* FIRST COMPLETE RECORDING

Leó Weiner was one of the most important of all Hungarian pedagogues as well as being a distinguished composer. The success of his Serenade, written when he was 21, was immediate – its light, intimate and richly melodic qualities, some of which derive from stylised Hungarian dances, are still captivating today. The Divertimento No. 3 and Variations on a Hungarian Folksong mine joyful music from a collection in Budapest’s Museum of Ethnography. The Violin Concerto No. 1 is a masterly orchestration of his Violin Sonata, Op. 9, alternating between the playful and the dramatic. The performance heard here restores 115 bars that were cut from the fourth movement, making this the first complete recording.

Giacomo Puccini achieved global renown as an opera composer, but the choral, vocal and orchestral works recorded here reveal little-known aspects of his output, including several rarities. Puccini’s early training was in church music, with the Messa di Gloria a clear indication of his great talent. The recently discovered Preludio a orchestra shows his wider ambitions, with the Germanic influences of the Capriccio sinfonico resulting in music destined to reappear in operas such as La Bohème. The elegiac and prescient aria Ad una morta contrasts with the celebratory Inno a Roma, a rousing occasional piece that features plenty of Puccini’s characteristic melodic flourishes.

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Giacomo PUCCINI
Preludio sinfonico
Requiem

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WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS

Claudio Santoro’s late works are marked by great concision and considerable emotional density. The music on this album was written in the last months of his life. The Viola Concerto and the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra juxtapose restless energy and expansive – if at times desolate – lyricism. The powerful Symphony No. 13 shows Santoro’s mastery of orchestration and form at its peak, and the compact Symphony No. 14 was to be the last in a cycle widely acclaimed as the most significant of its kind ever composed in Brazil.

Richard Strauss described his two-act opera Intermezzo as a ‘bourgeois comedy with symphonic interludes’. The soprano role of Christine with her shimmering cantilenas represents Strauss’s wife Pauline, while the successful Court Conductor Robert Storch is Richard Strauss’s alter ego in a reality drama that was avantgarde for its time. This acclaimed production from director Tobias Kratzer brings Intermezzo into the present day, highlighting Strauss’s own clever switches between reality and fiction with stunning visual effects and a superbly characterful cast.

Rossini’s Adina is a one-act farsa sentimentale or semiseria set in a seraglio in Baghdad where we find the Caliph determined to marry Adina who is also loved by Selimo. To this standard story Rossini brought an unexpected psychological depth, augmented by coloratura arias and male choruses of richness and daring. However, for unknown reasons he omitted a vital Terzetto, which has made the work problematic to fully realise in performance. This recording employs the Terzetto from Giovanni Pacini’s opera La schiava in Bagdad, a solution first proposed in 1861, much to the benefit of the opera’s pacing.

WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING

Michael Dellaira has become one of America’s leading opera composers, receiving acclaim and awards for compelling stage works including The Leopard (Naxos 8.669052–53). Based on Elisha Kent Kane’s expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the mid-19th century, Arctic Explorations is a study on the human desire to discover what lies beyond the boundaries of our experience. The effects of global warming and the plight of the Inuit in one of the most beautiful but endangered places on earth also forms part of the narrative.

INCLUDES WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING

Józef Wieniawski, younger brother of Henryk, was a prolific Polish composer and virtuoso pianist renowned throughout Europe. After studies in Paris he spent two years in Weimar studying with and absorbing the compositional style of Franz Liszt – Wieniawski’s work combines the pianistic flair and poetic intensity of both Liszt and his fellow countryman Chopin. These qualities can all be heard in the virtuoso Polonaises and the tragic Ballade as well as the Piano Sonata in B minor – the pinnacle of Józef Wieniawski’s many contributions to the piano repertoire.

