This recording is dedicated to two voices in Romantic music history that are almost forgotten today: Heinrich Stiehl (1829-1886) and Carl Schuberth (1811-1863). Both were highly regarded musicians in their day: one as an organist, teacher, and composer in Leipzig, St. Petersburg, and the Baltic region, the other as an internationally acclaimed cello virtuoso. Their works are exemplary of a musical 'second tier' that shaped the musical life of the 19th century, but whose quality can only be rediscovered today. The focus is on Heinrich Stiehl's Sonata for Pianoforte and Violoncello in A minor, Op. 37. Carl Schuberth is represented with two works that impressively demonstrate his melodic inventiveness and virtuoso approach to the violoncello: the Grand Nocturne elegiaque, Op. 6, for two cellos and piano, and the Grande Sonate for cello and piano in D major, Op. 43, a late work that combines orchestral sonority with balladic gestures. This music is interpreted by Martin Seemann and Bettina Messerschmidt (violoncello) and Mira Lange on the historic fortepiano by Streicher & Sohne (Vienna 1864). The historically informed performance practice lends the works a transparent, colorful sonority and allows their romantic expression to be experienced in all it's complexity. 0 UPC: 4039956926092Label: Coviello ClassicsRelease Date: 7.17.26Format: CD
The works of the late Romantic composer Felix Woyrsch stand as eloquent defenses of the creative successor. Perhaps it is precisely this too often disparaged generation of "late-born" artists who laid the groundwork for the great masters. By absorbing earlier achievements and reshaping them to serve their own expressive aims, they laid the foundation for later greatness. The Silesian-born Woyrsch, who established himself permanently in Altona-then still independent of Hamburg-demonstrated that even diametrically opposed models could be reconciled. He succeeded in bringing together Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms almost imperceptibly, without sacrificing his own artistic identity. On the contrary, the cycle of six symphonies, now completed with the present release, emerges as a distinctive artistic statement-made all the more impressive by the fact that Woyrsch remained genuinely receptive to the developments of modernism. UPC: 761203562824Label: Cpo RecordsRelease Date: 7.17.26Format: CD
Each part in this double album presents one work of 33 variations by Franz Hummel. Initially, Hummel felt challenged by Beethoven's Diabelli Variations to compose another 33 variations on the same theme. At a memorial concert following Hummel's death (August 20 th 2022), his three master students Yojo Christen, Christoph Preiss and Alexander Maria Wagner performed and reinterpreted these variations so powerfully that the desire arose to record this experience for album. The second album features the Hercher Variations, which Franz Hummel composed between 2017 and 2019, interpreted by Christoph Preiss. A special feature is that, apart from these two works by Hummel, there are only a few cycles with 30 or more variations in well-known piano literature, e.g. Beethoven's Diabelli Variations and J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. UPC: 4250702801993Label: TyxartRelease Date: 7.17.26Format: CD
The internationally renowned pianist Yulianna Avdeeva presents Metanoia, a profound exploration of the late piano works of Franz Liszt, tracing his radical transformation from virtuoso to visionary. Liszt's late works mark a decisive break with traditional musical language and form, opening the door to 20th-century modernism through bold harmonic experimentation, compressed structures, and strikingly dissonant sonorities. Stripped of conventional melodic development, these brief but intense works convey deep existential reflection, touching on themes of faith, mortality, and the human condition. Initially met with resistance, they would later become a major influence on composers such as Bartok, Scriabin, Debussy, and Ravel.The album unfolds in reverse chronology, culminating in Liszt's Sonata in B Minor and Legende No. 2. The Sonata in B Minor stands as one of the most important works in the piano repertoire: a single-movement structure of extraordinary dramatic and philosophical scope, where contrasting themes emerge, collide, and transform into a journey from darkness to transcendence. For Avdeeva, Liszt's music is never purely virtuosic, but an existential inquiry into the deepest aspects of human experience - light and darkness, faith and doubt, life and death - revealing a composer who continually expanded the possibilities of musical thought and expression.Yulianna Avdeeva returns to PENTATONE after a string of critically acclaimed releases: her label debut Resilience (2023), followed by Chopin: Voyage (2024) and Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 (2025). Together, these recordings have garnered international awards and widespread acclaim across the globe. UPC: 8717306266550Label: PentatoneRelease Date: 8.28.26Format: CD
