for her.

Alison Balsom - Quiet City
Warner Classics 0190296229916
Release: 26 August 2022
Quiet City is a significant departure from Balsom's previous recordings, exploring American music of the 20th century composed during the jazz era. The album takes its title from Copland's haunting Quiet City, one of Balsom's favourite works for trumpet, and one she has waited to record since she performed it and won the Brass Final of BBC Young Musician in 1998, her self-proclaimed turning point that launched her solo career. The sound of the solo trumpet in classical and jazz music at this time was contrasting in style, yet often evocative, plaintive and haunting, and thus iconic to the aural landscape of America. Fascinated by the meeting point of these two styles at this time between both composers and performers, Balsom looks to share her deep love for this particular character of the instrument that defies genres.

Augustin Hadelich – Recuerdos
Warner Classics
Release: 26 August 2022
A subtle and profound Spanish theme runs through Recuerdos – meaning 'Memories'. Violinist Augustin Hadelich, whose 2021 Warner Classics release of Bach's Solo Sonatas and Partitas brought him his fourth nomination for a Grammy Award, has conceived an album that unites three works for violin and orchestra and a piece originally written for solo guitar. For Britten's Violin Concerto, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy he is joined by the WDR Sinfonieorchester and its Chief Conductor, Cristian Măcelaru; he remains alone for Ruggero Ricci's arrangement of Tárrega's shimmering Recuerdos de la Alhambra.

Mariam Batsashvili – Romantic Piano Masters
Warner Classics
Release: 26 August 2022
Technically formidable piano transcriptions of the Romantic era, particularly Liszt, form the programme of Mariam Batsashvili's second solo album for Warner Classics. She realises Liszt's pianistic vision of music from operas (Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Gounod's Faust) and songs, complimented with his aptly named Valse de bravoure. Liszt's contemporary rival, Sigismund Thalberg, is represented with the spectacular 'Grand Caprice' on themes from Bellini's La sonnambula. A celebrated pianist of a later generation, the British-born Harold Bauer (1873-1951), supplies a transcription of a work conceived for organ, César Franck's Prélude, Fugue et Variation op 18. Two further waltzes, by Chopin and Schubert, complete the album.

Riopy – Bliss (Extended)
Warner Classics
Release: 26 August 2022
Riopy's story is extraordinary. Born in rural France, his mother left home with him when he was six months old, eventually joining a cult. Deprived of any outside culture, young Jean-Philippe taught himself to play on an abandoned piano when he was two. He finally escaped when he was 18, eventually moving to England and working as a pianist in venues across London. Riopy was heard one day by Coldplay's Chris Martin, who generously gifted Riopy his first piano, putting him on the pathway to global success. Following the first leg of a sold-out European tour, Riopy – the self-taught Franco-British pianist/composer with nearly half a billion streams to his name and an album which has been at the top of the US Billboard charts for nearly two years – releases [extended] Bliss, which features three brand-new singles and expresses the optimism and hope only someone who has experienced a harrowing life can.

Dmitry Shostakovich: The Preludes & Fugues
Alexander Melnikov, piano
harmonia mundi HMM932019.20 (2 CDs, reissue)
Release: 26 August 2022

Stravinsky : L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird); Apollon Musagète (Apollo)
Luxemburg Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo Gimeno
harmonia mundi HMM905303
Release: 26 August 2022
For their second recording with harmonia mundi, Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg reveal the splendours of these two major ballets of the early twentieth century.

Gustav Mahler : Symphony No 4
Sabine Devieilhe, soprano; Les Siècles (on period instruments) / François-Xavier Roth
harmonia mundi HMM905357
Release: 26 August 2022

Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas, Volumes 2 and 3
Orli Shaham, piano
Canary Classics CC21
Release: 26 August 2022
In this two CD set, Orli Shaham performs the ever-popular Sonata K.331, including the Rondo Alla Turca; one of the most technically demanding piano works by Mozart - the Sonata in D major, K.576; and the Sonata in A minor, K.310, a work with enormous emotional depth. Says Ms. Shaham, 'These sonatas give so many insights into Mozart's mind, his personality, and his soul, and reveal fresh ideas about the music and its meaning with every hearing.' Improvisation is a big part of Orli Shaham's approach to this music. For months leading up to the recording sessions, she worked on sections that she felt Mozart left open to improvisation, experimenting with all kinds of ideas. The result is a great sense of spontaneity in each of the sonatas she recorded. "The act of improvisation allows you to feel some sense of what Mozart would have felt. He was a real flesh-and-bone human being, for all his genius, just like us,' said Ms Shaham.

Lost & Found
Sean Shibe, electric guitar
A first recording of music by Daniel Kidane and music by Hildegard von Bingen, Chick Corea, Julius Eastman, Bill Evans, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Leith, Olivier Messiaen, Meredith Monk and Moondog.
Pentatone PTC5186988
Release: 26 August 2022
Shibe ranges freely among styles and periods on the new album, a follow-up to his critically-acclaimed 2021 acoustic guitar album on Pentatone, Camino.

Johannes Brahms Complete Symphonies
Danish Chamber Orchestra / Adam Fischer
Naxos Denmark 8574465-67 (3 CDs)
Release: 26 August 2022
Brahms was 43 years old when, after a long period of maturation, his First Symphony was published. The conductor Felix Weingartner commented on it 'taking hold like the claw of a lion' and its urgency marked a new phase in Brahms' musical development. The Second Symphony is traditionally seen as the pastoral element in the cycle, while the Third, with its melodic beauty, has the courage to end quietly, an act of astonishing serenity. The compelling Passacaglia finale of the Fourth Symphony represents a fitting summation to one of the greatest symphonic cycles in the classical canon. 2022 marks 25 years of close, innovative cooperation between Adam Fischer and the Danish Chamber Orchestra. This has resulted in a number of releases, and gained international recognition. The conductor commented: 'The many years together have created the foundation for a mutual understanding of music and a highly distinctive style of playing that has been recognised far beyond Denmark's national borders.'

Henry Vieuxtemps
Fantasie in E major 'La Sentimentale'
Alexander Markov, Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach, Markus Huber
Naxos 8574363
Release: 26 August 2022
Vieuxtemps transformed the technique and aesthetic of violin playing in the 19th century, and as a virtuoso exponent and composer he was considered a worthy successor to Paganini. His works for violin and orchestra illustrate two notable features – a liking for variation form and the fusion of emotional density with virtuosic flair. These can be heard in the impressive Variations on a Theme from Beethoven's Romance No. 1 and his Fantasie in E major 'La Sentimentale', one of his very greatest concert fantasies, where the music is influenced by bel canto. All of the works on this album were discovered after the composer's death apart from the the unfinished Violin Concerto No. 8 – one of Vieuxtemps' last compositions and dedicated to his most illustrious pupil, Eugène Ysaÿe.

Edward German: Merrie England Suite; Nell Gwyn; Gipsy Suite; Romeo and Juliet – British Light Music, Vol 10
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra / Adrian Leaper
Naxos British Light Music 8555171
Release: 26 August 2022
Acknowledged by Arthur Sullivan as his musical heir, Edward German enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime. His dances are 'charged with the fragrant essence of the greenwood' and the Overture to Nell Gwyn, with its richly English themes, explains Elgar's liking for German's music. The gloriously romanticised Gipsy Suite pays subtle homage to Dvořák; the dances from Henry VIII were responsible for his early celebrity; and Tom Jones (on 8.660270-71) and Merrie England were two of his greatest stage successes.

Derek Bermel: Intonations – Music for Clarinet and Strings
Derek Bermel, Christopher Otto, Wiek Hijmans, JACK Quartet
Naxos 8559912
Release: 26 August 2022
Twice GRAMMY-nominated composer and performer Derek Bermel studied with Henri Dutilleux, Dutch avantgardist Louis Andriessen, and ragtime revivalist William Bolcom. In his music, seemingly antithetical qualities – classical and vernacular, comic and serious – merge and transform each other unpredictably, their inspiration ranging from theatre (Ritornello), to gestalt psychology (Figure and Ground), to meditations on cosmology (A Short History of the Universe). Thracian Sketches explores and reimagines Bulgarian folk music, while the Violin Etudes distill Bermel's intellectual creativity into its purest form.

Konstantin Vassiliev: Guitar Works, Vol 1
Yuri Liberzon, Patrick O'Connell
Naxos 8574315
Release: 26 August 2022
Konstantin Vassiliev's music synthesises several different styles including jazz, Russian folk music and contemporary Western traditions. This album contains music written over a 22-year period, with three works composed specifically for guitar soloist Yuri Liberzon. The Hommage à Tom Jobin was inspired by one of the creators of the bossa nova style, while the melancholic and lyrical contrasts of Rose in the Snow reveal Vassiliev's gift for storytelling. Arias, romantic miniatures, variations and multi-character episodes further reveal Vassiliev to be a vibrant and exciting composer of wide-ranging gifts.

Great Composers in Words and Music: Erik Satie
Lucy Scott
Naxos 8578366
Release: 26 August 2022
Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, Erik Satie was an eccentric and solitary figure who was nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet of French musical modernism, his striking creativity championed by Ravel and Debussy. From tragedy and trauma in his early years, through his time as a pianist and Parisian provocateur at Le Chat Noir cabaret, and as house composer to the mystical Rose+Croix cult and beyond, Satie's eventful life is told in this fascinating revue of a composer whose unique music is still influential today. The narrative is illustrated with musical excerpts from works including Gymnopédie No. 3, Gnossienne No. 3, Sports et Divertissements, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire and Relâche, among others.

Lee Bradshaw: The Ties that Bind - chamber works for strings
Baiba Skride, Ivan Vukčević and Harriet Krijgh
Navona Records NV6453
Release: 26 August 2022
A collection of chamber music for strings that reveal an explicit and emotionally-charged truth. Brought to life by Baiba Skide (violin), Ivan Vukčević (viola), and Harriet Krijgh (violoncello), the album features works that redefine the expressive possibilities of contemporary string playing; and in which the performers are compelled to delve deeply into their own artistry. Lee Bradshaw's sensuous and yet muscular compositional style displays a profound intimacy for his craft, which ultimately renders music of a rare and arresting beauty.

2020 Visions - William Bolcom, Michael Cohen, Robert Sirota, Hilary Tann, Theo Chandler, Preston Stahly
Fischer Duo: Norman Fischer and Jeanne Kierman Fischer
Navona Records NV6444
Release: 26 August 2022
2020 VISIONS from the Fischer Duo celebrates the piano-cello group's 50 years of performances together. The Duo is known for performing music from Brahms and Beethoven to the works of emerging composers. The pair celebrated the anniversary of their formation in 1971 during the height of the pandemic and thus the resulting recording is their declaration of love and resilience. This album features three works commissioned for the Duo as well as three recent compositions from promising new composers. Expressing the pain of loss as well as the hope for a better tomorrow, 2020 VISIONS showcases this duo's versatility and musicianship.

Miniature Symphonies
The Lowell Chamber Orchestra / Orlando Cela
Navona Records NV
Release: 26 August 2022
The term 'symphony' automatically evokes grandiosity in all aspects – a large-scale orchestra, great compositional complexity and considerable playing time. Orlando Cela and his Lowell Chamber Orchestra turn this idea on its head with MINIATURE SYMPHONIES, an enticing selection of short and snappy sinfoniettas for chamber orchestra. Pivoted around a complete recording of Darius Milhaud's five charming, highly-aesthetic chamber symphonies (composed in France between 1917 and 1922), MINIATURE SYMPHONIES also showcases newly-commissioned companion works by a diverse range of contemporary composers: Brittney Benton, Kevin Scott, Quinn Mason, and Yoko Nakatani. Together, these pieces intertwine splendidly: Milhaud's symphonies effortlessly condense greatness into a minute form, and his modern successors prove that brevity is indeed the soul of wit.

Bruno Duplant - États Intermédiaires
Moving Furniture Records / Eliane Tapes ET04
Release: 26 August 2022

Calineczka - ADWOS/ABWOS
Moving Furniture Records / Eliane Tapes ET05
Release: 26 August 2022

Nils Quak - Ichi-Go Ichi-E
Moving Furniture Records / Eliane Tapes ET06
Release: 26 August 2022
Eliane Tapes is a series of music dedicated to the vast amount of work and the huge influence by Éliane Radigue. For many musicians working in the field of drone (a term Radigue does not use for her music) and other forms of minimal music someway, known and unknown, the work of Eliane Radigue is an influence on what they are doing. With her work she did so many groundbreaking things, and still does, that in modern electronic and electro-acoustic music her influence can't be ignored. All music in this series is presented as tape releases and downloads. We want to release it on tape because it used to play a major role in Eliane Radigue her early music.

Peter Drew: Symphony No 1, 'Reminiscence'
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra / Ivan Josip Skender
Navona Records NV6441
Release: 26 August 2022
Peter Drew's Symphony No 1, 'Reminiscence' is a pastiche of sorts; it gathers up the musical moments that have touched the composer throughout his life. These musical reminiscences recall his excitement as a very young boy, listening to the works of the great western composers through the speaker of a portable radio, and musically encapsulate his discovery of jazz and popular music. The symphony eventually carries listeners well beyond the shores of America to Africa, Australia, Brazil, throughout Europe, India, and Mongolia. Those who follow Drew along this symphonic journey are sure to reap the rewards of the composer's lifelong dedication to music in all its forms.

Chamber Works of Éric Tanguy
Navona Records NV6451
Release: 26 August 2022
Three world premiere recordings and a curated selection of the composer's chamber pieces that demonstrates his illustrative style of punctuated modality. Brought to life by talented artists Ambroise Aubrun (violin), Cécilia Tsan (cello), Steven Vanhauwaert (piano), Martin Chalifour (violin), and Elissa Johnston (soprano), these seven pieces reflect many years of past collaboration amongst the performers resulting in a connection that is translated through thoughtful yet intense musical stylings. Tanguy's ear-catching melodies and personalized compositions foster a sound quality that showcases the strengths and dexterity of the performers, all the while providing a stimulating and intimate listening experience.

19 AUGUST 2022

Benjamin Britten: Les Illuminations, Serenade, Nocturne
Andrew Staples, Christopher Parkes, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding
harmonia mundi HMM902267
Release: 19 August 2022
In these three song cycles, Britten draws his inspiration from the peaks of European poetry (Shakespeare, Blake, Shelley, Keats, but also Rimbaud), the better to push back the boundaries of the genre. He multiplies the relationship between voices and instruments, moving from strings alone (Les Illuminations) to a string ensemble featuring obbligato wind instruments, harp and timpani (Nocturne), not forgetting the fascinating dialogue with the horn in the Serenade.

Invisible Stream
Jean-Guihen Queyras, Raphaël Imbert, Pierre-François Blanchard & Sonny Troupé
harmonia mundi HMM902343
Release: 19 August 2022
Invisible Stream: the unseen currents that connect people and musical works by transcending styles or customary aesthetic and cultural boundaries. A feast of poetic expression organized by four key representatives of both the classical and jazz music scenes of today, this disc initiates a dialogue – motivated by the purest spirit of improvisation – between the compositions of Raphaël Imbert and those of Schubert, Wagner, and Ornette Coleman.

György Kurtág: Kafka-Fragmente
Isabelle Faust, Anna Prohaska
harmonia mundi HMM902359
Release: 19 August 2022
The Kafka-Fragmente, settings of excerpts from the diary, letters and a posthumous text by the author of The Trial, take the form of an intimate confession with no real narrative thread. Kurtág chose a soprano voice and a solo violin to express this fascinating kaleidoscope of emotional landscapes, in which humour, sensuality, desire and tenderness emerge in turn. A rare opportunity to hear the duo of Isabelle Faust and Anna Prohaska, both at the peak of their artistry.

J S Bach: Easter Oratorio BWV 249
Soloists; Cappella Amsterdam; Orch Of The 18th C / Bruggen
Glossa GCDC81115
Release: 19 August 2022
Together with the vocal soloists Ilse Eerens, Michael Chance, Markus Schäfer and David Wilson- Johnson as well as the Cappella Amsterdam, which performs the choruses, Frans Brüggen and his legendary ensemble went on a spring tour in 2012, during which Johann Sebastian Bach's Easter Oratorio was at the centre of
the programme. The conductor, who died in 2014, was one of the most influential figures in so-called historical performance practice, but he was never a fan of the practice of casting all voices as soloists. Thus, the interpretation of the Easter Oratorio presented here offers a magnificent range of tonal colours that bring out the extraordinary beauty of the work even more clearly. This CD is completed by a "hypothetical" organ concerto composed from various instrumental movements from the cantatas BWV 35 and BWV 156, based on an idea by Frans Brüggen himself.

