WORLD PREMIERE ON VIDEO OF THE FRENCH VERSION

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, telling the story of a power couple galvanised by witchcraft and superstition, and obsessed by a craving to conquer the throne by force, even by murder. This French version of Verdi’s opera takes us into a sphere of decorum and decency that hides monsters capable of the worst atrocities, portrayed in some of the composer’s most blood-curdling and intense passages of music. A genuine rarity on stage, this 2024 production of the French version was acclaimed for its powerful vocal performances and fine acting.

Paul Büttner was born in Dresden in 1870 and studied violin and oboe at the city’s conservatory, from whence he gradually established himself as an outstanding musician. But he remained virtually unknown as a composer until 1915, when the celebrated conductor Arthur Nikisch premiered his Symphony No. 3, following which Büttner became acknowledged as one of the greatest contemporary symphonists after Brahms and Bruckner. His Symphony No. 4 from 1917 continued this success and was performed on numerous occasions by several orchestras. In 1933 his music was marked as ‘degenerate’ by the totalitarian regime, which deleted him completely from the musical culture available to the public.

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The four symphonies of Arvo Pärt were composed over a span of forty-five years, and bear little or no relationship with one another – four individual pieces that represent his output at separate parts of his creative journey. The First Symphony was composed in 1963, shortly after Pärt had graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory. Its two-movement structure looks to the baroque – Canons and a Prelude and Fugue – but the harmonic language is extremely advanced, giving off a distinct whiff of twelve-tone serialism. The Second Symphony, from 1966, in three movements, again employs a combination of serialism and textures hinting at Penderecki and the Polish school. Also in three movements, the Third Symphony (1971) reflects the time Pärt spent in the late 1960s studying chant and mediaeval music. Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’ came much later (in 2007 – 08) and now the style is directly inspired by sacred music. Pärt took as his models two great litanies of the Orthodox Church: the Canon of Repentance, and the Canon to the Holy Guardian Angel. Unusually scored for strings, harp, timpani, and percussion, this final work is also cast in three movements. With her elegant, expressive body language, natural stage presence, and infectious musicality, Eva Ollikainen is one of the leading conductors of our time. This former student of Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra since 2020.

The development of an original classical repertoire for the accordion began with Mogens Ellegaard in his native Denmark and his student, the Scot Owen Murray, in the UK. In 1976 Ellegaard gave the first broadcast performance of Gordon Jacob’s pastoral, elegant concerto, which treats the accordion almost as a chamber organ. A generation and more later, two concertos written for Owen Murray open out the possibilities of the accordion much more adventurously, exploiting its extraordinary range of colour, its striking range of expression and its mercurial ability to weave through orchestral textures.

Kip Winger is a genre-bridging composer with a long and successful career in rock music. His celebrated ballet score Conversations with Nijinsky led conductor Giancarlo Guerrero to commission the two works on this album. Weaving four floriographical meanings into the musical arc, In the Language of Flowers is a violin concerto that celebrates a love story “no words could adequately express.” Symphony of the Returning Light sits in the tradition of autobiographical fantasies stretching back to Berlioz. The symphony incorporates the use of Morse code rhythms, and is centred around the theme of atonement.

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Joachim Raff moved in circles that included Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, and he ultimately became one of the best-known German composers of his day. Of Raff’s six stage works Dame Kobold (‘The Phantom Lady’) was the first of a series of comic operas that anticipated later trends, moving away from Wagnerian pathos and looking back to the levity of Rossini. Admired for its utterly gorgeous musical setting, the opera is notable for a disarmingly simple yet fast-paced plot, bewitching solos and elegantly flowing melodies, and a deftly responsive marriage of language and music.