The sound of a viol consort seems to float lightly; the silky, shining tones of the viols, ranging from soprano to bass, combine almost weightlessly - free from all. This consort was particularly popular in England around 1600, and no self-respecting household was without 'a chest of viols' (a box containing a set of different viols). The most important English composers wrote wonderful music for this ensemble, from dance movements and fantasies to complex polyphonic compositions, bringing the repertoire for viol consort to a peak. The 'chest of viols' of the Ensemble Private Musicke has compiled 'highlights' of English viola da gamba music by composers such as Holborne, Dowland, Ferrabosco II, Tye and Coperario, taking the listener on a journey through the air. UPC: 4011254260054Label: Note OneRelease Date: 6.12.26Format: CD
Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski's chamber music offers a strikingly forward-looking vision of the cello as a virtuoso instrument. Written for the leading musicians of nineteenth-century Warsaw, these works captivate with their lyrical richness and sweeping sense of drama. This album features the Nocturne, Op. 46, in it's world premiere recording. The performers bring effortless style to music that blends refined salon elegance with subtly woven folk influences-dumka and krakowiak-drawing listeners into a world of beauty, warmth, and spiritual calm. UPC: 5902547019239Label: Dux Recording Prod.Release Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Quatuor Diotima presents an album of Beethoven's late string quartets, bringing renewed clarity and passion to some of the most profound works in the chamber repertoire. Written in the final years of his life, these late quartets unfold as deeply expressive explorations of form, counterpoint and human emotion. From the solemn majesty of Op.127 to the transcendent variations of Op.132 and the taut and spirited finale of Op.135, Beethoven's vision is at once intimate and vast, weaving intricate textures and soaring lyricism into a continuous, compelling musical narrative. Quatuor Diotima's interpretations illuminate every nuance, revealing the inventive brilliance and emotional depth that make these works enduring masterpieces.One of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, Quatuor Diotima has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century, projecting fresh light onto the masterpieces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reflected in the mirror of today's music, the quartet brings new insight and energy to Beethoven's late voice. The ensemble returns to PENTATONE following their acclaimed Metamorphosis Ligeti (2023), Bruckner & Klose: String Quartets (2024) and Boulez: Livre pour Quatuor (2025), and most recently Lachenmann: Works for String Quartet in November 2025. UPC: 8717306266048Label: PentatoneRelease Date: 6.5.26Format: CD
Vienna was in the grip of serious political unrest that forced many of it's artists into exile when Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) composed his Second String Quartet in 1933, first performed the following year in the Austrian capital. In it he celebrated, before it faded away, the vitality of a musical school of which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) had been one of the founders more than a century and a half earlier, and which Anton Webern (1883-1945) had helped to usher into modernity. It is this lineage that the musicians of the Quatuor Hermès (the Hermès String Quartet) highlight through a twilight-tinged programme in which each work bears witness to a fascinating narrative power and could be understood as an expression of a farewell. UPC: 3760419360436Label: La Dolce VoltaRelease Date: 4.10.26Format: CD
Always curious and seeking new horizons, the musicians of the Voce quartet fell in love with Argentina during their concert tours. In Buenos Aires and Rosario, they frequented penas and milongas (folk music dance clubs) and had exciting working sessions with the illustrious Dino Saluzzi... They decided to ask composers Fernando Fiszbein, Gabriel Sivak and Jean-Baptiste Henry to write music and arrangements for them. They perform these pieces with the great Argentine guitarist Pablo Marquez and Jean-Baptiste Henry on bandoneon. This colourful programme features tangos, but also zamba, chacarera, cueca, baguala... Not to mention a tribute to Piazzolla (Four for Tango for string quartet) and Alberto Ginastera, with his first string quartet and his emblematic sonata for guitar. UPC: 3701624512180Label: AlphaRelease Date: 5.22.26Format: CD