Oritz, Hume, Hely, Bertalotti: Ricercare E Canzon
Matteo Cicchitti, Musica Elegentia
Challenge Classics CC72918
Release: 19 August 2022
This disc is a journey through the history of the solo viola da gamba, starting with its birth (1553) and finishing at the end of 17th century. Besides the pieces by Diego Ortiz and Tobias Hume, there are some world premiere recordings of music by Benjamin Hely and Angelo Bertalotti. The absolute protagonist of this recording is the solo viola da gamba which guides us on a musical journey from 1553 (Tratado de glosas by Diego Ortiz) to 1698/99 (Ricercare per diversi toni by Angelo Michele Bertalotti and The Complete Violist by Benjamin Hely). In so doing, it puts us in touch with a repertoire that may not be universally known, but still deserves to be discovered. Above all, it must be disclosed because it gives tangible testimonies that partially rectify some deep-rooted convictions about the viola da gamba. In fact, contrary to what is often believed, after blossoming in the Renaissance, this instrument did not leave the stage ex abrupto in the mid-17th century, crushed beneath the increasing weight of the cello. Instead, it continued to enjoy its own literature, certainly less striking but not less relevant. We are referring not only to the better- documented compositions for consort, but also to the solo repertoire which frequently had didactic and artistic value - often characterized by chamber allure due to its reserved nature. Matteo Cicchitti is the leader of Musica Elegentia, already responsible for a previous Wagenseil disc on Challenge Classics (CC 72896). The double bass player, violonist, gambist and teacher, connoisseur and continuous researcher of historical performance, combines his activity as an instrumentalist with that of artistic and musical director for the repertoire of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Melaine Dalibert
Shimmering
Ici D'Ailleurs MT14CD
Release: 19 August 2022
Melaine Dalibert's fifth album "Shimmering" is the newest addition to Ici D'Ailleurs' Mind Travels collection. His magnetic piano mantras and spellbinding live performances have already attracted a wide array of contemporary- classical and minimalism obsessives, drawn by Dalibert's innovative techniques integrating both an algorithmic approach and a taste for playful pop references and influences. His deeply personal style mixes a unique sense of flow that his technical skills never overshadows, allowing him to remain focused on musical emotions on pieces that could also pass as technical challenges for experts pianists (see the stunning "Six+Six" dedicated to David Sylvian). Those eight haunting and wordless pop songs act as snapshots of the artist's sometimes melancholic moods and owe as much to Morton Feldman or Philip Glass as to Ryuichi Sakamoto or Peter Broderick. Together, they reveal a highly singular musical language that allows Melaine Dalibert to explore new paths forward in his already fascinating, innovative and shimmering journey.

Luys Milan: Works For Lute
Jose Miguel Moreno; Eligio Quinteiro
Glossa GCDC80110
Release: 19 August 2022
'I know full well that Music is meant to speak to the heart of man, and to that end I strive to the best of my abilities: Music without feelings or passions is meaningless.' - Luigi Boccherini. José Miguel Moreno is considered an intimate connoisseur of Spanish Renaissance vihuela music. For his recording, he devised - in keeping with the performance practice of the time - an additional instrumental line in the manner of a second voice or counterpoint for the pieces by Luys de Milán (circa 1500-1561), which were originally intended for performance by one player.

Carlo Gesualdo Da Venosa: Quarto Libro Di Madrigali
La Venexiana; Claudio Cavina
Glossa GCDC80934
Release: 19 August 2022
The Fourth Book of Madrigals displays an increased tendency towards chromatism, but short of the extreme experimentalism of the two following collections. Amidst the stormy and poignant intensity of pages like Sparge la morte or Moro, e mentre sospiro, there is still room for fleeting accents of gentleness and
lightness, traces of luminosity and a certain ease in the movement of the high parts (perhaps an echo of the vocal charms of the 'Trio of Dames').Thus, this Fourth Book serves as a bridge in Gesualdo's production. The result is a jewel that shines with a light at once brilliant and sombre. By the way, does not the surprising façade of Gesualdo's first residence in Ferrara – the Palace of Diamonds – produce the same impression? Perhaps the spirit of Ferrara speaks, in covert fashion, in these madrigals

Franz Benda: Violin Sonatas (ornamented Versions)
Leila Schayegh; Felix Knecht; Vaclav Luks
Glossa GCDC82507
Release: 19 August 2022
'When [Franz] Benda plays an Adagio, one has the impression that eternal
wisdom is speaking down to us from heaven'. Thus the description, written in 1798, by violinist Johann Peter Salomon – a pupil of Benda's and a good friend of Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven – of the playing of the "magician" and the "great genius".The works on this recording were selected from a unique manuscript collection preserved in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. What makes it a rarity are the written- out ornaments, for all of the movements, even the quick ones, are complemented by one or, in some cases, even two ornamented versions on separate staves. Even if this Berlin manuscript does not stem from Benda's own hand, there is much to indicate that it is a very careful and, in terms of ornamentation technique, authentic version. For this recording, Swiss violinist Leila Schayegh and her continuo partners Václav Luks and Felix Knecht have recorded a selection from Benda's beautifully ornamented sonatas, including, of course, some of the legendary Adagio movements that Salomon mentions.

Luca Marenzio: Primo Libro Di Madrigali
La Compagnia Del Madrigale
Glossa GCDC82802
Release: 19 August 2022
The early five-part madrigals published by Luca Marenzio in 1580 in his "First Book of Madrigals" revive the Roman dolce vita of the 1580s and 1590s. The music and texts of this "Primo Libro di Madrigali a cinque voci" evoke that Golden Age of art and science in which cardinals and princes were splendour-loving patrons. At the time of its release, Marenzio's "Primo Libro" was a huge success and his recording forms another madrigal jewel in the collection of the Compagnia del Madrigale, which once again shows how sonorous and colourful it knows how to interpret this Italian repertoire. In addition to the madrigals from the "Primo Libro", this recording also features the rarely performed "Sestina Mentre ti fui sì grato", a collaborative work by a collective of Renaissance composers known as the "Musici di Roma". It consisted of the six composers Nanino, Moscaglia, de Macque, Soriano, Zoilo and Marenzio himself, each of whom set a stanza of this madrigal to music, thus offering the listener exciting opportunities for comparison.

Ivanovs: Symphonies Nos 17 & 18
Latvian National Symphony Orchestra / Guntis Kuzma
SKANI LMIC141
Release: 19 August 2022
Symphonies Nos 17 & 18 by Janis Ivanovs (1906–1983) continue the series by the most prominent Latvian orchestra on Skani label. These timeless works see their world premiere release in this 2022 studio recording. Available previously only as broadcast copies and ageing LP records from the 70s and 80s, these timeless pieces by perhaps the most talented Latvian symphonic composer are now available to a wider audience. The previous album of Janis Ivanovs' symphonic music (LMIC/SKANI 126, 2021) included his Symphonies No. 15 and 16. The CD concluded with the rich and resounding final E-flat major chord. There is a sense that the author uses this tutti chord to draw a clear boundary in his creative work. Beyond this boundary remains the central portion of his creative work – opuses full of dramatic conflict (mainly composed in the 1960s), which are characterised by constant battles, conflicts, collisions, gains and losses. Now, with a final chord that expresses a complete break from his previous life, Ivanovs sees this as a generous, rich autumn, which is brightened by brilliant rays of sunlight. It is like a life that has been bitter, but not in vain. Pride and satisfaction with this life. The apotheosis of a life.

Heiner Goebbels: A House Of Call - My Imaginary Notebook
Ensemble Modern Orchestra / Vimbayi Kaziboni
ECM New Series 4858039
Release: 19 August 2022
A House of Call is a cycle of invocations, prayers, poems and songs for large orchestra, which incorporates recordings of sounds and voices from all over the world collected by German composer Heiner Goebbels
during his travels, research, and chance encounters. The cycle is a response to the history of these recordings and to their complexity, rawness and radiance. In this secular "responsorium", the orchestra accompanies and supports the voices, answers and challenges them.

Barock Baroque Klassik Aus Berlin
Berliner Barock Solisten
PHIL.HARMONIE PHIL06036 (3 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
The Berliner baroque soloists under the direction of Rainer Kussmaul are some of the most renowned specialists of early music. Their recordings have been awarded several times with the Echo classic award.
This 3 CD set includes PHIL06003 Vivaldi Concerti, PHIL06008 Edicson Ruiz and PHIL06018 Zelenka and Telemann. This set includes masterpieces of Antonio Vivaldi: the famous four seasons with Rainer Kussmaul on the solo violin, the cello concert in b- minor RV 424 with Georg Faust, the Viola d'amore concert a-minor RV 397 with Wolfram Christ and the concert fur oboe & violin in B-Dur RV 548 with Jonathan Kelly as soloists. Aged only fifteen, Edicson Ruiz was awarded first prize at the International Society of Bassists' competition in Indianapolis, making him the youngest winner of all time. Just two years later he was made a member of the Berlin Philharmonic's double bass section, becoming not only the first Latin American musician to be so honoured but also the youngest ever in the history of the orchestra. Conductor Christian Vasquez is a protégé of the internationally known Venezuelan 'Sistema' and has already established himself as one of the most promising developing talents from the Americas. His debut as a conductor with the Simon Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela took place in April 2008 in Caracas conducting Mahler's Symphony No 2.
The music sounds like a sonic allegory on transience and futility, just like the elapsing of time or the dwindling vitality. The 'festive baroque' demonstrates a delicate sensorium for the downsides of earthly pleasures. Vanitas vanitatum! Vanity of vanities; all is vanity! Jan Dismas Zelenka

Cristofaro Caresana: L 'Adoratione De' Maggi
Soloists; I Turchini; Antonio Florio
Glossa GCDC82601
Release: 19 August 2022
Again and again, Antonio Florio and his colleagues from the Centro di Musica Antica Pietà de' Turchini in Naples succeed in tracking down forgotten repertoire of the Neapolitan Baroque and breathing new life into
it. This recording from 2009 focuses on cantatas by the composer Cristofaro Caresana. The latter was born in Venice and, in Florio's opinion, was one of the most important protagonists of Neapolitan musical life in the second half of the 17th century. Both the music of his cantatas and their performance reflect the
Neapolitan spirit of the Baroque in a dramatic and exuberant way. Tasteful and accomplished singers such as Maria Grazia Schiavo, Giuseppe De Vittorio and Rosario Totaro form the ensemble for the three polyphonic Christmas cantatas, of which the one about the "Adoration of the Three Magi" gave the CD its title. The programme is completed by the solo cantata "Partenope" for the feast of the Neapolitan patron saint San Gennaro as well as instrumental sonatas from the pen of Pietro Andrea Ziani, in which the strings of the Turchini can demonstrate their virtuosity.

Canto dolorosa e danza - Chamber Music By Christoph Schickedanz (first recording)
Sebastian Schmidt; Bernhard Fograscher
Dreyer Gaido DGCD21139
Release: 19 August 2022
Christoph Schickedanz (born 1969) can look back on a career as a violinist that has now spanned more than 35 years. In 2004, he was appointed to a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. In 2018, Christoph Schickedanz decided to publish his first own works and has since enjoyed an ever-growing reception from his fellow musicians and the public.

Kaija Saariaho: Works For Cello
Joanna Gutowska
Dux Recording Producers DUX1686
Release: 19 August 2022
On this album, we present a number of works by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (b 1952), living and creating in Paris. She is one of the most appreciated contemporary artists, exploring sound spaces in search of a new musical language.Instead of traditional harmonic or melodic solutions, the composer focuses primarily on the sound itself and its qualities – colour, strength, dynamics. She operates with wide and static sound planes, soft, sharp and rough sounds, whose function is to provide the piece with a structure. The cello becomes a vehicle that takes listeners to intimate spaces, closely related to nature, to which the titles of individual compositions refer. This instrument (sometimes also supported by electronics) contains a real cosmos of meditative sounds. The only performer of all the compositions presented on the album is Joanna Gutowska, a Polish cellist residing in London. The artist has been performing since the age of 12, co- operating with the best orchestras in the world and performing at prestigious festivals. Her interests include various genres and musical styles; she is also keen on exploring contemporary music. She devoted her doctoral thesis to the work of Kaija Saariaho.

Cracow Harp Quintet - Hommage
Dux Recording Producers DUX1871
Release: 19 August 2022
The Cracow Harp Quintet, founded in 2019, consists of an unusual set of instruments: harp, flute and a string trio. As the only such professional chamber ensemble in Poland, it promotes music that has been forgotten or has not been published yet. Thanks to the joint initiative, the members of the ensemble share many years of experience of concerts, festivals and competitions in Poland and abroad. The album Hommage is a tribute to the output of the composers associated with the Quintette Instrumental de Paris – a formation whose 100th anniversary of the foundation falls this year. The album features compositions by artists closely related to them, such as Jean Absil, Jacques Pillois, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur and Alexander
Tansman. The repertoire is distinguished by its diverse character: French Impressionism, medieval monody motifs, fascination with the Far East culture as well as the 20th-century idiom of Polish music. The album also includes the world recording premiere of the suite 5 Haïkaï by J Pillois and the first Polish recording of the Sonatina da Camera by A Tansman.

Musica Sacromontana
Julian Gembalski
Dux Recording Producers DUX1774
Release: 19 August 2022
This album features organ works, some of which are world premiere recordings. The compositions presented on the CD were recorded on the organ from the sanctuary on the Holy Mountain in Gostyn (Greater Poland), rebuilt in recent years after old patterns. The richness of the instrument's sound allows to show the beauty of very diverse compositions by artists formerly known in the Gostyn monastery or associated with the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in Rome. Thus, the album features an intavolation of vocal ricercars by the master of Renaissance church music Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), Tiento by Francisco Soto (1539–1619), co-founder of the Roman Oratory, as well as a curio – Fugue by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756– 1791), whose output was known in the Gostyn community and adapted for liturgical purposes. The Preambulum in C by the Czech composer Jan Krtitel Vanhal (1739–1813) already comes from a later period, which is an interesting bridge between early polyphonic techniques and classicism. The latter is represented by the Sinfonia per organo by Ferdinando Gasparo Bertoni (1725–1813). Polish accents on the album are two Fugues by Gostyn-born Alfons Szczerbinski (1858–1895) and compositions by Julian Gembalski (born 1950), who also performs all the works recorded on the album. The contemporary compositional convention shows the extraordinary sonic and textural possibilities of the organ, the so-called 'king of instruments'. Julian Gembalski – composer and organ virtuoso, awarded on a number of occasions in particular for his improvisational art, is also an outstanding teacher and an organ expert.

Michal Malec: Beloved
Vocore
Dux Recording Producers DUX1748
Release: 19 August 2022
This album is a special gift for all those listeners who appreciate vocal music in its most beautiful version – presented a cappella, in a meditative mood, provoking reflection and contemplation. It is a genuine rest for the spirit, tired of the often- intrusive sounds of the contemporary audiosphere. The composer of all the works presented on the album is Michal Malec, a young artist who surprises with the profound maturity of his pieces. Among his interests, music related to the sphere of sacrum occupies a particularly important place. The artist willingly refers to Biblical texts (the album features an arrangement of Psalm 101 and of an excerpt from the Book of Ruth) as well as to non-canonical texts – poetry of John Paul II or those rooted in the Polish folk liturgy of Bitter Lamentations. In addition to
religious texts, Malec has also composed music to love poems; moreover, he has reached for Edgar Allan Poe's poetry or fragments of the famous Carmina Burana. The compositional means used help the listeners feel both the beautiful texts and the accompanying music. The Vocore ensemble, which performs the music
recorded on the CD, was founded in 2017, and its mission is to sing beautiful, reflective music in excellent performance quality and present it to the audience. Michal Malec is both a composer of music for the ensemble and one of its members.

Serge Koussevitzky Conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra – Live
SOMM Recordings ARIADNE 5017-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
SOMM Recordings announces a major new release: the first appearance on disc of live performances of Tchaikovsky's Fifth and Sibelius' Second Symphonies by the iconic conductor Serge Koussevitzky and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This historic, two-CD set includes an exclusive, specially-commissioned documentary about Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony Orchestra tenure and his LPO guest appearances, featuring interviews with four key players from both orchestras by Jon Tolansky.

Stanford: Children's Songs
SOMM Recordings SOMM 0655
Release: 19 August 2022
SOMM Recordings continues its widely acclaimed championing of the music of Charles Villiers Stanford with a captivating collection of his Children's Songs by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and baritone Gareth Brynmor John, accompanied by pianist Susie Allan. Including numerous first recordings and the first complete CD release of his setting of 14-year-old Helen Douglas Adam's enchanting Songs from the Elfin Pedlar, it throws revealing new light on an important but largely overlooked aspect of Stanford's output.

Alessandro Scarlatti: Griselda
La Lira di Orfeo, Coro Ghislieri, Rosetta Cucchi, Raffaele Pe, Carmela Remigio, Francesca Ascioti, Mariam Battistelli, Krystian Adam, Miriam Albano, Carlo Buonfrate, Roberta Chirulli, Vanessa Liberto, Serena Rizzi, George Petrou
Dynamic CDS7935 (3 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
Alessandro Scarlatti is one of the key figures of Italian Baroque opera and the influential Neapolitan school in particular. Griselda is the last of Scarlatti's operas to have survived intact to the present day. Its narrative is set in motion by the marriage of the King of Sicily to a poor shepherdess; the ensuing complications of love and the tensions between country and court delivering an entertainment full of lyrical charm and lively action. Performed by a superb team of Baroque specialists and acclaimed singers, this production is set in Puglia's magnificent Palazzo Ducale and celebrates the 300th anniversary of Griselda's prémiere.

Johann Pachelbel: Hexachordum Apollinis; Chaconne in C major
Enrico Bissolo
Dynamic CDS7961
Release: 19 August 2022
Johann Pachelbel is remembered today for his Canon in D, but he was an outstandingly successful organist and composer whose musical legacy is in fact quite broad and varied. Of his keyboard pieces the Hexachordum Apollinis is regarded as the pinnacle of his oeuvre and was a work to which Pachelbel himself attached great importance. Consisting of six arias with variations, the collection brings together the influence of several schools of music, all filtered through the composer's refined tastes and superlative technical skill. The splendid Chaconne anticipates Bach and is one of Pachelbel's best-known keyboard pieces.