Diego Conti’s recent composition for string quartet/quintet can be placed in the aesthetic context which can be roughly defined, given any inevitable historical and conceptual adjustments, as post-modern. There is a multitude of approaches to sound, according to various different and diverging strategies (ranging from the prolongation of serial combinatorial rows on material and stylistic morphology in Ligeti to modulation/pluri– linguistic modelling in Berio, from the synthesis of minimal iteration and tonal orders in figures such as John Adams or Louis Andriessen to the clearance of practices and languages of other creative-musical areas, seventies’ art music has gradually abandoned the teleological, progressive tendency of its historical path. The language of composition has ceased to recognise the essential reference point in its most advanced frontier and has become a complex macro-area at its core, widely accessible, and able to be explored in all its domains even as far as the confines of the avantgarde frontier thanks, above all, to an interplay involving many possible directions, crossings and even multiple settlements. The recording is the result of the collaboration between the composer and the Chaos String Quartet, which was formed within the student environment of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, one of the most prestigious international musical institutions.

Alexander Glazunov’s seven string quartets extend over the entirety of his composing career and are equal in significance to his symphonies. Fused with nationalist sentiment and Classical discipline the First String Quartet secured the Glinka Prize for the teenage composer in 1884. The advances in expressive range and formal integration in the Second Quartet include a rapturous slow movement considered a highlight of his earlier output, while the Third Quartet has become known as ‘The Slavonic’ for its evocative folk-music character.

One of the most sought-after young chamber ensembles of its type, Trio Gaspard is praised for its unique and fresh approach to the score, one recent recording prompting The Times to conclude: ‘Kaleidoscopic textures and sprightly wit, wonderfully conveyed by Trio Gaspard… delightful listening’. It was founded in 2010, its members hailing from Germany, Greece, and the UK. They studied at the European Chamber Music Academy, in Vienna. Haydn’s music has been of central importance to their programming over the past fifteen years, and it is rare for them to perform a concert without one of his works. Trio Gaspard writes: ‘Over this series of recordings, we present Haydn’s rich output for piano trio neither chronologically nor in the groups in which the works were first published. Instead, just like the preceding discs, Volume 5 is conceived as a programme of contrasting trios that can be heard in a single sitting. We also continue the series of contemporary works which we have commissioned to accompany our Haydn project and are delighted to present the world première recording of Helena Winkelman’s Threesome in a High-den.’

Max Meyer-Olbersleben, born in 1850 in Olbersleben, Thuringia, studied at the Weimar Orchestral School under Franz Liszt, and later at the Royal Music School in Munich under Gabriel Josef Rheinberger and Peter Cornelius. He settled in Würzburg as a professor of counterpoint and composition and served as director of the Royal Conservatory of Music until his retirement in 1920. During his lifetime, 114 works were published, primarily smaller forms such as choral works, songs, and piano pieces. Through his studies in Weimar and Munich, Meyer-Olbersleben was familiar with both the traditionalist and the new German musical language of that era, and thus the chamber music gems recorded here for the first time bear witness to profound Romantic sensibility and the spirit of a new musical awakening.

Ciaramella captures the virtuosic essence of… Johannes Ciconia, Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Pullois, and Alexander Agricola. Never heard of them? Don’t worry: after listening to this recording, you won’t forget them, and will find yourself awake at night, tapping your feet and dreaming about the dukes and ladies of Burgundy and their Renaissance court. Ciaramella recreates improvisations in historical style, bringing the practice of fifteenth-century jazz back to life.

Modern American music has long been characterised by kaleidoscopic variety, reflecting the vigour and optimism of American culture more generally. John Corigliano’s early Violin Sonata is a work of the mid-twentieth century. But his own assessment of the piece – ‘Its eclecticism, its rhythmic energy, and its bright character give the Sonata a very American quality’ – could be applied with equal merit to the three 21st-century scores that accompany it here, all four switching easily between gentle introspection and buoyant exuberance.

Brouhaha: Shaped by Fire is a recording and performance project, combining music with anthropology to highlight our connections to our nature and origins. From noisy social gatherings around fires 800,000 years ago to virtual meetings over Zoom today, we humans have created and solved an amazing array of problems. Even as we shape the world in unprecedented ways, we remain an integral part of nature, intertwined with its rhythms and cycles. Project founder and violinist Maiani da Silva has commissioned six stylistically eclectic composers to write for solo violin based on what intrigues them about our human nature and our place in the ecosystem. In addition, Maiani and the composers have collaborated with world-renowned scientists to gain insights on their chosen theme. What results is an imaginative collection of works that both transcends stylistic labels and embraces intellectual inquiry, while highlighting an important duality: “our ability to work with or against our environment, [which] has been with us from the beginning” (Ian Gottlieb, composer of Shaped by Fire). The drive to express and understand are both deeply human. Brouhaha combines two cultural pillars–art and science–to further ask: What separates and also connects us to the delicate web of nature, our environment, other species, and one another?