A Forest Unfolding is a collaborative work inspired by recent scientific research into the rich communication and subterranean connectivity between trees. Four writers-the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Joan Maloof, along with the novelists Richard Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson-selected prose passages and poems on the relations among people and trees. They presented these selections to four composers-Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe, and David Kirkland Garner-who set these words into a linked sequence of recitatives and arias. The resulting whole traces a narrative arc beginning with human estrangement from nature and ending with a glimpse of the endless cooperation that knits a forest together. UPC: 613527005085Label: New FocusRelease Date: 5.15.26Format: CD
Alongside Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, this release features the world premiere recording of Mikhail Pletnev's Rachmaniana, which will be first performed in January 2026 at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. The eight short pieces of the Rachmaniana Suite succinctly outline some of the composer's character traits: passion, tenderness, a joie de vivre both exuberant and rooted in pain, and an all-encompassing melancholy. This music can be called "contemporary" insofar as it was composed in our time. However, it is not entirely untouched by what has been composed since Rachmaninoff's time, and these experiences are incorporated into it in a very subtle way - it does not follow the path of describing the ugliness of this world; rather, the music professes an imagination of beauty that we might find old-fashioned, yet desperately need again today.
Tracklist:
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45: I. Non Allegro
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45: II. Andante Con Moto. Tempo Di Valse
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45: III. Lento Assai - Allegro Vivace
Rachmaniana: Dance
Rachmaniana: Nocturne
Rachmaniana: Serenade
Rachmaniana: Landscape
Rachmaniana: Allegretto
Rachmaniana: Melody
Rachmaniana: Farewell
Rachmaniana: Hungarian Dance
UPC: 0880242111425Label: EuroartsRelease Date: 5.29.26Format: CD
Stradivari Classics - The World's Great Music, Captured at it's Finest
Tracklist:
Largo - Allegro Moderato
Allegro Molto
Adagio
Allegro Vivace
Scene
Waltz
Swan Dance
Scene
Czardas
UPC: 699246656692Label: Hindsight RecordsRelease Date: 5.22.26Format: CD
After the success of Mandolin on Stage, dedicated to the most emblematic 18th-century concertos for mandolin and recorded with Il Pomo d'Oro directed by Francesco Corti, Raffaele La Ragione returns with his third album for Arcana. This time he recounts a fascinating chapter in French musical history, joined by pianist Francois Dumont (who has chosen an exceptional 1896 Pleyel for the occasion) and special guest, soprano Sandrine Piau. In the 1880s and 1890s Paris discovered a deep passion for the mandolin: a fondness fuelled by the concerts held at the Trocadero during the Universal Exhibition of 1878. In the drawing rooms of high society the Neapolitan instrument became a supreme symbol of elegance and exoticism, conjuring up the atmosphere of southern Italy and immediately winning over poets and composers. The recording, created in collaboration with the Palazzetto Bru Zane, brings together original pieces, contemporary arrangements from French operas and operettas, and vocal works dedicated to the mandolin, thereby effectively recreating the soundscape and distinct allure of a fin-de-siecle salon. UPC: 3760195735961Label: Arcana RecordsRelease Date: 5.22.26Format: CD
"My God! What a child! No one has understood me as this boy does... this is not imitation, it is the same feeling, an instinct that makes him play without reasoning, as if he could not be otherwise. He plays almost all of my compositions without having heard them performed, without my having shown him the slightest thing - not exactly like me (having his own personality), but just as well." Chopin on Filtsch (The Humorist, 1843) UPC: 8051773578366Label: Urania RecordsRelease Date: 5.1.26Format: CD