Hans Knappertsbusch Conducts Richard Wagner's Der Rng des Nibelungen (Bayreuth 1956)
Hans Hotter, Wolfgang Windgassen, Josef Greindl, Gré Brouwenstijn, Astrid Varnay, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus, Hans Knappertsbusch
Music & Arts MACD4009 (13 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
Knappertsbusch's 1956 Bayreuth Ring in superb fidelity! Re-issued by popular demand, this edition was carefully remastered from an original set of broadcast tapes in superb sound. Technical reconstruction by Maggi Payne. Included are liner notes by William H Youngren.

Furtwängler Conducts Beethoven: The Best of the WWII Live Recordings
Tilla Briem, Elisabeth Höngen, Peter Anders, Rudolf Watzke, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Bruno Kittel Choir, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Wilhelm Furtwängler
Music & Arts MACD4049 (4 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
This collection represents the finest World War II-era performances of Beethoven's symphonies under Furtwängler's baton. The legendary March 1942 Berlin performance of the Ninth Symphony has been completely re-mastered for this edition from a new source and sounds superior to any prior issue!

The Musical Art Quartet: Complete Columbia Recordings
Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert
Sascha Jacobsen, Bernard Ocko, Paul Bernard, Louis Kaufman, Marie Roemaet-Rosanoff
Biddulph Recordings 85017-2
Release: 19 August 2022
Led by the Russian-born violinist Sasha Jacobsen, the Musical Art Quartet was was one of the preeminent quartets established in the US. In fact, the famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky proclaimed that the Musical Art Quartet was the greatest quartet he ever heard. First violinist Jacobsen made numerous solo recordings before he established the Musical Art Quartet, but is probably best known as the fourth and final name of the popular Gershwin song 'Mischa, Jascha, Toscha and Sascha', the forenames of four renowned Russian-Jewish violinists: Elman, Heifetz, Seidel and Jacobsen. Furthermore, the violist in the Musical Art Quartet was none other than Louis Kaufman, a major violin soloist in his own right. Jacobsen formed the Musical Art Quartet in 1926, and this recording features the ensemble's complete recordings of quartets by Haydn and Schubert made for the Columbia label in the late-1920s. Their recording of Haydn's C-major Quartet, op.54 no.2, is the first complete recording of a Haydn quartet ever made. Although the Quartet lasted for over two decades, this contains the group's only recordings of the quartet repertoire.

Frederic Rzewski: no place to go but around
Lisa Moore
Cantaloupe Music CA21173
Release: 19 August 2022
There's an entwined sense of bittersweetness and celebration that permeates Lisa Moore's latest recording — her first to feature a suite of all-new performances devoted to the work of her friend and mentor, Frederic Rzewski. For many fans of the composer, this is the first time they can hear a collection of his more lyrical works on one album, including the haunting epic Amoramaro, which was commissioned specifically for Moore and is one of the last pieces written by Rzewski before his death last June.

Fantasia: Works for Solo Cello
Henri Dutilleux, Aram Khachaturian, Zoltán Kodály, György Ligeti, Bent Sørensen
Jonathan Swensen
Champs Hill Records CHRCD168
Release: 19 August 2022
Jonathan Swensen offers a fresh take on lesser-known works for solo cello for his stunning debut album, Fantasia. Alongside the Kodály sonata sits the seldom-heard Khachaturian Sonata-Fantasie for Solo Cello, plus a newly commissioned work by Danish composer Bent Sørensen, Farewell-Fantasia. Swensen comments: 'My goal with this album was to create the illusion that the music was being played for the first time: a fresh take, what one might call a 'creation of sound in the moment'. It is only when I am playing that I truly feel music. The fact that it was written many years ago does not change that the music is happening now, in this moment, when the audience hears it. In my opinion, this is what makes music amazing. Works that stand the test of time do so because they will always remain fresh to interpretation, and the moment they are played, they become once again fresh, something that is happening right now, a story in need of being told in a different way which we haven't heard yet. This is the magic of music.' Swensen won the 2019 Windsor Festival International String Competition, his prize for winning included the recording of this brilliant debut album as part of the Windsor Festival's ongoing relationship with Champs Hill Records. He is the recipient of the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant and also the winner of the 2018 Khachaturian International Cello Competition. In his native Denmark, Swensen was also a recipient of the Musikanmelderringens Artist Prize in 2020, the Jacob Gades Scholarship in 2019, the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize in 2017 and the first prize winner at the Danish String Competition in 2016. Swensen has performed with orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, and Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música. He also performs at festivals in Denmark and further afield, including the Tivoli Festival, the Copenhagen Summer Festival, the Hindsgavl Summer Festival and the Usedomer Musikfestival.

Olwen Morris, piano
Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók, Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Frédéric Chopin
Quartz QTZ2148 (2 CDs)
Release: 19 August 2022
This is the second recording for Quartz from Olwen Morris, offering a cross section of works from the Classical period through the early Contemporary.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita No 2 in D minor
Petteri Iivonen
Yarlung Records YAR84177-787V (LP)
Release: 19 August 2022
After living a number of years in the United States, GRAMMY® and ICMA Nominated Finnish violinist Petteri Iivonen returned to Europe where he became concertmaster of the Finnish Opera orchestra in Helsinki before moving to Paris to serve as concertmaster for the Paris Opera. Petteri's ability to play in many styles with sincerity and his natural lyrical facility with his instrument made him the ideal candidate to work with luminary conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen in Helsinki and now Gustavo Dudamel at Paris Opera. Petteri commands his instrument with ease. While much of his playing is exceptionally beautiful, it is not beautiful for the sake of being pretty. I have heard few violinist's with Petteri's ability to control color and timbre, and even fewer who use this ability for such musical and appropriate ends. Petteri plays a Ferdinandus Gagliano violin in this recording, built in 1767. We recorded this performance during a live concert in Alfred Newman Hall at the University of Southern California. We chose a legendary Austrian AKG C-24 stereo microphone with the original brass surround CK12 tube, Midwood vacuum tube preamplifiers and no mixer recording to Agfa-formula 468 tape. The signal path was as short as we could make it, with as few electronics between performer and final product as we could manage. We hope you enjoy the results.

Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer – Ernest Chausson
Sasha Cooke, Colburn Orchestra, Yehuda Gilad
Yarlung Records YAR84179-148V (LP)
Release: 19 August 2022

As We Are
Julian Velasco, saxophone; Winston Choi, piano
Cedille Records CDR 9000 213
Release: 19 August 2022
Chicago-based classical saxophonist Julian Velasco, winner of Cedille Records' first Emerging Artist Competition, plays contemporary works for tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone on As We Are, his debut recording as a featured artist. On his first-ever album as a headliner, Velasco highlights music from composers he credits for playing large personal and musical roles in shaping his identity as an artist over the past few years. As We Are features world-premiere recordings of Steven Banks' Come As You Are and saxophone versions of works by Amanda Harberg, Elijah Daniel Smith, and Christopher Cerrone. Works by David Maslanka and John Anthony Lennon round out a project reflecting 'What I am right now,' the artist says. Velasco, 27, calls the opportunity to record an album for the label 'one of the greatest prizes anyone could ever imagine.'

Richard Carr: landscapes and lamentations
Neuma Records
Release: 19 August 2022
'Music and nature have a long and illustrious history together,' writes violinist, composer, improvisor, hiker, Richard Carr. 'It's been done a zillion times, but I can't fight it anymore. True, I spend more time than most knocking around the woods and winding up and down the trails. Over the course of six decades, I have explored the major mountain ranges of six continents. This has been long enough to witness first-hand the changes that have been so apparent not only to the naked eye but also through the empirical research of climate scientists.' While others trod the path of academe, 'I explored jazz, open improvisation, minimalism, just intonation, spectralism, dental equipment sampling, and anything else that might be a vehicle for self-expression.' Following in the footsteps of 2021's Over the Ridge (Neuma 146), Landscapes and Lamentations continues the (wholly- and) semi-structured musings, this time dwelling on places within 15 miles' radius of Carr's home in the Hudson Valley.

12 AUGUST 2022

Jonathan Tetelman: Arias
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 12 August 2022
With his agile technique, dramatic eloquence, and rich palette of vocal colors, tenor Jonathan Tetelman inhabits a range of roles from the French and Italian repertoire. Recorded at the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria and its Chief Conductor, Karel Mark Chichon, this collection shows Tetelman's strong and powerful voice in a selection of popular and unknown arias. Both a starting point and a destination, Arias is an impressive recording which captures the expressive power and radiant tones of Jonathan Tetelman's voice at this early stage in his career.

Lara Somogyi
! [Exclamation]
Mercury KX
Release: 12 August 2022
Mercury KX is proud to announce the debut album of electronic artist and harpist Lara Somogyi entitled ! (pronounced 'Exclamation'). With !, Somogyi builds a new creative sound world – an atmosphere – based around the harp, its expressive capabilities and electronics. It is the result of a decade's long dive into sonic exploration, which pushes the harp to its furthest potential. Here, we are introduced to a whole world of sound from a single instrument. (LP, Digital)

Britten & Bridge: Works for Viola
Hélène Clément | Sarah Connolly | Alasdair Beatson
Chandos CHAN 20247
Release: 12 August 2022
Bridge gave Britten his viola as a parting gift as Britten left for the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. They never met again. Hélène Clément, violist with the Doric String Quartet, is the current holder of this precious instrument, and recording these works on the instrument for which they were written is the realisation of a heartfelt ambition. She is joined for this project by pianist Alasdair Beatson, and mezzo Sarah Connolly.

Born: The Music of Edie Hill and Michael Gilbertson
The Crossing / Donald Nally
Navona Records NV6449
Release: 12 August 2022
Hill's avian-inspired Spectral Spirits paints a colorful study of recently-extinct birds and their interaction with humankind, while Gilbertson's Born and Returning address in raw and authentic language the complexities of our intimate relationships. Edie Hill's Spectral Spirits was commissioned by The Crossing and premiered in Philadelphia and New York City in 2019. The Crossing describes the piece as a 'memorial to lost birds,' structured in four pillars representing four bird species that are extinct. The 30-minute piece pairs pastoral musical textures of poetry by Holly J. Hughes with observations of Henry David Thoreau, Gert Goebel, Christopher Cokinos, Lucien M. Turner, Paul A. Johnsgard, and Alexander Wilson to create a nostalgic journey the composer describes as an 'emotional sequence of falling in love with a bird, followed by grieving its loss.' 'Composing Spectral Spirits was as much a study of humans as it was of birds,' said Hill. 'I found myself asking how human beings managed to obliterate these species. In some cases, populations were brought back from the brink of extinction only to be brought down again… Why, if we see something alive, vibrant, with striking color, do we want to possess it to the point of oblivion? Why is it permissible to destroy nature in the name of 'progress' or financial gain? In the end: we all lose. I grieve every day for the state of our planet and her creatures. Composing Spectral Spirits was a gift that gave me a chance to funnel this grief.' Two works by Michael Gilbertson bookend the album, leading with Born, based on a poem by Wisława Szymborska, which was premiered by The Crossing in 2017. The piece was commissioned by conductor Donald Nally and his spouse Steven Hyder in memory of Donald's mother; it contemplates birth, familial relationships, and the human condition. Gilbertson's Returning closes the album with the biblical story of David and Jonathan from the Hebrew Bible. Returning draws on text from Kai Hoffman-Krull exploring themes of friendship, fraternal and passionate love, absence and longing. Returning was recently featured by The Crossing at a performance in recognition of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia in 2021. Of Born, Donald says, 'We love singing this work because of the way Michael reaches the revelatory moment, through the intertwining of middle voices – one male, one female – holding the fabric of our thoughts together, that slowly rise to an epiphany in which thoughts of birth and of parenting lead to thoughts of the human condition. Michael responds with a kind of controlled howl. A declamation: simultaneously triumphant and despondent.'

Martha Argerich in Verbier (Live)
Deutsche Grammophon (digital only)
Release: 12 August 2022
From the very beginning, pianist Martha Argerich has been a beloved member of the Verbier family. Nowhere else in the world does Argerich devote herself more fully to playing chamber music with dear friends. This release begins with a shimmering account of Haydn's "Gypsy" Trio, where she is joined by Vadim Repin and Mischa Maisky. Argerich then delivers fireworks in a superlative reading of Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto, accompanied by Yuri Temirkanov and the Verbier Festival Orchestra.

Textures in Classics
Sang-Hie Lee and John Corina
Navona Records
Release: 12 August 2022
Textures in Classics from renowned pianist and music scholar Sang-Hie Lee explores the rich musical possibilities offered by the piano. To do so, Lee performs works from some of the seminal composers in Western music including Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. The album captures Lee's unique pianism at the height of her maturity as an artist. While contemporary performers often place an outsized emphasis on virtuosic technical skill, Lee's performances examine the notion of texture in piano music; this ranges from the clean, crisp soundscape of Mozart's early pianoforte to Beethoven's exacting technique and lush harmonies. There is little doubt that Textures in Classics will cement Lee's legacy as a scholarly-artistic pianist.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: Suite Veneziana; Triptychon; Divertimento; Arabesken
Oviedo Filarmonía / Friedrich Haider
Naxos 8573583
Release: 12 August 2022
Wolf-Ferrari is famous for his operatic works in which he invented a new idiom by transplanting 18th-century Venetian culture into the 20th century. But almost all of the composer's orchestral music dates from his final years and occupies a different expressive realm. The Suite veneziana resonates with melancholy, and the Triptychon is a contemplative, passionate masterpiece of orchestration. Subtle use of counterpoint transforms the Divertimento into a playful exploration of themes, while Arabesken pays tribute to an old friend, the Venetian painter Ettore Tito (1859–1941). His own elegantly simple melody, known as 'Tito's theme', is turned by Wolf-Ferrari into a sequence of sumptuous orchestral variations culminating in a powerful fugue.

John Burge: Sinfonia Antiqua; One Sail; Forgotten Dreams; Upper Canada Fiddle Suite
Joanna G'froerer, Rachel Mercer, Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra, Kevin Mallon
Naxos 8579073
Release: 12 August 2022
John Burge is a JUNO Award-winning composer and a passionate advocate for Canadian music who has a strong affinity with writing for string instruments. All of the works in this recording were commissioned and premiered by the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra. Opening with the joyous and celebratory Sinfonia Antiqua, the mood shifts to an evocative and impressionistic atmosphere in Forgotten Dreams, while One Sail captures the compelling power of poetic imagery. The Upper Canada Fiddle Suite blends tradition and nostalgia with entirely original inventiveness, and concludes an album that perfectly represents Burge's eloquent and deeply expressive compositional style.

Flauta Andina – 20th Century Andean Music for Flute and Piano
Sixto María Durán, Jacinto Freire, Gerardo Guevara, Leonardo Cárdenas, Samuel Zyman
Daniel Velasco, flute; Ellen R Sommer, piano
Naxos 8579125
Release: 12 August 2022
The rich variety of colours and rhythms in South American culture and music are an essential feature of this programme, which focuses largely on music by composers from the Ecuadorian Andes. Opening with Durán's popular and crowd-pleasing Leyenda incásica, the theme of Ecuadorian dances continues in Jacinto Freire's Suite, which also celebrates the flight of the condor. Virtuosity, evocations of landscape and expressive traditional songs can all be found here, concluding with Mexican composer Samuel Zyman's internationally acclaimed Flute Sonata No. 1, which ranges from lyrical introspection to intensely contrapuntal dialogue.

Siegfried Wagner: An Allem ist Hütchen Schuld! ('Everything is little-hat's fault!')
Soloists, Nuremberg Philharmonic Chorus, PPP Music Theatre Ensemble, Munich, Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra, David Robert Coleman
Marco Polo 8225378-80 (3 CDs)
Release: 12 August 2022
Richard Wagner's son Siegfried initially studied to become an architect, but the pull of music was too strong and he composed 15 operas, among other works. An Allem ist Hütchen Schuld! ('Everything is Little-Hat's Fault!') has a multi-layered plotline that alludes to at least 40 fairy tales. These are all brought together into a storyline in which Katherlies'chen and Frieder's intentions to be married take them on fantastical adventures, with the goblin Little-Hat at the heart of all the goings-on. With its expressive orchestration, lyricism and late Romantic colour, this is an opera that transports you into a world in which anything seems possible. This recording of Siegfried Wagner's An Allem ist Hütchen Schuld! is of a live performance of the Bayreuth production that was done in the year of the composer's 125th birthday in August 2019. The attractive production uses a new critical edition of the score created by Ulrich Leykam, and it proved extremely popular with sell-out audiences at each performance. The earlier 2015 production by the late Peter P. Pachl first appeared on DVD (2.220006) and shares several cast members with this more recent Bayreuth production.

Martha Argerich: Live, Vol 7
Doremi DHR-8175/6 (2 CDs)
Release: 12 August 2022
Includes a recording of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, made in 1969, as well as two performances from the Edinburgh Festival in 1966 and 1967.

Piano Concertos with Rudolf Serkin, Vol 4
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven
Rudolf Serkin, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St Luke's, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Günther Wich, James Levine, Dimitri Mitropoulos
Doremi Legendary Treasures DHR-8177/8 (2 CDs)
Release: 12 August 2022
Includes live performances of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 5 & 3 and Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 16 & 25, as well as Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1.

