The GRAMMY Award-winning team of composer Michael Daugherty, conductor David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony returns with a set of remarkable works exploring associations with flight and space exploration, both tragic and triumphant. Each new release of Daugherty’s music is eagerly anticipated, and we’re entirely confident that this stunning new recording will not disappoint. Daugherty’s long-established reputation for deftly-written concertos is extended here by a performance from violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers, one of today’s leading violinists and a muse of distinguished composers, conductors and orchestras, both in America and beyond. She has commissioned, premiered and recorded violin works that have been performed around the world, including Michael Daugherty’s Blue Electra which premiered in 2022 and unsurprisingly receives a peerless performance on this new release.

Fazıl Say is both an internationally admired solo pianist and a much-commissioned composer, who has written works for numerous distinguished organisations, including the Salzburger Festspiele, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Dresdner Philharmonie, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the BBC. All the works on this latest album of his music are heard in their first recordings, and the engaging, mixed-genre programme opens with Say’s Violin Concerto No. 2; the soloist is Friedemann Eichhorn, who also gave the first performance of the work. Friedemann previously recorded all Pierre Rode’s virtuoso violin concertos for Naxos: ‘I can think of no violinist better suited to the task than Friedemann Eichhorn. With truly awesome right-hand technique, bow control, and tonal allure, he vanquishes the daunting challenges of these works, seemingly without breaking a sweat.’ (Fanfare)

Here’s a splendid live recording of Handel’s 1707 oratorio La Resurrezione by the Händelfestspielorchester Halle, performed on period instruments. Artistic director Attilio Cremonesi, a specialist in Baroque and Classical works, consulted documents relating to the work’s first performance in 1708 in preparation for the recording; consequently the part of Mary of Clopas, for example, is sung here by a countertenor (Rafał Tomkiewicz), not a female voice. The dramatic libretto inspired the 23-year-old Handel to produce a score of lavish richness and expressive drama which is superbly realised by the cast of fine singers. The role of Mary Magdalene is sung by Italian soprano Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli. Performing Monteverdi madrigals at an Utrecht Early Music Festival, Bachtrack noted how she ‘produced a vocal line that was nothing short of sublime.’

Recordings from the Black Dyke Band are guaranteed to appeal to all collectors of brass band music, and this album spotlighting the amazing skills of renowned virtuoso euphonium player David Childs will certainly turn heads and mesmerise ears. The programme is a dazzling combination of soloist and band in a splendid mix of transcriptions and originals of both traditional and contemporary works. The Black Dyke Band holds the highest rank in the worldwide brass band community with its continued triumphs at significant competitions under its music director, Nicholas Childs. The band’s previous Naxos recordings include Peter Graham’s Metropolis 1927 (8.573968) in which ‘the virtuosic Black Dyke Band is in top form, with clean, polished playing that thrills and captures the imagination. Warmly recommended – you won’t regret it.’ (Fanfare) Soloist David Childs featured on our album of Peter Graham’s Force of Nature (8.574563), about which American Record Guide noted that ‘You might never hear a euphonium player as technically dazzling as David Childs.’

This release continues the Capriccio label’s exploration of rarely performed or recorded symphonic works by Miklós Rózsa, composer of the renowned film score for Ben-Hur. The programme comprises his Rhapsody for Cello, in which the young composer found his true style; the Notturno Ungherese (‘a nostalgic night piece, harking back to the memories of my childhood in Hungary’); and the late Sinfonia concertante for violin and cello, a fiendishly difficult work that is among Rózsa’s finest, least filmic concert works, and one of his most underrated. It was legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and violinist Jascha Heifetz who instigated its composition, but they never went on to perform it. Fortunately we get to hear it performed brilliantly on this recording by two equally distinguished artists: cellist Harriet Krijgh, one of today’s most exciting and promising young cellists, and violinist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Society and laureate of international music competitions.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco always remained faithful to a tonal musical language and while he’s mostly known today for his guitar works, his output is much richer and more varied than is widely appreciated, as this programme of previously unrecorded songs demonstrates. Castelnuovo-Tedesco selected Heinrich Heine’s more ironic poems in the three collections recorded here; also included are unpublished works such as La canzone di Usigliano with its references to Tuscan folk songs, and the Three Sonnets from the Portuguese, which reflect the romantic and dreamy character of texts by Elizabeth Barret Browning. The additional item of his piano cycle The Stories of Joseph includes light-hearted quotes from Schumann and Verdi. Soprano Elisabeth Herzberg is accompanied by Simonetta Heger.

This is the world premiere audiovisual recording of Vivaldi’s opera Il Bajazet, a work of Vivaldi’s late maturity and a dramatic tale that recounts the capture of the Turkish sultan Bajazet by the all-conquering Tartar, Tamerlane. It’s a pasticcio, a well-established form in which Vivaldi incorporated arias by some of the greatest young composers of his time – Johann Adolf Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli and Riccardo Broschi, brother to the famous castrato Farinelli – to form a veritable feast of musical fireworks. Nonetheless, it’s Vivaldi’s recitatives, choruses and arias that form the backbone of the opera and constitute the majority of the music, producing a work of kaleidoscopic invention. The opera is performed in the critical edition by Bernardo Ticci; the conductor is Federico Maria Sardelli, who has recorded the world premieres of numerous unpublished Vivaldi works; and the title role is taken by baritone Renato Dolcini, noted for his outstanding performances of Baroque repertoire.

Also available on Blu-ray Video (DYN-58056)

Although the young Felix Mendelssohn was not brought up in any faith until the age of seven, Christian traditions featured largely in his creative make-up. Already in 1821 – when he was aged just 12 – he embarked on a series of psalm settings, before eventually going on to produce his mature, large-scale choral works that include St Paul, Elijah, and Die erste Walpurgisnacht. In the final decade of his life, however, Mendelssohn returned to writing unaccompanied choral works; most of the works featured in this collection were composed during the 1840s, when the composer was already ailing with what would prove his final, fatal illness. The more significant works on the album are the Sechs Sprüche, with each anthem themed to a specific feast day of the year, and the Three Psalms. This recording of the psalms also includes the world premiere recording of Ehre sei dem Vater, published by Carus Verlag in 1997.

The world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company now presents the most complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays to be captured in widescreen. Filmed onstage in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, this collection contains 35 unforgettable dramas – 14 comedies, 9 histories, 12 tragedies – with iconic performances by leading actors. From David Tennant’s ‘mesmerising’ Richard II (The Guardian) and Paapa Essiedu’s ‘utterly engaging performance’ as Hamlet (The Times), to Josette Simon delivering ‘a Cleopatra to die for’ (The Observer) and Sir Antony Sher’s King Lear being hailed as ‘a crowning achievement in a major career’ (The Telegraph), this special collection showcases British theatre at its finest.