Divine Impresario is countertenor Randall Scotting's portrait of the celebrated castrato Nicolo Grimaldi ("Nicolini"), performed with the Academy of Ancient Music and Laurence Cummings. Drawing on arias and duets written for Nicolini by Handel, Porpora, Gasparini, Mancini, Giaj, Broschi, and Ariosti, the album revives music closely tied to his stage career across Italy and London. Many pieces are recorded in new performing editions based on early sources. With contributions from soprano Mary Bevan, the programme highlights Nicolini's influence as singer, actor, and collaborator, presenting repertoire that shaped early 18th-century opera. UPC: 635212098622Label: Signum ClassicsRelease Date: 3.27.26Format: CD
Widor is a composer best known for writing the thunderous organ symphonies that echoed throughout the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, where Widor was organist for over 60 years. His famous Toccata for organ continues to be a favorite piece at weddings and concert halls around the world.We share this album in order to shine a light on a quieter, more intimate side of Widor, as a composer of French solo songs and duets for voice and piano. In these songs, Widor let's go of the grandiose sounds of the cathedral organ, and offers delicate, expressive meditations on human emotion, poetry, and connection. In this spirit, we invite you to join us in hearing these rarely performed and little-known works, Six duos: six duets for soprano and contralto, and Soirs d'ete: eight solo songs set to the poetry of Paul Bourget. UPC: 044747416526Label: CentaurRelease Date: 4.3.26Format: CD
This album by pianist Reinis Zarins and the Trio Palladio is a special personal tribute to composer Arvo Part (b. 1935), one of the most influential composers of our time. This album includes Part's timeless piano works together with a selection of his chamber works, including the famous Fur Alina, Fratres and Spiegel i'm Spiegel alongside his early works. The programme also includes two special dedications by two Latvian composers, Georgs Pelecis and Andrejs Selickis, who both as composers have been greatly influenced by Arvo Part's example and ideas. These two works, written in 2025 for Arvo Part's 90th birthday, receive their first recordings. UPC: 761195147825Label: OndineRelease Date: 4.3.26Format: CD
The versatile French conductor and violinist Remy Ballot, following his recent chamber music recordings, now presents a milestone in music history for solo violin: the Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Op. 27, by the Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye. Ysaye composed these sonatas for six outstanding violinists who were at the peak of their artistry in the 1920s. They form a kind of visionary synthesis of the achievements of Bach and Paganini and the spectrum of Romantic violin music and the French schools from Franck to Debussy. Together with his wife Iris Ballot, the second CD of the album features the Sonata for Two Violins, a work that remains widely underrated to this day, uniting within itself the full abundance of all musical currents present at the time (1915) during a period of transition. UPC: 9003643993624Label: GramolaRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Transience is one of the major themes of the Baroque period, and Gabriel Garrido has put together an entire program for this production featuring works from Baroque Rome whose lyrics deal with the transience of the world. The texts are sombre and brimming with charged symbolism of death - in stark contrast, the music of Giacomo Carrismi, the brothers Vigilio and Domenico Mazzocchi, Marco Marazzoli and Kaspar Forster is cheerful and magnificent. The grand seigneur of Baroque music, Gabriel Garrido, works with a large ensemble of young musicians and singers on this recording, which was brought together for the first Rencontre Baroque de Montfrin festival. The result is a wonderful example of Baroque splendour in 17th-century Rome, which sweetens the transience of life for the listener with the most beautiful colours and Baroque soundscapes. UPC: 4011254260047Label: Note OneRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Music to Hear... Alfonso Ferrabosco: Music for Lyra Viol from 1609, Volumes 2 & 3 continues Richard Boothby's acclaimed exploration of early English viol repertoire. Joined by Sam Stadlen and Jo Levine, Boothby performs Ferrabosco's Lessons for 1, 2 & 3 Viols - a rich sequence of pavans, almains, galliards, and corantos that illuminate the expressive range of Jacobean consort music. Written for Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, these pieces showcase Ferrabosco's invention and refinement at the heart of the early 