Andres Segovia and his Contemporaries, Vol 15
Doremi Legendary Treasures DHR-8149
Release: 12 August 2022
The Guitar in Spain, Part 3, 1930-1939: Orchestral and Chamber Settings. Also included: Segovia's premiere of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Guitar Concerto in D, Op 99 from 1939.

Bohuslav Martinů: Symphonies Nos 5 & 6
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / Roger Norrington
SWR Classic SWR19119CD
Release: 12 August 2022
Bohuslav Martinů's six symphonies were composed between 1942 and 1953 during the composer's years in America. He completed the first five symphonies at the astonishing rate of one per year, although not at any artistic expense – years later, he described the Fifth Symphony as a 'well organised, organic, well ordered work' in an interview with The New York Times. A full seven years elapsed, however, before Martinů completed his Sixth. One of his 'unexpected' works, it took, quite unusually for him, two years to complete, and its form proved to be a radical change from his previous symphonies. As he wrote to his friend Šafránek – 'I am about to create fantasias!' In November 2021 Sir Roger Norrington announced his retirement from conducting. From 1998 to 2011 he was chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (today the SWR Symphonieorchester), and during that time caused an international stir with what came to be known as the 'Stuttgart Sound' – a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner, Brahms or Martinů, Norrington sought to recreate a faithful performance experience, adjusting the orchestra's size and seating plan, and creating an authentic sound without vibrato.

Hans Rosbaud conducts French Music
Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Jacques Ibert, Albert Roussel, Maurice Jarre, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, Marcel Mihalovici
Südwestfunk-Orchester Baden-Baden, Monique Haas, Hans Rosbaud
SWR Classic SWR19115CD (4 CDs)
Release: 12 August 2022
Hans Rosbaud was a passionate musician, whose conscientiousness, intuition and experience were extended to even the most complex and contemporary musical forms. The diversity of the works presented here demonstrate his musical universality, and serve to further contradict the reputation he garnered during his lifetime as being only a technically superior champion of the avant-garde. With the exception of two pieces by Debussy composed in the 1890s, this present anthology of French orchestral repertoire comprises compositions from the 20th century, featuring Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye, Ibert's Le Chevalier errant and Messiaen's Chronochromie alongside works by French-Swiss composer Honegger, member of the legendary Groupe des Six, and Bucharest-born Mihalovici, who, like Honegger, studied composition under the traditionalist Vincent d'Indy.

Sergiu Celibidache conducts Haydn and Tchaikovsky
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / Sergiu Celibidache
SWR Classic SWR19118CD
Release: 12 August 2022
Among the great conductors of the second half of the 20th century, Sergiu Celibidache was without a doubt a most unusual personality. Even his fierce opponents hardly denied that he was exceptionally gifted as a musician and conductor – a gift he had consciously developed to absolute perfection. Like no one else he stood for rigorous rejection of records and studio recordings, seeing in them nothing but a 'by-product' fully unable to provide an adequate impression of the actual performance. However, it was mostly radio orchestras that were willing to meet Celibidache's demand for extensive rehearsal time, asking him therefore, in turn, to allow concerts or studio performances to be recorded and broadcast. Thus, what he regarded as 'by-products' became archive gems that have survived the course of time, preserved for posterity. The repertoire on this album is no exception: it dates from September 17, 1959, when Celibidache conducted a studio concert at the legendary broadcasting studio of the Villa Berg in Stuttgart.

Live in Wrocław
Szymon Krzeszowiec, Adam Krzeszowiec, Jan Krzeszowiec, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, Jerzy Maksymiuk
CD Accord ACD295
Release: 12 August 2022
"We wish to dedicate this album to our Parents, Anna and Henryk, who taught us to love music and derive joy from its daily presence in our lives. We owe our special thanks to Maestro Jerzy Maksymiuk, who has inspired us for many long years with the sincerity of his musical expression. Our joint concerts are invariably a source of artistic satisfaction.' - Szymon, Adam, Jan Krzeszowiec. The CD was recorded on 19 March 2021 in the Main Hall of the Witold Lutosławski National Forum of Music during a concert held as part of seventy-five years of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic.

Timeless
Tanja Zapolski / Aarhus Symphony Orchestra
Danacord DACOCD876
Release: 12 August 2022
Danish female pianist Tanja Zapolski found the music she always held close to her heart. It is music to treasure, a timeless experience. All are part of a world of dreams, a kind and tender world and with music to touch our souls. The brand new recording features the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra as partner in slow movements from famous piano concerti- Chopin, Ravel and Grieg. Music from Bach to Pärt with the famous Spiegel in Spiegel where the brilliant cellist Toke Møldrup is heard. A CD for the moments of beauty and calm, where everything around simply is timeless.

Rarities of Piano Music 2021: Live Recordings from the Husum Festival
Duo Berlinskaya/Ancelle, Simon Callaghan, Hiroaki Takenouchi, Florian Noack, Nicholas Stavy, Zlata Chochieva, Peter Froundjian
Danacord DACOCD939
Release: 12 August 2022
Founded in 1987 the annual Rarities of Piano Music Festival in the North German town of Husum is a major event. Danacord is proud to release the recording from the Festival in 2021 featuring again rare piano music played by some of the leading pianists of today. Among the highlights you will find the brilliant Zlata Chochiewa in Liszt and early Rachmaninov. Also the truly remarkable pianist Simon Callaghan in rare Holbrooke. Many of the works are first CD recordings like the Langgaard work played by founder Peter Froundjian and, as usual, all are unedited live performances. All lovers of piano music will want this release, not only because of the first class pianism from truly outstanding performers, but also because the quality of the often unknown and rare mostly romantic piano music is of such invaluable substance. Critics greated all the previus CD releases with enthusiasm.

Benjamin C S Boyle: Spirits in Bondage
Lyric Fest
Navona Records NV6450
Release: 12 August 2022
Poetry and music have often been described as "beautiful sisters" in the European tradition, and American composer Benjamin C. S. Boyle sets out to prove just how harmonious this kinship can be. Owing to pianist and art song expert Laura Ward as well as to a selection of top-class singers, these elaborate yet easily accessible vocal compositions are resplendently brought to life on Spirits in Bondage. The lyrics underpinning this double album are often fantastical, but Boyle prudently renounces any notion of musical pomp and instead sets them in an agreeably-reduced, crystal-clear tonal language. Ward and her high-carat assortment of vocalists empathetically, wisely oblige and perform them likewise – and the result is magnificent.

Inviting Worlds Vol 2 - New Works for Large Ensemble
Lawrence Mumford, Dinah Bianchi, Bruce Reiprich, William Copper, Debra Kaye, Richard E Brown
Jan Kučera, Stanislav Vavřínek, Jiří Petrdlík and Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava
Navona Records NV6445
Release: 12 August 2022
Hot on the heels of its first edition, Inviting Worlds Vol 2 follows in the footsteps of its predecessor with the rhythmic dexterity and textural nuance of today's orchestras paired with a new roster of composers. New sounds and expressions burst with emotion and uplift us through dark days, navigating uncertainty and delivering us to tranquil resolution. From the frenetic energy and hair raising harmony of Chasse Noir to the soothing solemnity of When Quiet Comes, Inviting Worlds Vol 2 delivers a colorful palette of orchestral virtuosity sure to please any listener who lends an ear.

Samuel A Livingston: American Scenes
Winds of Filharmonie Brno / Stanislav Vavřínek
Navona Records NV6446
Release: 12 August 2022
American Scenes, from composer Samuel A. Livingston is, as its title suggests, a painterly tribute to America. The album's title piece, Three American Scenes, is a three-movement suite that expresses the grandeur of the American west, the serenity of a mountain lake at dawn, and the bustle of a busy day in a large city. The album opens with Celebrating the Fourth, which depicts an American Fourth of July celebration. The final two selections feature works for concert band with a solo instrument – the flute, in Silvertube Variations, and the clarinet, in Balkan Dance. In that last selection, Livingston turns his attention beyond our shores, to the harmonies and rhythms of the folk music of the Balkan countries, especially Bulgaria and Macedonia. Altogether, AMERICAN SCENES is thoughtfully-crafted and unabashedly jubilant, expressing appreciation for America and the world beyond with refreshing sincerity.

6 AUGUST 2022

Flair - works for cello and piano
Miriam K Smith and Jacob Miller
Samuel Barber, Manuel De Falla, Astor Piazzolla, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
MSR Classics MS1780
Available: 6 August 2022
Young American cellist Miriam K Smith is rapidly gaining recognition as a gifted concert soloist. Smith made her orchestral debut at age 8 playing Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto No.1 with the Seven Hills Sinfonietta in Cincinnati, and played Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations in a series of children's concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony and Louisville Orchestra. She was also a featured soloist with the Wright State Chamber Orchestra, and with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on a subscription concert, and during summer Concerts on the Square. In addition, she has been a featured soloist with the Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra in Ohio and the 2020 subscription series of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra. While on tour, Smith has given interviews for radio and television, as has taken part in numerous private and public community outreach events. Her first performance of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor took place with the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra for an in-person and live-streamed educational concert, and on the orchestra's 2021 subscription series. Smith is also active in the chamber music setting, performing recitals and concerts throughout the United States. Pianist Jacob Miller began his music studies at an early age, attending the Interlochen Arts Academy at the age of 14, and several later, The Juilliard School, studying with Julian Martin. While at Juilliard, Miller was sent by the college to the Rohm Music Festival in Kyoto, Japan. He subsequently studied with Frank Chiou at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he won the OWU Concerto Competition, played with the OWU Chamber Orchestra and ultimately received the OWU Music Department's Performance Award. Miller received his Master's Degree in piano performance at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, studying under Ran Dank. Miller gave his debut concerto performance in his hometown of Delaware, Ohio, in 2018 playing George Gershwin's Concerto in F with the Central Ohio Symphony Orchestra. Currently, he teaches piano at Xavier University and works as a Graduate Assistant at the College-Conservatory of Music while maintaining an active performance schedule.

Child's Play
Johannes Brahms, Reinhold Glière, Edward Knight, Maurice Ravel, Sihyun Uhm
Enhake - Wonkak Kim, clarinet; M Brent Williams, violin; Katherine Decker, cello; Eun-Hee Park, piano
MSR Classics MS1788
Available: 6 August 2022
Possessing a knack for adventurous yet accessible programming, enhakē (in-HA-kee) has consistently distinguished itself with performances of startling intensity. Drawing its name from the Seminole (Creek) word for sound or call, enhakē has been praised for their distinctive instrumentation – clarinet, violin, cello and piano – that allows them the flexibility to perform repertoire from the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras as well as today's most captivating contemporary works. The grand-prize winner of the Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition (2009), gold medalist of the International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition at Carnegie Hall (2008) and finalist of the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition (2011), enhakē has successfully toured on three continents at important venues and events, including Carnegie Hall, OK Mozart Festival, South Korea's Young-San Arts Hall, Pan-Music Festival at the Seoul Arts Center and the Promising Artists of the 21st Century Series in Costa Rica under the auspices of the US Department of State and Costa Rica – North America Cultural Center. They have also been the ensemble-in-residence for the Albany Symphony Orchestra in Georgia and Tallahassee Youth Orchestras. Strong advocates for new music, enhakē has had works written for and/or dedicated to them by many of the world's leading composers, including Edward Knight, Libby Larsen, Peter Lieuwen, SiHyun Uhm and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. The quartet's members are all dedicated educators, having held posts at universities in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. In addition, they have been on faculty at the Chapel Hill International Chamber Music Workshop in North Carolina, Music in the Mountains Conservatory in Colorado and in Michigan at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. As a group, they have released well-received albums for the MSR Classics, Naxos and Emeritus labels.

5 AUGUST 2022

Songs of William Busch
Roderick Williams, Diana Moore, Robin Tritschler, John Reid
Lyrita SRCD409
Release: 5 August 2022
The album comprises previously unperformed and unrecorded songs by British composer William Busch, alongside works by Gerald Finzi, Elizabeth Poston and Michael Head. Lyrita's recording is a tribute from daughter to father, made possible through painstaking research and reconstruction by Julia Busch and Diana Moore. Busch, born in 1901, studied music in London, Berlin and the United States. His composition teachers included John Ireland and Bernard van Dieren. His pacifism during World War II resulted in decreased reception for his works. William died tragically on 30th January 1945 in Woolacombe, North Devon, England while he walked back across the headland from Ilfracombe Hospital after visiting his newly born daughter, Julia.

Rebecca Clarke and William Busch Complete Piano Music
Simon Callaghan, piano
Lyrita SRCD408
Release: 5 August 2022
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) and William Busch (1901-1945) were unlikely friends with Busch often visiting Clarke's house. Busch first mentions Rebecca Clarke in his diaries on 26 October 1927: 'Went to a Gordon Byron concert – Brosa, Rebecca Clarke and John Slater, violin, viola and flute respectively – and heard new and old works – nothing particular. Then to CMC at the Court House. The Brosa Quartet played the String Quartets by Bax, Honegger and Hindemith.' There are 22 more references to Clarke until 1937. Busch performed Clarke's music in August 1932, when he wrote 'Broadcast from London Regional – I read Rebecca Clarke's piece from the Manuscript.' They certainly talked a lot about music, and Busch played through her piano pieces as she composed them. On 30 August 1932 – William gave the first performance of Clarke's Cortege, then his own 'Gigue'.

Vaughan Williams Brass
The Tredegar Town Band with Ian Porthouse and Martyn Brabbins
Albion ALBCD052
Release: 5 August 2022
In 2022 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams, and there is no better way to do so than with this album of brass band music. Vaughan Williams wrote three pieces for brass band - Henry the Fifth Overture, Prelude on Three Welsh Hymn Tunes and Variations for Brass Band, the latter commissioned for the National Brass Band Championships in 1957. This album brings together these works with many new arrangements of some popular pieces by Paul Hindmarsh (who curated and produced the album) and Phillip Littlemore.

Gity Razaz: The Strange Highway
BIS Records BIS-2634
Release: 5 August 2022
BIS Records will release composer Gity Razaz's debut album The Strange Highway. The New York Times describes Razaz's work as 'ravishing and engulfing,' and this album features music she has composed over the last fifteen years recorded by the All-American Cello Band from the Cello Biennale Amsterdam, violinist Francesca dePasquale and pianist Scott Cuellar, cellist Inbal Segev, violist Katharina Kang Litton, and Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr. Razaz, who was born in Tehran, Iran in 1986 and now lives in New York, is a composer whose music is deeply influenced by the constantly changing, at times tumultuous, realities of the world, including her identity and personal journey as an immigrant. This process of what Razaz describes as 'uprooting and rebuilding' occupies much of her work, resulting in music that is emotionally charged and dramatic, while still maintaining mystery and lyricism. Her compositions are her means of responding to a hyperactive, disconnected world and offering transformation to listeners. As Joanna Wyld puts it in the album's liner notes, 'The relationship between the grounded and the ephemeral inhabits much of Gity Razaz's music, in which there is often a tension between physical and metaphysical themes. A glance at Razaz's choice of titles for her works reveals an otherworldly, poetic sensibility: Spellbound, sighs, prayers and haikus. Yet this is by no means purely cerebral music; it is often anchored by the visceral, as with the punchy rhythms and earthy colors of The Strange Highway for cello octet.'

Evgeny Kissin - The Salzburg Recital
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 5 August 2022
Deutsche Grammophon releases a double-disc album of Evgeny Kissin's sensational recital at last summer's Salzburg Festival. The Salzburg Recital builds dramatic tension across a compelling program of music by Berg, Chopin, Gershwin, and Khrennikov.

The Big B's
Janoska Ensemble
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 5 August 2022
As broad-ranging and eclectic as its repertoire may be, the Janoska Ensemble stands for a very special sound that offers audiences an intimate combination of sensuality and sophistication, airiness and precision. When looking for a basic idea for their third album, the ensemble started from their own strength in improvising. The backbone of this release: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms; and more contemporary composers: Bernstein, Bartók, and Brubeck.

Near To Each
Josh Modney
Carrier Records
Release: 5 August 2022
composer, solo improviser, bandleader, and writer Josh Modney releases Near To Each, his debut full-length album as a composer and bandleader, on Carrier Records. The album features nine compositions for a quartet of adventurous musicians including Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones), Mariel Roberts (cello), and Cory Smythe (piano), with Modney on violin. A highly detailed relationship to sound production on the violin is foundational to Modney's creative practice, with a particular interest in complex timbres, Just Intonation, and in exploring the perceptual space between improvisation and notation. Modney explains 'while my previous solo release, Engage, represents an attempt to forge a violin practice that to me feels personal and authentic, Near To Each is rooted in relationships, expanding this violin language outward to a chamber ensemble that is founded on dialogue with three extraordinary artists who share a fascination with the in-between spaces of soundmaking.' This interest in liminal states permeates Near To Each, as the compositions blend improvised and precisely notated music while often deliberately playing with listeners' perception of the space between those two modes, and deal with the juxtaposition and overlapping of various musical elements, for example, three distinct approaches to intonation.

Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate: Winter Moons
Azica Records
Release: 5 August 2022
Chickasaw composer and U.S. Cultural Ambassador Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate releases a new album, Winter Moons, on Azica Records. Winter Moons is a ballet in four movements based upon American Indian legends from the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains, performed with a live storyteller to guide the audience. The title of the ballet is derived from the ancient idea that American Indian stories – some serious historical narratives, and others lighthearted bedtime stories for children, but all usually carrying a moral – are best told during the full moons of the wintertime. Winter Moons was Tate's very first composition, commissioned by and dedicated to his mother, choreographer Dr. Patricia Tate. Spirit Chief Names the Animal People was part of the original version of Winter Moons and is now performed as a separate work with narrator. Patricia Tate shares, 'According to the Osage, the Moon is a woman, and all women are symbolic of life. In the ballet, the four moons represent the four seasons of life. Winter Moon tells of the culmination of life as she rises majestically to the spirit world.' The ballet weaves together stories about Puberty Blessing Songs, a rite of passage for young Lakota women; the Indian spirit at Mesa Falls, a tragic Shoshone tale of two lovers getting swept away by a waterfall; the Medicine Wheel, in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, a place of great importance to Northern Plains Indians; and the Pend d'Oreilles legend of Bitterroot Valley, when an old woman cried upon the earth during a famine and her tears formed the roots of a new plant, a bitter edible blossom that fed her people.

Migration
University of Texas Wind Ensemble / Jerry Junkin
Reference Recordings RR-150
Release: 5 August 2022
Four outstanding contemporary composers are represented on this album. The title piece by ADAM SCHOENBERG: Migration — Symphony No. 2 for Wind Ensemble, is the World premiere recording of this important new work. Reference Recordings is proud to present it beside two additional World Premieres: The Eyes of the World Are Upon You by JENNIFER JOLLEY, and Intrada 1631 (after Juan Pérez Bocanegra) by STEPHEN MONTAGUE. And last but certainly not least, this release contains the premiere of a new wind ensemble transcription of JOHN CORIGLIANO's Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble, with clarinet soloist Jonathan Gunn. The repertoire on this new album was performed by the UTWE on their CBDNA National Conference Tour in March of 2017, and recorded in sessions at Bates Recital Hall, The University of Texas at Austin, and at Meyerson Symphony Center, in Dallas Texas concluding in August of 2017.

Giya Kancheli: 18 Miniatures & Middelheim
Delos DE 3589
Release: 5 August 2022
This album offers delightful chamber music of Giya Kancheli, regarded as one of Georgia's greatest composers. The 18 Miniatures for violin and piano draw from music Kancheli wrote for plays and films. As he explains, he chose 'the themes I especially cherish' for this set. His trio, Middelheim, is dedicated to the
doctors of the Middelheim Hospital in Antwerp, where Kancheli received a dramatic resuscitation in the winter of 2016. Called 'a major talent' by The New York Times, Piet Koornhof has recorded many albums for Delos, including Violin Plus One and Frolov & Friends, both with pianist Albie Van Schalkwyk, who also performs with Koornhof on this album. They are joined by cellist Susan Mouton for the mesmerizing Trio, Middelheim. Together, these works take the listener on a fascinating journey.

Hugo Wolf: Italienisches Liederbuch
Allan Clayton, Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton
BIS Records BIS2553 (SACD)
Release: 5 August 2022
Composed in feverish bouts interrupted by long periods of inaction, Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch was brought to completion in 1896. The 46 songs are settings of poems in German by Paul Heyse, after Italian folk songs – miniatures with a duration of less than 2 minutes in most cases. Heyse's collection numbered more than 350 poems, but Wolf ignored the ballads and laments, and concentrated almost exclusively on the rispetti. These are short love poems which chart, against a Tuscan landscape, the everyday jealousies, flirtations, joys and despairs of men and women in love. Heyse's translations often intensify the simple Italian of the original poems, and in their turn, Wolf's settings represent a further heightening of emotion. Miniatures they may be, but many of the songs strike unforgettably at the heart. When Wolf's songbook is performed in its entirety, it is usually done by a male and a female singer, although this is not specified in the score. It is not uncommon for them to be transposed, but the songs are written for high voices, and are here performed by a soprano and a tenor – Carolyn Sampson and Alan Clayton – with Joseph Middleton at the piano. The performers have chosen to present the songs in the order they appear in the printed collection, dividing them between themselves.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Concertos for Harpsichord & Strings, Vol 2
Bach Collegium Japan / Masato Suzuki
BIS Records BIS2481 (SACD)
Release: 5 August 2022
The concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo harpsichord and strings are some of the earliest, if not the very first, keyboard concertos. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) –probably to be performed with Leipzig's Collegium Musicum. The concertos' fresh and exuberant character reflects how much Bach enjoyed the opportunity to engage with his fellow musicians, a quality that also came across on Masato Suzuki's first installment of Bach's harpsichord concertos together with his colleagues in Bach Collegium Japan: 'sparkling performances...[Suzuki's] remarkable virtuosity is beautifully projected by BIS's excellent SACD recording' (MusicWeb-International). Despite how idiomatic they may sound, many of Bach's harpsichord concertos are almost certainly transcriptions of earlier works written for other instruments. Of the works presented on this second volume, BWV 1054 and BWV 1058 are adaptations of violin concertos composed while the composer was living in Cöthen. The model for BWV 1055 has been lost but it is believed to be a concerto for oboe or viola d'amore. BWV 1057, finally, is an adaptation of the well-known Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, transposed down one step but retaining the original's two recorders. As examples of musical recycling, these works display Bach's uncanny ability to re-use successful music ideas and give them a new meaning and significance.

Tournament for Twenty Fingers
Lennox Berkeley, Richard Arnell, Stephen Dodgson, Constant Lambert
Emma Abbate, Julian Perkins
BIS Records BIS2578 (SACD)
Release: 5 August 2022
Initially enjoying popularity first in Germany-speaking lands and then in France, the genre of the piano duet (four hands, one piano) went on to blossom in England during the 20th century. On this album Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins present the complete works for piano duet by each of the composers selected. Palm Court Waltz, the Sonatina and Theme and Variations from Lennox Berkeley display Gallic traits, the consequence no doubt of his studies in France and his keen interest in the music of Satie, Ravel and Poulenc. While showing an evolution in the composer's approach to tonality, every hint of seriousness is constantly balanced by elegant playfulness and diaphanous textures. Less well-known than Berkeley, Richard Arnell and Stephen Dodgson nevertheless contribute to the general atmosphere with their unabashedly tonal music that shows the neoclassical influence of Hindemith, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Dodgson's suite Tournament for Twenty Fingers, which gives its title to this disc, is especially full of fun while ending with a homage to the Czech composers Dvořák and Janáček. An outstanding talent, Constant Lambert held jazz in high esteem and his Trois Pièces –written to be played entirely on the piano's white keys – form a high-spirited and heartfelt tribute to its rhythmical vitality and inventiveness.

Benjamin Britten: The Music for String Quartet
Emperor Quartet
BIS Records BIS2640 (3 SACDs)
Release: 5 August 2022
Between 2010 and 2014, the British Emperor Quartet released the three discs gathered here, with all of Benjamin Britten's published music for string quartet – as well as his one work for string quintet, the Phantasy in F minor. Their performances of the three numbered quartets, undisputed masterpieces of 20th-century chamber music, were variously described by the critics as 'stupendous' (Classic FM Magazine), 'a wonderful homage' (Ensemble), and 'a complete cosmos of colours and nuances' (Fono Forum), and the discs received top marks and distinctions in magazines such as Fanfare, Diapason and International Record Review. Britten wrote his String Quartets Nos 1, 2 and 3 in 1941, 1945 and 1975 respectively, but his natural facility in writing for strings was evident from a very early age. The Emperor's set includes a number of youthful works, from the String Quartet in F, by a fourteen-year old schoolboy, to Simple Symphony, composed in 1934 and the work which may be regarded as his breakthrough. The box set includes the original booklets, with insightful liner notes by Britten specialist Arnold Whittall.

Allan Pettersson: Symphony No 15; Viola Concerto
Ellen Nisbeth, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra / Christian Lindberg
BIS Records BIS2480 (SACD)
Release: 5 August 2022
Allan Pettersson's Symphony No 15 is characterized by a high degree of tension right from the striking opening: brief, emphatic chords from horns and trombones above the tremolo of a side drum. Soon an expressive melodic subject is heard from the first violins, followed by contrasting rapid scales – at which point Pettersson has presented the greater part of the symphony's building blocks. Like so many of the composer's symphonies, the 15th is in one movement, but with clearly defined sections. It was completed in 1978, two years before Pettersson's death, and was followed in 1979, by the sixteenth symphony, the last work that the composer submitted for performance. Only later did it become known that Pettersson had also been working on a Viola Concerto – a work that, if not fully completed, was so far advanced that it has been accepted as part of his œuvre. It is presented here by the Swedish violist Ellen Nisbeth, who also performs one of Pettersson's very earliest compositions – a Fantaisie pour alto seul, dated June 1936, when the composer himself was about to embark on a career as violist. On this the tenth disc in their acclaimed Pettersson cycle, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg bring their combined expertise to bear on the orchestral scores.

Klas Torstensson: Lantern Lectures
Norrbotten NEO, Christian Karlsen
BIS Records BIS2516 (SACD)
Release: 5 August 2022
Although born in Sweden, Klas Torstensson has spent most of his working life in the Netherlands following his studies in Utrecht in the early 1970s. Stylistically, he may call to mind Varèse, Xenakis and – perhaps more distantly – Stravinsky. First and foremost, however, Torstensson's music is personal and distinctive. It is often nourished by his experiences of nature: rough granite, the sea, ice in the frozen Baltic inlets, the polar ice cap. His Lantern Lectures were composed in the aftermath of his opera The Expedition, about an ill-fated journey to the North Pole. While occupied with the opera he had received commissions from several different ensembles, and he therefore decided to write a cycle of works for these ensembles – compositions to be performed separately or as 'movements' forming a greater whole. The four lectures portray fundamental elements and phenomena in Nordic nature: bedrock with stratified memories of its violent origins (Solid Rocks I & II), traces of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and potholes, cylindrical holes drilled into the bedrock under glaciers (Giant's Cauldron). They all involve 12 to 15 players, and are connected by Brass Links, brief interludes for trumpet, horn and trombone. Lantern Lectures is here performed by Norrbotten NEO, an ensemble dedicated to the promotion of contemporary chamber music, conducted by Christian Karlsen.

Leo Blech: Complete Orchestral Works and Orchestral Songs
Sonja Gornik, Opernchor Aachen, Sinfonieorchester Aachen / Christopher Ward
Capriccio C5481
Release: 5 August 2022
The closest Leo Blech (1880–1959) gets to fame these days is being mistaken for Ernest Bloch, although some might still remember his seminal work as an opera conductor in Berlin, where he worked for almost half a century (except for the Nazi years). But his compositions – either operas or involving the voice in some other way – have disappeared from the repertoire, which is a pity because his music, while less probing than that of his contemporary Bloch, is very much charming in the style of, say, Humperdinck or Rheinberger.

Radu Paladi: Piano Concerto; Violin Concerto; Symphonic Suite 'Das Zauberflötchen'
Nina Karmon, Oliver Triendl, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen / Eugene Tzigane
Capriccio C5465
Release: 5 August 2022
After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi proved an exceptional talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was particularly tricky both politically and artistically, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional style to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

Instrumental Soloists for Capriccio's 40 Year Anniversary
Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Haydn, Hummel, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich
Ton Koopman, Eckart Haupt, Christine Schornsheim, Burkhard Glaetzner, Reinhold Friedrich, Tabea Zimmermann, Tzimon Barto, Linos Ensemble, Petersen Quartet, Vladimir Spivakov
Capriccio C7399 (10 CDs)
Release: 5 August 2022
Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalogue. Keyboard mavens include Ton Koopman, performing J S Bach; the great Christine Schornsheim, performing concertos by Bach's sons; and Tzimon Barto, combining his muscular frame with a gentle touch in Brahms. Leading wind and brass players are represented by Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute) and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) in music by masters of the Baroque and Classical periods. And there are contributions from the ever-reliable Petersen Quartet, the inquisitive Linos Ensemble (whose exploration of new repertoire represents a Capriccio hallmark), and incomparable solo performers Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov with highlights for the upper strings. Altogether, a generous and enticing programme that is truly representative of the Capriccio label.

Albert Lortzing: Zum Groß-Admiral
Anett Fritsch, Lavinia Dames, Julia Sophie Wagner, Bernhard Berchtold, Jonathan Michie, Martin Blasius, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Ulf Schirmer
cpo 555133-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 5 August 2022
Ulf Schirmer recorded Albert Lortzing's Regina in 2011 (CD: CPO 777710-2), and now yet another discovery from this composer's opera oeuvre of a good dozen works is ready for release: the comic opera Zum Groß-Admiral (The Grand Admiral). Today Lortzing's name continues to appear in the opera performance repertoire mostly only in association with Zar und Zimmermann or Der Wildschütz, but during his lifetime he was known far and wide not only as a composer but also as a librettist, actor, singer, and conductor. It was Lortzing himself who wrote the libretto for Zum Groß-Admiral, his tenth full-length opera. Composed in Vienna in 1847 and premiered in Leipzig during the same year, this work, like Regina, was born of the spirit of revolution – and completely vanished from performance programs after the revolts of 1848-49. Lortzing, an ardent admirer of Mozart, paid homage to him with the full-length work Szenen aus Mozarts Leben in 1832, and his veneration for this Viennese classical composer is frequently in audible evidence inhis music. Already the overture to Zum Groß-Admiral sparkles with lightness and performance joy, and the ensemble scenes as well as the solos and choral scenes continue in the tradition of the mirthful virtuosity of thecorresponding scenes in Mozart's operas while representing supreme challenges for the soloists and the chorus.

Hugo Alfvén: Symphonic Works Vol 3 – Symphony No 2 Op 11 in D; Swedish Rhapsody No 3, Op 47
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester / Lukasz Borowicz
cpo 555354-2
Release: 5 August 2022
Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden's most important symphonist and certainly its most popular one.' This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén's Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental – a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this CD.

Hugo Wolf: Orchesterlieder & Penthesilea
Benjamin Appl, Jenaer Philharmonie, Simon Gaudenz
cpo 555380-2
Release: 5 August 2022
'I am too cowardly to be a proper composer,' Hugo Wolf confessed to a Viennese friend when he was barely 28 years old. And the result of his introspection was not so wrong: everything in his life, not only composing, proceeded in explosive spurts. He wandered through the deepest emotional valleys, suddenly flew up into the highest regions, suffered agonies when he couldn't think of anything to say, shouted his enthusiasm about a successful piece to the whole world and still managed to produce a respectable, albeit fragmentary oeuvre, from which the early poem Penthesilea after Heinrich von Kleist's tragedy of the same name stands out as a symphonic masterpiece. The Austrian baritone Benjamin Appl and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, led by its principal conductor Simon Gaudenz, have prefaced this highly dramatic monolith with twelve selected songs, most of which were orchestrated by their author himself: a dozen small, finely polished gems based on texts by Goethe, Mörike and Heyse, whose subtle arrangements leave no doubt that Hugo Wolf would certainly have had the makings of a 'proper composer'. Whether then, of course, the ingenious things would have been created that posterity owes to him - that is another matter.

Georg Christoph Wagenseil: Trio Sonatas for Flute, Violin and Bass
Ensemble Klingekunst
cpo 555406-2
Release: 5 August 2022
The present trio sonatas for transverse flute, violin and basso continuo by Christoph Georg Wagenseil, who was one of the most famous Viennese composers of his time, are all conceived in three movements according to the usual sonata scheme of fast - slow - fast, but they are by no means musical 'mass-produced goods', since the music of the 17th and 18th centuries was, without exception, committed to the musical imitation of the so-called 'affects', whereby this term was understood to mean any human emotion. This imitation of affect was considered the highest goal of composition in those days. As means for this imitation, the composer had all the parameters of composition at his disposal, such as style, genre or form, key, melody, rhythm, tempo, meter, harmony, dynamics, articulation and instrumentation, whereby he should always choose such means and their combinations that best corresponded to the intended affect. The Ensemble Klingekunst interprets these trio sonata jewels - all first recordings, by the way - expressively and passionately.

The Sounds of the Arpeggione - Franz Schubert, Johann Friedrich Franz Burgmüller
Lorenz Duftschmid, Paul Gulda, David Bergmüller, Chris Pichler, Michael Dangl
cpo 555446-2
Release: 5 August 2022
Franz Schubert's so-called 'Arpeggione Sonata' owes its peculiar name to a long-forgotten string instrument that was usually referred to in Vienna in the 1820s as the 'bowed guitar' or 'guitar-violoncello'. It was an invention of the Viennese instrument maker Georg Stauffer and was quite popular for about a decade. After that, it disappeared into the annals of history. If Schubert had not dedicated his famous sonata to the instrument, the arpeggione would have been long forgotten. But this way, the memory of the instrument was kept alive. To complement the great 'Arpeggione Sonata', soloist Lorenz Duftschmid has recorded five Schubert songs in instrumental versions (the poems in question are recited before the instrumental version in each case) as well as three nocturnes by an almost forgotten Romantic from the Rhineland: Friedrich Burgmüller. His 'Trois Nocturnes', available in various versions, sound most beautiful and full of emotion on arpeggione and guitar, the two instruments so closely related.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber: Sonatae Violino Solo 1681
Plamena Nikitassova, Les Élémens
cpo 555481-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 5 August 2022
The opus most decisive for Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's fame and widely used into the eighteenth century are the eight sonatas for violin and basso continuo published in 1681. Since the Sonatae unarum fidium by the Viennese violin virtuoso Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, published in 1664, no violin solos of comparable extraordinary compositional and technical ambition had appeared. With his sonatas of 1681, Biber succeeded in setting new standards and achieving a previously unattained synthesis of equally high virtuoso demands, artistic content and compositional technical level. Our exceptional violinist Plamena Nikitassova uses a historical playing technique for her interpretation - a technique that is hardly cultivated any more even among baroque violinists. The instrument is not placed on the shoulder and, if necessary, held with the chin, but is placed against the left breast. This also requires a different posture of the bow: the right arm is not raised very high, the thumb is placed on the hair and contributes to the tension. The sound is noticeably removed from the late Baroque aesthetic, but develops its own charm, especially in the execution of the rapid passagework.