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Viennese composer, conductor and pianist Wilhelm Grosz was a musician of remarkable versatility and wide-ranging influences. He attracted critical praise as a composer from an early age with the technically formidable Symphonic Variations on an Original Theme, acclaimed as ‘a dramatic tone painting expanding to symphonic grandeur – on only one instrument’. The Kleine Sonate is marked by great depth and clarity of expression, while the waltz transcriptions tapped into a craze for Johann Strauss II in 1930s London. The highly original Three Pieces was rediscovered just before this recording was made.

A native of Bohemia, Wenzel Thomas Matiegka was a contemporary of Beethoven and a celebrated guitarist. His reputation was established after settling in Vienna where he became accepted in musical circles that included Schubert. Matiegka’s works reflect the influence of Mozart and Haydn, while exploring the virtuoso possibilities of the guitar by blending lyrical serenity with refreshing good humour and exhilarating technique.

All the works recorded here were composed between 1825 and 1835, when Mendelssohn was aged between sixteen and twenty-six. He spent much of this decade travelling, from Berlin to Paris via Weimar, then London and Scotland before work in Düsseldorf eventually led to his appointment as municipal musical director and conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. The Piano Sonata in E major and that in B flat major, and indeed the Phantasie (subtitled Sonate écossaise), owe some debt to Beethoven, but are also influenced by Weber, Hummel, and Moscheles (to whom the Phantasie was dedicated). The two shorter works (Scherzo à capriccio and Capriccio) perhaps show a more relaxed side of the composer, free from the constraints of sonata form. Liszt’s virtuosic re-working of themes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream completes the programme. Born in Manchester in 1953, Peter Donohoe studied at Chetham’s School of Music for seven years, graduated in music from the University of Leeds, and went on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham, and then in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique.

Violetta Khachikyan’s third solo album is dedicated to rarely performed keyboard works from the Renaissance, early Baroque and Classical periods that take on new timbres and vitality when performed on a modern grand piano. The works by Marianne von Martinez, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Yekaterina Alexeyevna Vorontsova are of particular interest, while Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin melds retrospection with innovation in the use of old dances and forms that are infused with new harmonies and complemented by the technical possibilities of a modern instrument.

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The Song of the Fates, Op. 89, was composed in 1882 and is a work for choir and orchestra by the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). It sets to music a section from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s drama “Iphigenia in Tauris”, which refers to the Fates, Roman goddesses of destiny.

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Featuring the Danish vocal consort ÆTLA, this EP presents Månen (The Moon) by composer Adrianna Kubica-Cypek. Drawing on the evocative poetry of Barbara Agertoft, the work moves from the vulnerability of the lone voice to the strength of the collective. Through sacred allusions and the experimentalism of the Polish tradition, Kubica-Cypek creates a comfort blanket of sound – a meditation on the moon’s shared light and our belonging to one another.

The Cappella musicale di Santa Maria in Campitelli, conducted by Maestro Vincenzo Di Betta, who has already been responsible for significant recording revivals such as Orazio Benevoli’s Missa in angustia pestilentiæ (TC600201), Bonaventura Rubino’s Messa de’ Morti (TC601803), and Francesco Giovannini’s Messa à Quattro (TC700703), is now engaged in this new and notably interesting musical production. This rediscovery focuses on two sacred oratorios from the seventeenth century by two authors active in the Neapolitan orbit: Francesco Nicolò de Rossi, a priest of Apulian origin, and Cristoforo Caresana, of Venetian origin and formerly the organist of St. Mark’s Basilica. The two works – performed with the ensemble’s customary expertise – are interspersed with an instrumental battle piece by Andrea Falconieri, composed in the spirit of that Baroque theatricality which is the main ingredient of these works and of the sacred musical masterpieces of the seventeenth century.