17th-century English court. Recorded on period instruments and gut strings, this release captures the music's depth, intimacy, and quiet brilliance UPC: 635212098721Label: Signum ClassicsRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Discover the allure of Gran Teatro La Fenice, one of Italy's most iconic theatres and among Europe's grandest opera houses. Known for hosting groundbreaking opera premieres in the 19th century, La Fenice has staged legendary works from the masters of the Bel Canto era-Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. Each year, a quarter-million visitors from around the globe are drawn to this historic venue, while the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro La Fenice now perform worldwide, including a celebrated appearance at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie in July 2024.Now, Teatro La Fenice proudly presents a collection of it's finest opera recordings from the past 30 years, available for the first time on CD. Featuring between 10 and 15 carefully selected operas each year, these recordings bring the magic of La Fenice's world-renowned performances to your home. Indulge in the timeless beauty of Italian opera at it's best. UPC: 4260193298202Label: Mondo MusicaRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Discover the allure of Gran Teatro La Fenice, one of Italy's most iconic theatres and among Europe's grandest opera houses. Known for hosting groundbreaking opera premieres in the 19th century, La Fenice has staged legendary works from the masters of the Bel Canto era-Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. Each year, a quarter-million visitors from around the globe are drawn to this historic venue, while the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro La Fenice now perform worldwide, including a celebrated appearance at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie in July 2024.Now, Teatro La Fenice proudly presents a collection of it's finest opera recordings from the past 30 years, available for the first time on CD. Featuring between 10 and 15 carefully selected operas each year, these recordings bring the magic of La Fenice's world-renowned performances to your home. Indulge in the timeless beauty of Italian opera at it's best. UPC: 4260193298165Label: Mondo MusicaRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
Andrew Wan, Concertmaster of the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, and Charles Richard-Hamelin, internationally acclaimed pianist and silver medalist at the Chopin Competition, unite their artistic chemistry in a pinnacle of the Romantic repertoire. Through Brahms' three violin sonatas, they unfold a sweeping expressive arc: the intimate lyricism of Op. 78, the radiant warmth of Op. 100, and the dramatic intensity of Op. 108. Their interpretation combines depth, architectural balance, and controlled intensity, supported by a rich and resonant recorded sound. A landmark recording, at once noble, incandescent, and profoundly compelling. UPC: 774204902728Label: AnalektaRelease Date: 6.5.26Format: CD
This landmark triple CD release presents for the first time the complete solo piano works of Denmark's nationalcomposer, Carl Nielsen, performed by one of the country's most distinguished and visionary pianists, RikkeSandberg. She has worked with Nielsen's music since she began playing the piano as a child, and her teachersform an unbroken lineage back to the pianists for whom Nielsen originally wrote his piano works. On this releaseyou will find Nielsen's original piano music as well as his own arrangements of his compositions. All of Nielsen'ssolo piano music is included.The Danish press has repeatedly celebrated her artistic integrity. Politiken writes: "She gathers torrents of notesinto long, breathing arcs with sharply etched detail and colourful nuance... First and foremost she is an artist;display does not interest her." The same paper concludes: "Few Danish pianists make as great a difference inour musical life as she does." Jyllands-Posten praises her "richly nuanced and superbly controlled playing," whileinternational critics highlight interpretations where "nothing sounds overheated or overplayed... full of fire andsparkling esprit... with such restrained dynamics that one's breath is taken away."At the heart of Sandberg's artistry stands the great Romantic tradition, notably her acclaimed interpretations ofJohannes Brahms, alongside a profound commitment to twentieth-century and contemporary Danish music.Now, that lifelong dialogue between heritage and renewal culminates in Nielsen's piano oeuvre: music of rhythmicvitality, bold architecture, folk-like simplicity and daring modernity. Spanning nearly forty years, from intimateminiatures to monumental works, this edition reveals Nielsen in his full creative breadth.More than a recording, this is a definitive artistic statement, and the ultimate document of Carl Nielsen's pianoworld. UPC: 0636943693926Label: Our RecordingsRelease Date: 6.5.26Format: CD