Josefine Opshal: Atrium
Dacapo 8.226596
Release: 5 August 2022
Atrium, Danish cellist and composer Josefine Opsahl's debut for Dacapo Records, is a strikingly original statement exploring the duality of her music. Opsahl's distinctive set-up employs cello and live electronics, moulded together into a precisely defined box of digital loops, bodies and buildings, woman and machine.

Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák - Works for String Quartet
Wihan Quartet
Nimbus Alliance NI6422
Release: 5 August 2022
Loss of hearing forced Smetana to leave his position at the Provincial Theatre and withdraw from social life and his musical career. In 1876 he moved to his daughter Zofie´s house in Jabkenice. Here he was able to enjoy the calm and quite needed so that he could focus on his compositions. The change in his circumstances made him reflect on his life and he captured his feelings in his String Quartet No. 1 in E-minor From My Life. Smetana described the work as 'intimate and private music for four instruments talking about my life'. However, the opposite was true of this epic score of programme music. Until this time the techniques used by Smetana in this quartet had only been used by composers writing for symphony orchestra. He used symphonic techniques with brilliant effect for chamber music.From 1892 to 1895 Dvořák was the director of the National Conservatory in New York. He composed many masterpieces during this time and one of them was his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American. It is one of Dvořák's most played works and one of the most popular works in the chamber music repertoire. Filled with joy and optimism, Dvořák tried to capture the characteristics of American music, using pentatonic scales, syncopation and melodic themes of typical American revue music. After the successful premiere of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, German music publisher, Simrock, asked Dvořák to compose more pieces in the Slavonic style. At first Dvořák declined, but then changed his mind and he composed Eight Waltzes for Piano, Op.54. These waltzes are straightforward, jovial and uncomplicated. Dvořák arranged two of the waltzes for string quartet and they were premiered by an ad hoc ensemble with the first violin played by his friend Ferdinand Lachner. Simrock never published the Op.54 set of waltzes and yet they spread among musicians and became very popular. They were finally published in 1911 to mark what would have been Dvořák´s 70th birthday.

Ludvig Norman: Symphony No 3 & Overtures
Oulu Symphony Orchestra / Johannes Gustavsson
Ondine ODE 1391-2
Release: 5 August 2022
This album includes a large portion of the orchestral works written by Ludvig Norman (1831–1885), 'The Swedish Brahms', including his masterpiece work, Symphony No. 3, performed by the Oulu Symphony Orchestra under Johannes Gustavsson. Ludvig Norman was a highly fascinating artist who inspired a generation of Swedish composers and was widely respected, although his 3rd Symphony was premièred only after the composer's death.

George London: Arias by Offenbach, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Verdi, Wagner
George London, Teresa Stich-Randall, Maria von Ilosvay, Valérie Bak, Astrid Varnay, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Moralt, Richard Kraus, Hermann Weigert
Orfeo C220051
Release: 5 August 2022
Re-release of sold-out C502001. Among those singers who, in the mid-twentieth century, stepped onto the opera stages of the world and into the shoes of the legendary thirties and forties generation of singers, the bass-baritone George London was an exception. His voice, with its inimitable and balanced timbre in all registers, found virtually no comparison. London was a true bass-baritone whose voice, even in extreme reaches, could maintain its dark tone thanks to a conscious style and articulation and a wide-ranging expressive ability. His international career was brought to an abrupt and all too early end in the 1960s. During an operation one of his vocal chords was damaged and his voice never regained its force and beauty. While in Munich during a tour of Europe, London suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died in New York in 1985. The present album with recordings from the Bavarian broadcast archive feature the legendary bass-baritone at the height of his career in the 1950s.

Antonín Dvořák: Hussite Overture & Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto
Henryk Szeryng, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Rafael Kubelík
Orfeo C220081
Release: 5 August 2022
Re-release of sold-out C719071.The visiting Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra opened its concert at the 1967 Vienna Festival with a high-octane performance of Dvořák's patriotic overture The Hussites. In the Brahms Violin Concerto, the elegant soloist Henryk Szeryng and the conductor Rafael Kubelík entered into a musical dialogue that was both subtly sensitive and quick-witted.

Reflections: Works by Copland, Gershwin et al.
Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Magnus Lindgren, Lina Nyberg, Andrea Tarrodi, Anders Nilsson, Emilia Amper, Svante Henryson
Västerås Sinfonietta, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Lina Nyberg
DB Productions DBCD203
Release: 5 August 2022
Swedish-based British conductor, Simon Crawford-Phillips, leads the award-winning Swedish chamber orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, in Aaron Copland's 'Appalachian Spring', George Gershwin's 'Variations on I Got Rhythm', and reflections by various Swedish composers on the famous Swedish traditional tune, 'Visa från Utanmyra'. Bonus tracks: Exclusive and rarely heard alternative ending of Copland's 'Appalachian Spring'!

Festa patronale: I suoni della tradizione fasanese
Paolo Paternò, Antonio Gidiuli, Giuseppe Oronzo Campanella, Mosè Petrella Tirone, Unknown
Banda Città di Fasano 'Ignazio Ciaia', Silvestro Sabatelli
Digressione Music DIGR128
Release: 5 August 2022
The sounds of the band are undoubtedly an integral and essential part of those rites, sacred and profane, which characterized the patronal feasts of the south and of Puglia in particular because they offer the most spontaneous and immediate musical commentary. They perform a double task: they translate what is being done into musical affections and reinterpret the ancient lesson of the Neapolitan school of music with a fluid and only apparently obvious melodic vein; that musical teaching, exemplary ferried in the nineteenth century by Fedele Fenaroli (1730-1818), Niccolò Zingarelli (1752-1837) and by the Altamuran Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870), which expresses itself in the marches in an immediate and effective way through ideas and music by composers from Fasano and not, who formed the repertoire of marches between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, integrating it with loans and reductions from melodramas. This last aspect of the reduction from the opera also shows how much the melodrama was widespread, felt, appreciated, reinterpreted and performed in many forms (often far from the original) in a time when it was difficult to enjoy it (if not in the theater ) due to the absence of record diffusion. The publication of this record testifies on the one hand the passionate attachment to tradition and on the other the intelligent and timely initiative to promote the area and its extraordinary history and culture.

The Year That Never Was
Ernesto Lecuona, Frederic Chopin, Domenico Scarlatti, George Gershwin, Mily Balakirev, Ludwig van Beethoven, Andrei Tudor
Matei Varga, piano
Sono Luminus DSL-92258
Release: 5 August 2022
To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy memories feel more or less the same; but the unhappy times are experienced differently by each one of us. We've all had some really tough weeks, which sometimes turned into months, and (with a bit of bad luck) into years ... I like to think that 'off' years help us grow and prepare for the beautiful things that will undoubtedly come our way (I am an optimist at heart), but living through dark times is a complicated process. The year 2020 was complicated indeed. The world was put on hold and we hardly remember what we did in February, or May, or September ... Many suffered from isolation and the inability to socialize - and they probably prefer tothink back to 2020 as a year that never happened… I, on the other hand, felt liberated by the lack of schedules, appointments and the pressure to be productive - that horrid word which is killing our souls, slowly but surely. Instead I embraced seclusion and enjoyed the time off which was forced upon us. Yes, I did miss performing in front of a live audience and traveling to beautiful places, but I found that staying home, with my piano, offered me a better view towards my inner self and a chance to experience the joy of a new discovery. That was for me the Cuban master Ernesto Lecuona… Two years later, the pandemic isn't over and neither is the collective anxiety - but at least I can offer you this very personal recording, which I hope will take your mind away from the current realities. This is music's most phenomenal power - to bring joy when we really need it! ...

On the move
Alex Mincek, Eric Wubbels, Ashkan Behzadi, Mario Diaz de Leon
Stradivarius STR37218
Release: 5 August 2022
'Ryoanji', composed by John Cage for the Ensemble Alternance and the double bass player Joëlle Léandre, is one of the founding works of the Ensemble. Since then, the Ensemble Alternance's attention to contemporary American music has been constant through the revival of works by leading composers such as Ives, Crumb, Carter, Brown... but also creations by David Lang, Jason Eckardt... This new generation of composers is the heir to the pioneering spirit of John Cage. It is also emblematic of a melting pot society open to cultures from around the world. Although expressing themselves in resolutely different styles, the four composers featured on this recording: Alex Mincek, Eric Wubbels, Ashkan Behzadi and Mario Diaz de Leon, have two things in common. The first is a high level of instrumental practice: one is a saxophonist, the other a pianist or an electric guitarist... evolving in a vast field of expression (from experimental, alternative and electronic music to rock or jazz). The second is Columbia University (New York), where they acquired knowhow and in-depth knowledge of music writing and where, in turn, some of them have taught or still teach.

Luca Fiorentini & Jakub Tchorzewski: Live in Bologna
Karol Szymanowski, Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Meyer, Fryderyk Chopin
Stradivarius STR37227
Release: 5 August 2022
Luca Fiorentini and Jakub Tchorzewski's concert was recorded on September 25, 2014 at the Oratorio San Filippo Neri in Bologna as part of the 'Il Nuovo l'Antico' section of the XXXIII edition of the Bologna Festival. 'Il Nuovo l'Antico' was in turn divided into two cycles: 'Delizie e Tenebre' and 'La Triade Polacca: Chopin-Szymanowski-Lutosławski', conceived by the artistic director of the Festival, the Venetian musicologist Prof. Mario Messinis - former artistic director of the Biennale Musica in Venice and of the RAI Orchestras of Turin and Milan, as well as superintendent of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice - to whom this recording is dedicated. The duo Fiorentini-Tchorzewski presented a repertoire that spans more than a century, adding to the 'triad' the living Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer. The cycle 'La Triade Polacca: Chopin-Szymanowski-Lutosławski' was organized in collaboration with the Polish Institute of Rome.

Impressiones Nocturnes
Patricia Pagny
Frédéric Chopin, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Georges Migot, Francis Poulenc, Jean-Jacques Werner, Georges Auric
Stradivarius STR37229
Release: 5 August 2022
Tender or troubled, dark or starlit, the night has long been a source of artistic creativity. Whether it is simple music to help children fall asleep, or broader forms inspired by the nocturnal theme, this recording suggests some of the many facets of an essentially romantic element, dictated by the unconscious. Twentieth-century France was certainly one of the countries that developed this theme most, proposing a poetic content with an extensive panorama, ranging from melancholy and mystery, to pure and enchanting melody, passing through the instantaneous description of a scene or a painting, the aim of each composer being to exploit a flexible structure, favouring the alternation between highly expressive lyrical passages and other more or less animated moments. Far from the clamour of the media, Patricia Pagny has for years made a name for herself in the world of music by following an atypical path marked by important tours abroad. Her frequent appearances in Asia and Europe, the masterclasses she holds in various music centres, her position as Professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, her presence on the juries of international competitions, her commitment to the promotion of the new generation of musicians, within the framework of the «Tasti'Era-Projects» programme of which she is artistic director, as well as a rich and varied discography, are all evidence of her intense activity.

Evocaciones
Enrique Granados, Gaspar Cassadó, Manuel De Falla, Isaac Albéniz
Martina Biondi, Pietro Locatto
Stradivarius STR37232
Release: 5 August 2022
This program stems from the desire to plunge into a succession of short and idiomatic musical forms that can 'evoke' the expressive nuances of the protagonists of the Spanish national school, which developed between the XIX and the XX century. The deep voice of the cello and the brightness of the guitar perfectly blend in this repertoire to recall the taste, the cultural world, and the expressive spirit that originated it and that underlies, in every page, the stories and the weaves of its protagonists. The first pioneers of this Iberian impressionism were the renowned pianists and composers Isaac Albéniz (18601909) and Enrique Granados (18971966). Catalans and spokesmen of a national music filtered through a more European outlook, born from their parisian stays and the rich cultural excitement of the Barcelona of that era. Both, through their pianos, manage to render a Spain seen from the outside. The popular pieces for piano (or for voice and piano, like in Elegia Eterna) collected here, evoke colors and sounds that transcend the instrument; they recall the dances, the folk songs, the nightly atmospheres, the cante jondo and the voice of the guitar itself to such an extent that the following vibrant transcriptions of guitarists like Tarrega, Llobet and Segovia sparked the popular false belief that these pieces were created for the guitar in the first place. Therefore the guitar presents itself as the ideal instrument for this repertoire since its conception, but the expressive intensity of the cello, not only perfectly marries with the tone of the six-strings, but also seems to infuse the singing with a fluidity, a richness, and a narrative intensity that no transcription for solo guitar could ever fully support.

Gipsy Jazz Style
Pietro Lazazzara, Antonio Solazzo, Francesco Clemente, Maria Pia Lazazzara, Sabrina Loforese, Luigi Vania, Nicoletta di Sabato, Giuseppe Magistro
Stradivarius STR57925
Release: 5 August 2022
This album represents an innovative and renewed production path started in 2020 with my first album 'My Art of Gypsy Jazz' published by Stradivarius Music label with which a solid collaboration has been established. Already in the previous work, my aim was to immediately highlight in the title a personal vision of the Gypsy style, starting from its stylistic peculiarities, and adding 'colour' in a harmonic and stylistic combination with my experience. Despite maintaining the basic ensemble of guitars and bass, with 'Gypsy Jazz Style', it was necessary to complete my compositions, depending on the need, with the valuable collaboration of many friends / musicians who, with enthusiasm have been involved. Even the desired sounds are more modern than the previous album. Each note is meaningful!At the root of this collection of unpublished works there is the 'contamination' and 'inclusion' of music styles that have occurred in the journey of my artistic life. The unmistakable touch and sound of the Manouche guitar and the sound, creative and emotional impacts that Django Reinhardt had on me, have inevitably influenced my vision and my path, in summary: 'Gypsy Jazz style'.

Music for archlute, guitar and harpsichord
Gaspar Sanz, Luigi Boccherini, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Arcangelo Lori, Domenico Pellegrini, Santiago De Murcia, Giovanni Zamboni, Alessandro Piccinini, Paolo Rigano
Paolo Rigano, Cinzia Guarino
Tactus TC 670005
Release: 5 August 2022
Among the motivations of this disc, the most important one is the wish to present the various styles and periods in a clear, simple way, endeavouring to avoid superabundance and the accumulation of crossover deposits that are often heard where it seems that the music of the past cannot be self-sufficient and needs an extra chromatic and rhythmic shove in order to catch the listeners' attention, inducing them to compare it with the commercial, repetitive entertainment repertoire. In this musical journey between Italy and Spain of the Baroque era, Paolo Rigano on the archlute and baroque guitar and Cinzia Guarino on the harpsichord are interpreting a singular anthology of pieces enriching the playing through the practice of the basso continuo that marked the entire musical period from the Renaissance to the late Baroque.

Lirica da Camera sui testi di Pascoli, Moretti, Panzini, Moretti
Roberto Berzero, Claudio Ferrara, Heinrich Hunterhofer, Giorgi Barozzi, Angelo Palmisano, Filippo-Maria Magi, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Silvia Baroni Pasolini, Nicky Pipita, Christhian Paterniti, Francesco Vitucci
Monica Boschetti, Omar Montanari, Andrea Jin Chen, Pia Zanca, Giacomo Carnevali
Tactus TC 950007
Release: 5 August 2022
The pieces recorded here have a common characteristic: they are all inspired by lines of poets who were born in Romagna or attracted by this enchanted land. On the one hand Pascoli and Moretti, on the other Panzini, who was practically a citizen of Rimini, and Carducci, who was an enthusiastic visitor in the countryside of Cesena. Romagna is the place where their respective memorial buildings stand, ranging from those in San Mauro Pascoli and Cesenatico to the Casa Rossa in Bellaria and Villa Silvia in Lizzano, above Renato Serra's Cesena. These four houses actually have been united by a strong project, whose goal was to give rise to a musical competition under the aegis of the four illustrious men of letters. This was the origin of the 'Primo Concorso internazionale di composizione lirica da camera su testi di poeti e scrittori di Romagna', organised by N.O.T.A. Music, a cultural association that is quite zealous and innovative in the sphere of didactic and productive activities. A selection from this competition constitutes most of the programme of the CD.

Sir Donald Tovey: Chamber Music, Vol. 3 – The Complete Cello Sonatas
Alice Neary, Kate Gould, Gretel Dowdeswell
Toccata Classics TOCC 0497
Release: 5 August 2022
Donald Tovey (1875–1940) has long been known as one of the finest writers on music in English – but he saw himself primarily as a composer. His occasionally turbulent friendship with Pau Casals was the spur for a monumental concerto and three sonatas: for solo cello, two cellos and cello with piano. The cello was the ideal instrument for Tovey's Brahmsian musical language, with its long, singing lines unfolding in effortless counterpoint – though the huge passacaglia that ends the solo sonata also demands a virtuoso technique. The brief Bach arrangement recorded here for the first time arose when the twelve-year-old Tovey added a cello line to one of Bach's best-known preludes, originally for lute.