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This album by pianist Reinis Zariņš and the Trio Palladio is a special personal tribute to composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), one of the most influential composers of our time. This album includes Pärt’s timeless piano works together with a selection of his chamber works, including the famous Für Alina, Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel alongside his early works. The programme also includes two special dedications by two Latvian composers, Georgs Pelēcis and Andrejs Selickis, who both as composers have been greatly influenced by Arvo Pärt’s example and ideas. These two works, written in 2025 for Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday, receive their first recordings.

On his new double vinyl album, Jakob Buchanan masterfully blends the ultra-local folk music and the unique character of the landscape, with some of the world’s leading names in modern jazz, and one of Denmark’s many great string quartets Artos Quartet.

A few years ago, jazz composer and trumpeter Jakob Buchanan moved to Mols. Here, he sits and plays in an old circus wagon on Thorup Mark, gazing over the rolling hills and becoming absorbed in an old booklet of folk tunes by the local legend, fiddler Peter Madsen (1865–1900). One autumn day, he tries out the old dance tunes on his trumpet while looking out across the landscape. The tunes turn into hymns, and it feels as if an old soul is reborn floating across the warm, hilly land, a landscape that writes its own silent music on the horizon every day.

Bringing together voices from across the UK Punjabi community, award-winning composer and tabla player Kuljit Bhamra MBE unites leading British vocalists including Heera Group, Premi Johal, Abira Shah and Mohinder Kaur Bhamra with renowned lyricists such as Preet Nihal and Pappi Sing Kenya. Inspired by the timeless lok geet traditions and the golden era of 1980s British Bhangra, Kuljit blends classic folk instruments with fresh contemporary production to celebrate the enduring spirit of Punjabi culture.

Robert Schumann has accompanied saxophonist Joerg Kaufmann since his childhood. As a young piano student, he was shaped by pieces from Album for the Young; later, he was particularly captivated by the Piano Concerto in A minor. During his jazz studies and his work as a music teacher, Kinderszenen remained a central point of reference. In these poetic miniatures, he discovered an expressive power that closely resonates with jazz: deep emotionality, personal experience, moods, and narrative moments. While European classical music realizes these aspects through carefully composed structures, jazz approaches them primarily through improvisation. The song-like forms, clear melodies, and distinctive harmonies of Kinderszenen provide ideal material for this exploration.

For this project, the artist deliberately chose an instrumentation without piano in order to gain the greatest possible sonic freedom while preserving the essence of the originals. Together with Mathias Haus (vibraphone) and Conrad Noll (double bass, cello), he created interpretations that sensitively translate Schumann’s romantic sound world into the language of jazz.

This collection celebrates the masterful artistry of The Royal Ballet’s Founder Choreographer, Frederick Ashton, with three defining works. A pioneer of 20th-century dance, Ashton brought elegance, innovation and emotional depth to the stage, shaping the identity of British ballet for generations.

Scènes de ballet distils classical technique into a striking study of form and symmetry. Ashton gracefully reimagines Turgenev’s play A Month in the Country as a one-act ballet where all the drama unfolds in the family’s living room upon the arrival of a dashing young tutor. Rhapsody, created for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lesley Collier, blends virtuosic movement with lyrical beauty, set to Rachmaninoff’s sweeping score. Together, these works offer a vivid portrait of Ashton’s genius.

Fromental Halévy’s five-act grand opera La Juive (‘The Jewess’) is one of the most popular operas of the 19th century, captivating audiences ever since its debut at the Opéra de Paris in 1835. Set in the 15th century and full of pageantry, the subject is the forbidden love between a Christian man and a Jewish woman, and the tragedy that ensues. Oper Frankfurt’s contemporary staging won great acclaim, with Ambur Braid being lauded for her ‘luminous soprano’ as the heroine Rachel, and ‘vocal phenomenon’ John Osborn heralded in the role of her father Éléazar as ‘immensely moving’.