Gates presents the Riot Ensemble at the peak of contemporary ensemble performance. The album brings together works by Eric Skytterholm Egan, Eden Lonsdale, Kaija Saariaho, and Bernhard Gander, exploring the tension between order and chaos, structure and excess, historical reference and radical present. Riot Ensemble, one of the world's leading contemporary music ensembles, is renowned for it's precision, stylistic versatility, and close collaboration with living composers. Kaija Saariaho's Gates from her ballet MAA opens a space of fluid transitions, transforming Baroque sonata models into overlapping timbral clouds. In contrast, Bernhard Gander's (2005) channels raw, physical energy inspired by rock, yet retains a structural link to Baroque principles of excess. Gates is an album of thresholds: between past and present, ritual and corporeality, control and collapse. The Riot Ensemble renders these tensions audible with a blend of analytical clarity and visceral immediacy. UPC: 4039956925163Label: Coviello ClassicsRelease Date: 6.12.26Format: CD
Nkeiru Okoye's When the Caged Bird Sings is a 'musical celebration' whose compositional voice, though rooted in the African American church, also embraces minimalism and improvisational elements. Delivering a message of adversity turned to triumph, it celebrates the transformative ability of African American women, partly evoking the experiences of the author and activist Maya Angelou. The work functions as a communal ritual that, like oratorio, opera, and theatre, brings together vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra in an experience that both commemorates and celebrates hope and possibility. UPC: 636943995327Label: NaxosRelease Date: 4.10.26Format: CD
Nine works - nine musical microcosms: this CD brings together contemporary monologues for trombone, composed by an international group of renowned composers. Between expressive sound theater, inner dialogues, and ecstatic outbursts, an impressive soundscape unfolds, showcasing the trombone in all it's facets - poetic, radical, virtuosic. UPC: 4260052386958Label: Ars ProduktionRelease Date: 5.15.26Format: CD
This album presents a new arrangement of Franz Schubert's song cycle Die schone Mullerin, performed by baritone Roderick Williams with the Carducci Quartet. Originally composed in 1823 for voice and piano, the cycle sets poems by Wilhelm Muller that trace the emotional journey of a young miller through hope, love, jealousy and despair. In this recording, the piano part is reimagined for string quartet, drawing out the implied instrumental textures in Schubert's writing while preserving the narrative flow of the songs. The arrangement offers a fresh perspective on the work's structure and atmosphere, highlighting it's central Romantic themes of nature, longing and reflection. UPC: 635212100325Label: Signum ClassicsRelease Date: 6.5.26Format: CD
While Rodolfo Ritter's repertoire encompasses many well-known and unfamiliar composers, he has made a speciality of Ponce's piano music. He recorded the two piano concertos (for Sterling) in 2013, as well as several solo pieces. Now, for Piano Classics, he embarks on a new adventure, which should win new friends everywhere for an idiom full of charm and optimism, essentially Romantic in spirit and piquantly coloured by the composer's Mexican heritage. A social and cultural revolution followed on the heels of Mexico's political revolution of 1910-1917, as a once largely rural nation became, within a matter of years, predominantly urban. Born in 1882, Manuel Ponce in some ways embodied the outward-facing spirit of that revolution, as the country's first internationally renowned composer of European-style art music ('classical'), and yet in the nostalgia-soaked language of that music evoked a romanticized past. This is the tension explored by Rodolfo Ritter as he begins a multi-volume journey through Ponce's piano output - only the second pianist to do so on record. Ponce was something of a child prodigy, already accomplished and cultivated as both a pianist and composer before he entered the national conservatoire in 1901. Take the dance for the left hand titled Malgre tout, which Ponce was inspired to write in 1900 as a homage to the sculpture