Fridrich Bruk: Orchestral Music, Vol 3
Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Maris Kupčs
Toccata Classics TOCC 0645
Release: 5 August 2022
This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents: Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world's oceans, and No. 23 takes its material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish-Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of colour and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance.

Robert Fürstenthal: Complete Choral Music, Vol 1
Ian Buckle, Richard Casey, Philippa Hyde, Emma Roberts, Rory Carver, Felix Kemp, Borealis, Skipton Camerata, Stephen Muir
Toccata Classics TOCC 0648
Release: 5 August 2022
Like many Austrian Jews, Robert Fürstenthal (1920–2016) fled to the USA after the German invasion of his country in 1938. Music then became his link to his homeland: 'When I compose, I am back in Vienna'. As an amateur composer, Fürstenthal preferred to work on a small scale, and his output of songs and chamber music is considerable. But he also wrote two sizable works for chamber choir, the first of which, in this series of two albums, is book-ended by piano sonatas – all three works revealing that the tradition of Schubert and Brahms was alive in the California sun.

Henriëtte Bosmans: Early Chamber Music
Solarek Piano Trio
Toccata Classics TOCC 0654
Release: 5 August 2022
The three works by the Amsterdam-born Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952) in this album all date from her early to mid-twenties. The Violin Sonata and Piano Trio are substantial pieces, both animated by the passion of youth – and, given their quality, it is astounding that they should be receiving their first recordings here. At this stage in her life Bosmans was still writing in an expansive, Romantic style, although echoes of French Impressionism, Spain and the Middle East can often be heard – and from time to time the Violin Sonata nods to Bach and Reger.

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Cello Suites, Vol 1
Pavlos Carvalho
Willowhayne Records WHR072
Release: 5 August 2022
There has not been a more important or influential body of cello music written before or since the 6 Bach Cello Suites. Now treated almost reverentially by cellists, for two hundred years they were virtually unknown until a young Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals, discovered them in a little shop and breathed life back into these masterpieces. For some the music is deeply spiritual, for others the pieces are closely connected with nature… or perhaps it is the ingenuity of their structure and symmetry that inspires people to be moved by the Cello Suites. Whatever the reasons, people always come back to Bach. Through, seemingly the most simple means, Bach speaks to the soul and the intellect at once. Like the best fairy tales or myths, his music is layered and can be enjoyed and understood at different levels at different times of our lives. He is everywhere and a deeply rooted part of our lives, from performances in the greatest concert halls to contemporary films, used as music of political statement, as exciting imaginative music to be explored by the greatest jazz musicians, for mothers to soothe their babies, for people to celebrate weddings or deep consolation at funerals. The profound imagination behind the cathartic simplicity of Bach's Cello Suites makes his music a companion for life for the listener and a mystery to be constantly re-examined and explored by the performer.

Fresque Marine: Forgotten French Treasures for Harp, Vol 1
Auguste Chapuis, Henriette Renié, Henri Büsser, Marcel Tournier, Jacques Pillois, Odette de Montesquiou, Marcelle Soulage
Alexander Rider, harp
Willowhayne Records WHR074
Release: 5 August 2022
An abundance of brilliant French harpists at the dawn of the last century led to composers in that country being galvanised to write for the harp as a solo instrument. Works by Debussy, Fauré, Ravel and Pierné are still the staple repertoire of harpists, but there exists much more music unjustly neglected and, until now, almost forgotten. Fresque Marine brings this music once more into the light, using the intimate and rich tones of an original French Erard concert harp, such as the composers would have heard in their aural imagination. The recital features music by such well-known harpist composers as Renié and Tournier, but also celebrates less well-known composers, particularly pieces by female composers, all brought forth in a kaleidoscope of subtle colours.

Ludwig van Beethoven: The Complete Violin Sonatas
Christopher White, Melanie Reinhard
Willowhayne Records WHR076 (3 CDs)
Release: 5 August 2022
Christopher White and Melanie Reinhard have been performing the Beethoven Violin Sonatas together for over thirty years, from when they first met in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music. They have become a staple of their recitals in combination with other repertoire. Although the ten sonatas are mostly early works and not his most significant (compared to the string quartets for example) they are a charming and varied set of compositions. It is a shame that often one only hears the select (and famous) few such as the Spring or Kreutzer sonatas because some of the lesser-known sonatas (for instance Op. 12 No. 2 in A major or the glorious slow movement in the sixth sonata) deserve a much wider audience.

El Rebelde
Art Song Colorado DASP 005
Release: 5 August 2022
Baritone Andrew Garland is front and center on a new album of songs by Gabriela Lena Frank and Dmitri Shostakovich. 'El Rebelde' (The Rebel) brings together the vocal compositions of Frank and Shostakovich, two composers who transformed Spanish language song through their innovative settings. Along with the pianist Jeremy Reger, Garland performs Cantos de Cifar y el Mar Dulce (Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea) in its first recording. Cifar is a setting of a collection of poems by the Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra that recounts the odyssey of a harp-playing mariner who travels the waters of Lake Nicaragua. Eight songs are contained on this album, and Frank intends to ultimately set all 30 poems of this saga. Also on this album is Las Cinco Lunas de Lorca (The Five Moons of Lorca), with tenor Javier Abreu and Cuatro Canciones Andinas (Four Andean Songs), both by Frank; and Spanish Songs Op 100 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Lorca, with text by the Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz, describes the assassination of the literary giant Federico García Lorca in the Spanish Civil War. Texts for Four Andean Songs draw on traditional poetry of the Quechua people, descendants of the ancient Incas. The Peruvian folklorist José María Arguedas collected and translated these poems from Quechua into Spanish. Shostakovich's songs are traditional Spanish tunes in simple arrangements: Spanish culture through a Russian lens. Garland says he admires Frank's music for its "driving rhythms, the jazz harmonies, the non-classical vocal techniques, the Spanish language, the high F#s and Gs." He continues, "Besides her innovative music-making, I adore Gabi's philosophy: when western 'classical music' assimilates another culture, it must make both cultures equal: one culture can't dominate the other."

James M Stephenson: Visions
Lake Forest Symphony / Vladimir Kulenovic
Cedille Records 3014 (digital only)
Release: 5 August 2022
This is the first recording of James M Stephenson's Symphony No 3, 'Visions', the prolific Chicago composer's largest orchestral work to date. Illinois' Lake Forest Symphony, led by multiple award-winning conductor Vladimir Kulenovic, performs the four-movement, 40-minute work, which Stephenson says embodies 'a formal sense of melody and tonality, embedded in a contemporary soundscape,' a signature characteristic of his compositional style. A composer of 'straightforward, unabashedly beautiful sounds' (Boston Herald), Stephenson says the symphony is informed, as is all his music, by his prior experience as a professional orchestral trumpeter and conductor. In his program note, he writes that the symphony's subtitle, 'Visions,' derives from images he kept in mind as he composed the work: 'I would literally close my eyes and imagine myself sitting there, in the performance space. I would then only write music that I could envision getting colleagues, patrons, conductors, and young versions of myself at the edge of their seats, eager to play and experience.' Stephenson wrote his Third Symphony in 2019 on commission from the University of Miami's Frost School of Music. Alexander Magalong, who conducted the work's premiere in April of that year, wrote, 'Stephenson has produced an excellent, accessible, modern work that truly deserves an unlimited number of future performances.' James Ginsburg, Cedille Records founder and president, and the recording's producer, suggests listeners take note of 'the engaging, perpetual-motion type motor rhythms in the faster movements and the beautiful pacing and cinematic scope of the Adagio second movement. 'A particular highlight for me,' Ginsburg says, 'is the jazzy, smoky middle section of the third movement, marked 'Vivo scherzando,' where the composer adds three saxophones to the orchestration to give that section a completely different sound from the rest of the piece.'

1 AUGUST 2022

Grażyna Bacewicz, The 'First Lady of Polish Music'
Diana Ambache
Cambridge University Press - Cambridge Elements - Women in Music (book)
ISBN: 9781108913485 (online)
Online publication: 1 August 2022
Print publication: 18 August 2022
This Element explores the life and work of Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), as a composer, violinist, pianist and author. She lived a remarkable life in Poland, navigating the complex world of Polish communist society and Soviet dominance after the Second World War, and brought Polish music to wider European attention. The Element describes the historical context of her life, her major achievements, and the language and development of her compositions, which attracted notable interest in Polish musical life. She wrote a wide range of pieces, making a significant contribution to the string repertoire, with important String Quartets and violin works. In her sixty years she achieved impressive triumphs as a women composer, served the Polish Composers Union and often judged major international competitions.
Available free online from 3-17 August 2022

29 JULY 2022

Haydn: Piano Sonatas Vol 11
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Chandos Records CHAN 20193
Release: 29 July 2022
The eleventh – and final – volume of Haydn sonatas with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. As with the previous issues, the programme mixes works from across Haydn's life – in this instance including both the first and the last sonata.

Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn Piano Sextet Piano Quartet Piano Trio
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
Chandos Records CHAN 20256
Release: 29 July 2022
Hot on the heels of their Samuel Coleridge-Taylor album, the acclaimed Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective present this programme featuring Fanny Mendelsson Henshel's rarely heard Piano Quartet and Piano Trio, alongside her brother's more familiar Piano Sextet.

Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 7-9
Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel
Deutsche Grammophon (digital only)
Release: 29 July 2022
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic scored rave reviews for their performances of Antonín Dvořák's masterful final three symphonies in February 2020. Hailed as 'a revelation' by the Los Angeles Times, their interpretations were recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall by Deutsche Grammophon for release as a digital album – the follow-up to the artists' Grammy Award-winning recording of Mahler's Symphony No 8. Available in Dolby Atmos, Antonín Dvořák: Symphonies Nos 7 – 9 captures the power and intensity of Dudamel's vision of three of the greatest works in the symphonic repertoire.

22 JULY 2022

Mozart: 5 Divertimentos, K Anh 299/439b
Claudio Cruz, Gabriel Marin, Alceu Reis
Azul Music AMDA1759
Release: 22 July 2022
The 5 Divertimentos, K Anh 299/439b, originally written by W A Mozart for corno di bassetto (a sort of old 'bass clarinet'), were adapted for string trio in this recording. Considered one of the most beautiful works by the Austrian composer, each piece has five movements, featuring allegros, adagios, menuettos and rondos, which show a remarkable diversification of the aesthetics of this very elegant period in the history of European music. These versions, transcribed for string trio, here exquisitely performed by Claudio Cruz on violin, Gabriel Marin on viola and Alceu Reis on cello, highlighted the specific possibilities of the instruments, their plasticity, and dynamics, but also provide a rich and congruent performance a trio of strings. The individual quality of the musicians and the conviviality of years of playing together, show the cohesion of the tuning, the precise articulation, and the immaculate dynamics interpretation. In this unique set of singularities, Mozart's genius is praised by the musical maturity of the trio, which, in its innovative adaptation and performance, promotes a fundamental recording of this masterpiece.

Anthony Brandt: Kassandra
Navona Records NV6438
Release: 22 July 2022
On Kassandra, composer Anthony Brandt and librettist Neena Beber explore two leading issues of our times — climate change and sexual harassment. Based on the Greek myth of Apollo trying to seduce Trojan princess Cassandra, Brandt and Beber tell the tragic yet familiar story of Kassandra, a scientist whose forecasts of climate change are discredited as a result of rejecting sexual advances from a venture capitalist. In the ancient myth, Apollo places a curse on Cassandra: she will see the future but no one will believe her. In today's world, scientists face a similar curse, their warnings of our warming planet too often ignored. Brandt and Beber's chamber opera challenges us to heed Kassandra's predictions.

Uncommon Voices - Women Composers from Eastern Europe
Maria Szymanowska, Zara Levina, Grażyna Bacewicz, Dora Pejacevic, Bojana Petrovic Aleksova, Natasha Stojanovska
Natasha Stojanovska, piano
Navona Records NV6440
Release: 22 July 2022
Uncommon Voices from Natasha Stojanovska explores the music of female composers from Eastern Europe. This collections of piano works includes the music of Croatia, North Macedonia, the former Soviet Union, and other Eastern European countries, combined with elements of the western musical tradition. The album includes two of Stojanovska's compositions, Phantasy No. 1 and Phantasy No. 2. The former borrows metrical patterns found in Macedonian folk music; along with elements of tonality and atonality, the piece examines the uncertain boundary between the Macedonian and American cultures. The album also features the works of contemporary composers like Bojana Petrovic Aleksova, as well as historical composers like Maria Szymanowska. Stojanovska is especially proud to bring the music of Szymanowska to the attention of modern listeners; while Szymanowska's music is not performed as often today, her compositions — including the enchanting Nocturne in B-flat major — likely inspired Frederic Chopin. Uncommon Voices offers a long overdue celebration of female composers from Eastern Europe, as interpreted by the capable hands of Natasha Stojanovska.

Mind & Machine, Vol 4
Organic and electronic works by Mara Helmuth, Andrea Vos-Rochefort, Avik Chari, Gina Biver, Juro Kim Feliz
Raello Records RR8070
Release: 22 July 2022
The Mind & Machine series from Ravello Records returns in its fourth installment with a fresh roster of today's electro-acoustic composers. From the depths of the sea to the wildlife that populates our atmosphere and the breaths that form within us, a myriad of mystifying soundscapes await discovery. Innovatively-captured sound samples intertwine with contemporary social issues in this album, commenting on climate change, justice and inequality, and more. Our fragility and recovery are revealed in Gasp, human influence on the environment manifests in green line 2065 and Water Birds, and resilient voices respond in the face of oppression in Hanggang sa Takipsilim.

Stefan Weglowski: Phase_1_4
Kairos 0015122KAI
Release: 22 July 2022

Beethoven: Piano Works
Paul Coriolan Cartianu
Austrian Gramophone AG0027
Release: 22 July 2022

Poèmes Sans Paroles
René Kubelík, Patrizio Mazzola
Orlando Records OR0039
Release: 22 July 2022

Adjacent Spaces
Dries Tack
Orlando Records OR0046
Release: 22 July 2022

Inviting Worlds
John Wineglass, Michael Wittgraf, John A. Carollo, Brian Belet, Richard E Brown, Liova Bueno, Jan Van der Roost, William Copper
Navona Records NV6435
Release: 22 July 2022
From the mysterious magic of our darkest corners to the exuberant atmosphere of Carnaval, infinite possibilities lay within INVITING WORLDS from Navona Records releasing this Friday. The musical dimensions of several composers are explored by the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Zagreb Festival Orchestra, and the National Moravian Silesian Theater Choir in this dynamic journey, offering insight into new realms through imaginative approaches to composition. Even in far away lands, close-to-home concepts are explored in thought-provoking soundscapes, showcasing the rhythmic dexterity and textural nuance of today's orchestras across a wide breadth of compositional styles.

21 JULY 2022

The Metropolitan Opera - A Concert for Ukraine
Decca Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, New York Metropolitan Opera
Release: 22 July 2022
The Metropolitan Opera, Decca Classics, and Deutsche Grammophon present A Concert for Ukraine, an album recorded live at the Met on March 14, 2022, that features the company's complete special concert expressing solidarity with the people of Ukraine. All ticket sales and donations supported relief efforts in Ukraine, and proceeds from the album will also support relief efforts in the country. The album is released digitally (available here) today, and physically in the U.S. later in 2022. 'This album captures a uniquely memorable performance by the Metropolitan Opera and its stars, and demonstrates the power of art to deliver a clear message to the forces of darkness that would destroy a nation,' Peter Gelb, the Met's General Manager, said. 'I hope this concert brings a measure of comfort and moral support to the suffering people of Ukraine, and that it reminds the world that we stand with them.' Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company's Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, with a roster of star musical soloists offering solace through their art. The album opens with the National Anthem of Ukraine, featuring Ukrainian bass-baritone and Met Lindemann Young Artist Vladyslav Buialskyi. Stirring performances of Valentin Silvestrov's 'Prayer for Ukraine'; Barber's Adagio for Strings, Op. 11; and 'Va, pensiero' from Verdi's Nabucco are also included, as well as a moving interpretation of Strauss' Four Last Songs by the incomparable soprano Lise Davidsen. The final selection, the Finale from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, featuring the stellar quartet of soprano Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Piotr Beczała, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, offers a rousing conclusion. Dominic Fyfe, Label Director of Decca Classics, says, 'This is a time for solidarity with those suffering. We are pleased to join with our friends at the Met and our colleagues at Deutsche Grammophon to bring this Concert for Ukraine to a global audience. All the soloists performed without charge, and proceeds from the album will be donated to charities supporting relief efforts in Ukraine. Music can make a difference.' Dr. Clemens Trautmann, President of Deutsche Grammophon, believes that the recording represents a beautiful symbol of support and solidarity. 'A Concert for Ukraine,' he notes, 'enabled some of today's finest musicians to show their compassion and light a beacon of hope for the Ukrainian people.'

15 JULY 2022

Colours of Villa-Lobos
Olga Kopylova, piano
Azul Music AMDA1751
Release: 15 July 2022
The titular pianist from São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), one of the most important orchestra of Latin America, presents in her new album, an anthology of pieces written for piano by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, highlighing the preciousness, creativity and diversity of his compositions.