of the same name by Jesús F. Contreras - a resonant depiction of a chained and defenceless woman who, "despite everything", looks up with hope (not so oblique as a politically charged metaphor). Earlier still is the bel-canto style lyricism of the Misterio doloroso (1899). Another pivotal work for the left hand dates from a full quarter-century later, the Prelude and Fugue which Ponce wrote in Paris while under the tutelage of Paul Dukas. No less schooled by an earlier period of study in Europe, as a pupil of Martin Krause in Berlin, comes the Variations on a Theme by Handel (1906). In the interim, Ponce channelled this classical technique through the melodies and rhythms of his home country in pieces such as the Rapsodia Mexicana No. 1 of 1911.Volume 1 of Rodolfo Ritter's survey contains all these and many more exciting discoveries. As a Mexican pianist, teacher and scholar of German heritage, Rodolfo Ritter is ideally placed to guide us through such unfamiliar territory. UPC: 5063758103671Label: Piano ClassicsRelease Date: 4.17.26Format: CD
This first portrait album devoted to Annelies Van Parys reveals a distinctive voice in contemporary European music. Drawing on spectralism, she builds luminous orchestral textures that unite timbral exploration with clear musical architecture and strong dramaturgy. Conductor Marit Strindlund notes: "I find Van Parys to be one of the most interesting contemporary European composers... a uniquely individual artistic voice is always shining through her music." UPC: 608917738322Label: AntarcticaRelease Date: 6.5.26Format: CD
SOMM Recordings continues it's much-admired and long-running series The Beecham Collection with it's 35th release of live recordings by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording highlights the operatic side of Beecham with orchestral excerpts from Les Troyens and La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz, and Tannhauser, Parsifal, Gotterdammerung, and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by Richard Wagner. Producer and audio engineer Lani Spahr, whose work for SOMM on Elgar from the Archives has been described by Gramophone Magazine as "astounding" and "revelatory," is once again responsible for the audio restoration on this release.The professional debut of Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart., C.H. took place on 6 December 1899 in St Helen's Town Hall when he was twenty years old. He conducted the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz with the Halle Orchestra, and the music of Berlioz was to become one of the cornerstones of his repertoire for the next six decades. This present recording of the Hungarian March is a gloriously uninhibited performance that brought the house down at the end of a 1955 concert at the Royal Festival Hall. That concert also included two excerpts from Les Troyens by Berlioz. The Prelude to The Trojans at Carthage is followed by The Royal Hunt and Storm, with the Oxford Bach Choir providing the brief choral contribution from Nymphs, Sylvans, and Fauns. These performances are remarkable for their atmospheric poetry in the slower sections and the rampaging energy in the faster music.During the same year as his professional debut, a young Beecham made his pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and he became an enthusiastic, instinctual conductor of Wagner's music. The renowned music critic Neville Cardus once noted that, while German conductors tended to take a reflective and philosophical approach in interpreting Wagner, Sir Thomas concentrated on the dramatic and picturesque parts of the music. This concentration on colour and drama makes his conducting of the orchestral extracts included on this release both satisfying and full of character.These four orchestral excerpts were recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 17 December 1958. The concert opened with the Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannhauser; for decades one of Beecham's warhorses as a concert opener. Orchestral excerpts from Parsifal appeared regularly on Beecham's concert programmes, and this 1958 concert featured the Good Friday Music. Beecham conducted a number of Ring cycles during his career, and his  affinity with the music shines through in this recording of Siegfried's Rhine Journey from Gotterdammerung. This release closes with the Prelude to Act One of Die Meistersinger, about which the review in the Daily Telegraph said, "the thickly overlaid texture of the overture can seldom have been given with such golden clarity." UPC: 758871013529Label: Somm RecordingsRelease Date: 6.19.26Format: CD