Elevation
Francesca Khalifa, piano
Sheva Collection
Release: 15 July 2022
This album features the first recording of Tocata by Cuban master composer Alfredo Diez Nieto. This is classical pianist Francesca Khalifa's first album. Praised for her nobility and introspection, and for her determination in serving the music without compromise, Khalifa has kept mostly away from studio recordings so far. This album was conceived during the COVID lockdown and it is meant to be a reflection upon Khalifa's artistic legacy, the tradition of piano playing passing down from Beethoven through Franz Liszt, Claudio Arrau and German Diez Nieto. The connecting theme in the album repertoire is the exploration of the idea of elevation: the album is a journey through various paths to transcendence, its sensations and its nuances, the sublimation or transfiguration of the original state of mind and the conquest of a higher plane of existance. ' It is a tribute to the role of music and art -- says Khalifa -- at a time of loss and rebuilding, as the world emerges from COVID and struggles with unprecedent challenges'. Francesca Khalifa is a Brooklyn-based Italian-Egyptian pianist, researcher, organizer and activist. Awarded by renowned pianist and musicologist Paul Badura – Skoda winner of the Ferrara International Piano Festival in 2014, the pianist's most recent highlights include solo concerts with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra at the Cairo Opera House, the Orchestra Filarmonica Ettore Pozzoli at the Auditorium in Seregno, the Orchestra Sinfonica Junior La Verdi, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra String Quartet, Orchestra Amadeus in New York City. She is also the co-founder and co-director of EXTENSITY Concert Series, a Yamaha Sponsored concert series in New York, which has been featured on NPR, I Care if you Listen TV, WWFM and KAWL FM.

14 JULY 2022

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68,
arranged for solo piano by Otto Singer
Nada Loutfi, piano
4Tay Records CD-4068
Available: 14 July 2022
'After having recording all of Brahms solo piano works, I came across a reduction of the first Symphony in C minor, realized by an important musician of the time of Brahms, Otto Singer. Singer had also done all of Beethoven's symphonies. I have lightly revised Singer's writing for some corrections and clarity of texture. The Symphony is a majestic journey from a tormented atmosphere in C minor, torn in chromaticism to a complete grandiose reconciliation in C major.' A United States citizen of Lebanese/Hungarian descent, Nada Loutfi ('Pianist Nada') is a native of Beirut, Lebanon. Her piano training was hampered by the unrelenting civil war and terrorism which also cost her mother's life. Since then, she has created a career with tremendous depth and breadth. She has just completed the recording of all solo piano works by Johannes Brahms.

11 JULY 2022

Nicholas Hubbell: Piano Works
Ilya Friedberg, piano
Nicholas Hubbell Music
Release: 11 July 2022

8 JULY 2022

Debut
Amorim-Rufino Duo
Azul Music AMDA1755
Release: 8 July 2022
Debut is the first album and recording by Amorim-Rufino Duo, created in 2005 by Brazilian-Canadian musicians Vladimir Rufino on violin and Fabíola Amorim on viola. Featuring a cohesive repertoire that reflects the musicians' history of harmony and partnership, the album features pieces composed for the instruments between 1788 and 2021, including Canadian composer Frank Horvat´s world premiere, Two Hearts in Concert, written especially for the duo. The selection, carefully crafted, included reference pieces in the violin and viola format. In fact, when performing works as distinguished as Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Viola in D Major (1789), by the Moravian composer Paul Wranitzky; Duo for Violin and Viola, Op. 19 No.4 in C Major (1788) by the German Franz Anton Hoffmeister; Duo for Violin and Viola (1946) by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Three Madrigals (1947) by Czech Bohuslav Martinů (in addition to the original piece by Horvat), the duo demonstrate extraordinary synergy of deep lyrical beauty and virtuoso technique. The couple currently resides in Canada, where they have been building a solid international career in chamber music. They have a BA in Music from the Federal University of Paraíba (Brazil), a master's degree from Azusa Pacific University (USA) and a PhD from the University of Alberta (Canada) and are members of the acclaimed Vaughan String Quartet.

Kismet - Vignettes for violin and piano - Elena Kats-Chernin
Vov Dylan, Clemens Leske
Ambition Entertainment AMBITION159
Release: 8 July 2022
Violinist Vov Dylan and Pianist Clemens Leske present an album filled with new music and arrangements from composer Elena Kats-Chernin. This collection of over 10 new works, world premieres and associated performances was born from COVID inactivity, where Vov Dylan and Elena Kats-Chernin found time to grow from musical friends to musical collaborators and in the process delving into the vast array of music that Elena has composed. Renowned Australian Pianist Clemens Leske joined the project and together with Vov and Elena, a program of delightful, personal, playful and extremely musical vignettes was curated. During the 2021 lockdowns, Vov, Clem and numerous other guest performers were able to record these works. They have been recorded in extreme high definition and will be the first collection of works by an Australian Composer to be released in this format.

1 JULY 2022

Daniel Jones Rediscovered Piano Works
Martin Jones, piano
Lyrita SRCD.2396
Release: 1 July 2022
Throughout his life, Welsh composer Daniel Jones (1912-93) claimed never to have written any solo piano music. Following extensive research at the National Archive, pianist Martin Jones and Nimbus / Lyrita's Music Director Adrian Farmer discovered hundreds of piano compositions spanning Daniel Jones' entire life. During the Second World War, Daniel Jones served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps (1940–46): his linguistic skills were required at Bletchley Park as a cryptographer and a decoder of Russian, Romanian and Japanese texts. After the War, Jones won increasing recognition as an innovative composer and enjoyed long friendships with artists including Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards, Grace Williams and most closely, his lifelong school-friend Dylan Thomas. As well as composing song-settings for Thomas's Under Milk Wood and dedicating his Fourth Symphony to Thomas's memory in 1954, Jones edited collections of Thomas's poetry and prose, and in 1977 published the memoir, My Friend Dylan Thomas. Between 1945 and 1985 he composed his cycle of twelve symphonies, each centred on a different semi-tone of the chromatic scale.

27 JUNE 2022

Justin Henry Rubin: Opus Quinquagenarian Volume 1 "The Past Is Always With Us"
Adam Bowles, piano; The Composer's Choir / Daniel Shaw; Virtual orchestrations by Paul DeSilva and William Brueggemann
bandcamp
Release: 27 June 2022
Volume 1 of works by American composer Justin Henry Rubin. This first installment contains pieces for piano solo, choir, chamber orchestra and orchestra. Born in 1971 in New York City, Mr. Rubin is a distinguished professor of music in Minnesota, where he resides with his wife and son. "If music has any function at all for people, it is to grapple with the reality of impermanence." -Justin Henry Rubin

17 JUNE 2022

Philip Glass
Kristina Socanski, piano solo
Oclassica
Release: 17 June 2022
In this album, Kristina Socanski continues her exploration of music written by Philip Glass, while looking beyond its categorization as "minimal" and exploring its aesthetic qualities and appeal from a highly personal perspective. She investigates the non-repetitive in repetition, the different ways in which a phrase can be formed in a moment of inspired listening and the timbre and color which she associates with the sound universes of Chopin and Debussy. Philip Glass (1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and associated with minimalism. Glass himself takes distance from the minimalist label and prefers to speak of himself as a composer of 'music with repetitive structures'.

8 JUNE 2022

SaxSpectrum 3 - New Music for Alto and Soprano Saxophone
Glen Gillis
MSR Classics MS1712 (2 CDs)
Release: 8 June 2022
A continuation of the SaxSpectrum series, and a collection of new and stylistically diverse music for saxophone. All compositions were commissioned, written for, or written by Glen Gillis to promote the saxophone and the work of Canadian composers. Glen Gillis maintains an active schedule in saxophone performance. He has performed at numerous international music conferences, including the World Saxophone Congresses and North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial and Regional Conferences, and in recitals in North America, Europe, Iceland and China. Gillis' diverse performance career and musical experience has spanned four decades in the classical and jazz genres, with many published compositions for saxophone and for concert band.

Harbach V.15 – Orchestral Music VI
LPO
MSR Classics MS1714
Release: 8 June 2022
Barbara Harbach has a large catalog of works, including symphonies, operas, works for string and chamber ensemble, choral anthems, ballet, musicals and film scores. She has also composed music for organ, harpsichord and piano and has arranged numerous Baroque works for brass and organ. A gifted performer as well, Harbach has toured extensively as both an organist and harpsichordist throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Her lively performances and recordings have captured the imagination of many American composers; the body of work written for and dedicated to her is substantial. Harbach is also heavily involved in the research, editing, publication and recording of manuscripts of 18th century keyboard composers, as well as historical and contemporary women composers.

Soul of Brazil
Martha Marchena
MSR Classics MS1764
Release: 8 June 2022
After a long parentheses, Cuban-American pianist Martha Marchena returns to play as beautifully as her vast array of followers are accustomed to. The medium she selects to use is a new recording; the music she interprets is by Heitor Villa-Lobos, a composer dear to her, and the subject of her doctoral thesis.

3 JUNE 2022

Victor Herbiet: Airs & Danses
Victor Herbiet, saxophone, Jean-François Guay, saxophone, Marc Djokic, violin, Julian Armour, cello, Jean Desmarrais, piano
Centrediscs CMCCD 29822
Release: 3 June 2022
Airs & Danses is an album of original compositions by Canadian composer and saxophonist Victor Herbiet. The album features Victor Herbiet himself playing alto and soprano saxophone as a solo instrument and in diverse chamber ensembles. Joining him are pianist Jean Desmarais, violinist Marc Djokic, cellist Julian Armour, and fellow saxophonist Jean-François Guay. The title Airs & Danses not only refers to the eponymous piece but also to the album as a whole where we can hear a variety of dances from around the world including a tango, waltzes and the pas de deux. The melodic and upbeat works found on the album draw from various influences such as French impressionism, Canadian folk, American jazz and Latin music. Music lovers and connoisseurs alike are sure to enjoy the variety of sounds this album has to offer.

Gerald Barry: In the Asylum
Adi Tal, Darragh Morgan, Fidelio Trio, Gerald Barry, Mary Dullea, Rose Redgrave
Mode Records mode 332
Release: 3 June 2022
This album collects works for piano through piano quartet by Irish composer Gerald Barry. All, except for In the Asylum are first recordings. Barry has had a long association with Darragh Morgan and for years both have wanted to record these works with the Fidelio Trio. The music moves from the 1979 Rothko inspired Ø for piano quartet to the longest piece on the album, 1998, for violin and piano. Ø is as severely contained as 1998 is explosive. In general the music is more concerned with pure material than color, and so may be played on any instruments. The solo piano piece All day at home busy with my own affairs appears calmly at one with being alone, but is also used frenziedly in Barry's opera Salome. All is not quiet on the home front. There is the hallucinogenic piano trio, In The Asylum, the Le Vieux Sourd setting of Auld Lang Syne which would work perfectly on pub/bar pianos, Midday for violin and piano, a meditation on landscape, the melancholy Baroness von Ritkart, and the testicular whirlwind of Triorchic Blues. Composer supervised performances by the Fidelio Trio (Darragh Morgan, Mary Dullea and Adi Tal) with guest artists Gerald Barry (piano on All day at home busy with my own affairs) and joined by Rose Redgrave (viola on Ø).

1 MAY 2022

Ponce Complete Piano Works 3
Álvaro Cendoya, piano
Grand Piano GP772
Release: May 2022
Not only was Manuel Ponce the leading figure in the emergence of Mexican nationalism but his music embodies a wide variety of influences. Nowhere is this more evident than in his writing for solo piano, and this album, the third of eight volumes, explores three specific facets. The first is his youthful concert studies, which are virtuosic, atmospheric and memorably evocative. The second, the Veinte piezas fáciles ('Twenty Easy Pieces'), consist of ingenious pianistic adaptations of Mexican folk songs and dances, some indigenous. The third element is his personalised use of Romanticism in the form of mazurkas, character pieces and the dazzling Bersagliera. Álvaro Cendoya continues his acclaimed cycle dedicated to the complete piano music of Manuel Ponce.

19 APRIL 2022

Formas del Tiempo
Elena Klionsky plays piano music of Martin Matalon
MSR Classics MS1789
DOS Formas del Tiempo is the perfect antidote to the recently published article in The Wall Street Journal called 'Songs Without Listeners' by Barton Swaim -- a book review of The War on Music by John Mauceri: pianist Elena Klionsky always tries to champion new music to the enjoyment of her audiences! The significance of Formas del Tiempo is its musical content full of Argentinian rhythms intertwined with contemporary French elegance; its connection to The Juilliard School (the composer, the pianist, and the second pianist, Salome Jordania, in La Makina are all alumni; New Juilliard Ensemble, and Joel Sachs as the ensemble's conductor); its brilliant twice Grammy-nominated recording engineer, Dale Ashley; and, probably most important, the pianist, who navigated her road to recovery during twelve hand/arm/shoulder surgeries following an accident, who never gave up and continued learning and recording this extraordinary music.

8 APRIL 2022

Mozart Minore
Mozart: Piano Concertos No 20 K 466, No 24 K 491, Adagio K 540
See Siang Wong, piano; Southwest German Philharmonic / Philipp von Steinaecker
RCA Red Seal 5917322
Release: 8 April 2022

JANUARY 2022

Beethoven Trilogy 2: Childhood
See Siang Wong, piano
RCA Red Seal
Release: January 2022
Pianist See Siang Wong continues with his trilogy for Beethoven's 250th jubilee. This second album presents works from Beethoven's youth: the enthralling Kurfürsten Sonatas, the playful Dressler Variations (his first published piano piece, written when he was just 12 years old), his lesser-known but lively E-flat major Concerto and the energetic Rondo for Piano and Orchestra. The album concludes with the Variations on a Swiss Song as a small encore.

2022

Laus Deo
John Robinson
Regent Records REGCD 561
Release: 2022
In 1969 the British organ builder, J W Walker, built a remarkable new organ for Blackburn Cathedral, utilising some pipework – including some by the distinguished French builder, Cavaillé-Coll – from the previous organ. Walker's new organ, designed in consultation with the then Director of Music, John Bertalot, was original, bold, and daring – and unprecedented in an Anglican cathedral. They created an instrument that has become world-renowned as one of the most iconic, exciting, and distinguished instruments in the country. In 2001/2 major work was carried out by David Wood of Huddersfield which enlarged the instrument to 4-manuals and made a few small tonal modifications. In 2019 the organ celebrated its 50th anniversary and this is celebrated (slightly belatedly due to Covid postponements!) in this new recording with the current Director of Music, John Robinson. The wide-ranging capabilites of the organ are demonstrated in an eclectic programme of virtuoso British organ music from the last hundred years, including the first recording of John Bertalot's stunning Variations on the hymn tune, Regent Square, for pedal solo. John Robinson is the Organist and Director of Music at Blackburn Cathedral, where he oversees a thriving Cathedral Choir, and Music Department. He is Director of Blackburn Music Society (the town's historic Choral Society), and of Blackburn Chamber Choir.

Tremor
Robert Nairn, double bass
Ablaze Records ar-00043
Release: 2022
A tour de force set of performances by Australian bassist extraordinaire Robert Nairn. Through his collaborations with composers Barsom, Balliett, Askim, Knehans, Gershon and Millet, Nairn ranges across repertoire from concerto to sonata, from duo to work with electronics. This is a remarkable journey for any listener wishing to hear how brilliant an acoustic double bass can be in all of these varies guises.

Douglas Knehans: Cloud Ossuary
Ablaze Records ar-00062
Release: 2022
An evocative journey into the delicate and emotional world of composer Douglas Knehans and writer Katarina Knehans. This disc explodes with electric performances by the Brno Philharmonic, violin soloist Pavel Wallinger and stunning young soprano Judith Weusten under the propulsive and imaginative baton of conductor Mikel Toms.

New Choral Voices Volume 5
Coro Volante / Brett Scott
Ablaze Records ar-00061
Release: 2022
In another wonderful series of recordings from Coro Volante, this disc highlights tremendous variety of approach to massed voices that is truly inspiring. Mari Kotskyy's I Sing of a Maiden is a setting of a Middle English lyric poem which seek to capture the calmness and astonishment of the Virgin Mary as she learns she is to give birth to the Son of God. James Sproul's In This Short Life is a setting of two short poems by Emily Dickinson inspired by the composers loss of his cousin at a very young age—a moving and powerful work. Flos Carmeli Antiphon is Paul Portelli's setting for four voices of this text most frequently associated with the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Kit Grahame's The Tears of Two is a setting of Sonnet VI by Elizabeth Barrett Browning the subject of which is the power and force of enduring love. Ed Frazier Davis's Through the Wilderness of Worlds is a reflection on Davis's four hundred mile pilgrimage from Pamplona to Santiago de Compostela. This mighty trek allowed the composer a unique experience of self and nature that he sets here to music in a work of utter beauty. Vasiliy Medved's Psalm 67 is a setting for choir and chimes the composer sees as an account of his personal redemption and is a tremendously evocative and emotional work. Shuang Xu's Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease is one of the best known work of Taoist literature. In his setting, Xu seeks to target a musical state of freedom and transcendence. SangUn Kang's Extraordinary Harmonical Alphabet Song is a literal setting of the English Alphabet that seeks, through different colors and harmonies and textures to create unique choral music that is bright, engaging, challenging and fun. Ariel Sol Bertulfo Schwarz's Willow Poem evokes the sense of depth and quietude of a lone willow tree standing stoically throughout the seasons.

2018

Douglas Knehans: Backwards from Winter
Ablaze Records ar-00054
Release: 2018

Douglas Knehans: Unfinished Earth
Ablaze Records ar-00036
Release: 2018

Posted 7 August 2022 and updated 8 August 2022 by Keith Bramich

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