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Józef WIENIAWSKI
Polonaise No. 1 in C major

Only available for download and streaming

INCLUDES WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS

Paris was the musical destination for many Russian émigré composers between the two World Wars, with both Grechaninov, from an older generation, and Tcherepnin, from a younger one, living in the city. Grechaninov’s Piano Trio No. 2 in G major is a brightly decorative work, whereas Tcherepnin’s concise, refined orientalism in the Piano Trio, Op. 34 is influenced by French modernism and the Russian avant-garde. Daniele Amfitheatrof moved to Rome where he wrote his beautiful, sunlit Piano Trio, richly imbued with the aura of Puccini and Mascagni. The dazzling Piano Trio on Hebrew Themes by New York-based Jacob Weinberg incorporates synagogue and Russian tunes, quotations from Bizet, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, as well as tango rhythms.

* WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING

David Amram’s career as a versatile composer, conductor and multi-instrumentalist has spanned more than 70 years. Recorded here in its world premiere, Voyages for Solo Violin in three movements evokes ancient Egypt, Native American and African roots music and, in the words of the composer, “the tradition of the fiddler as a keeper of the flame.” Ranging from prayer-like melodies to blues and polyrhythms, the Piano Sonata is one of the most jazz-influenced of any 20th-century work in this genre, while the Violin Sonata brings classical and jazz idioms together in music that inspired a collaboration with the writer Jack Kerouac.

This volume in the Complete Piano Music edition focuses on march transcriptions, a genre that often symbolised national identity and one that Liszt arranged and transcribed throughout his entire compositional career. Marches often appeared in Liszt’s recitals and allowed him to pay respect to the culture in which he was performing. These brilliant works are spiced with Hungarian timbres, suggesting native scalic patterns and the sound of the cimbalom, as well as Liszt’s Romantic flamboyance.

Few musicians shaped the evolution of keyboard writing as profoundly as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His sonatas and concertos aligned technical brilliance with lyrical sensitivity to elevate the piano from largely domestic use to a powerful vehicle for solo and ensemble musicianship. This collection of hidden gems includes pieces spanning early childhood miniatures to complete sonata movements, minuets, a set of variations and a wide variety of incomplete works filled with Mozart’s characteristic delicacy, surprise and operatic drama.

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Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART
Piano Sonata No. 6

Only available for download and streaming

INCLUDES WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS

Reginald Smith Brindle served with the Royal Engineers in Africa and Italy during the Second World War, and later returned to Italy in 1949 to further his compositional studies with Pizzetti and Dallapiccola. The influence of Italian landscapes and culture can be found in many of Smith Brindle’s works, including an extended combination of nostalgia and melancholy in November Memories dedicated to the poet Margherita Guidacci, and an evocation of the spirit of Gesualdo in The Prince of Venosa. The sheer variety of his guitar music is further represented in the expressive Preludes and Fantasias, the technical demands of the Île-de-France Variations, and the pedagogical but intriguingly atonal Ten Simple Preludes.

The Czech composer Leoš Janáček is primarily known for his operas and orchestral works, but at the piano he discovered a highly idiosyncratic and expressive language, strongly influenced by his studies of contemporaneous Slavonic folk music. The cycle On an Overgrown Path is a microcosm of this style. Composed between 1900 and 1911, these small pieces evoke the composer’s rustic boyhood in the village of Hukvaldy, conveying intimate nostalgia and poignancy in an autobiographical diary of impressions and dreams tinged with joy, introspection and loss. This recording includes the two surviving pieces from the work’s second series as well as the Paralipomena sequence of three miniatures from the 1942 publication.

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The ‘Stradivari Quartett in Concert’ series presents this second volume – Songs of Yearning – a live recording captured during the ensemble’s Klangwelle concert in Zurich. The album features three remarkable works: Dvořák’s radiant ‘American’ Quartet, five lyrical selections from his Cypresses, and the world premiere recording of Swiss composer David Philip Hefti’s String Quartet No. 8 – a work expressly commissioned for the ensemble and designed to be performed interspersed with the Cypresses, as heard in this recording. Founded in 2007, Stradivari Quartett has earned global acclaim for its sophisticated musicianship and profound interpretations that affirm the quartet’s standing among today’s foremost ensembles.

Only available for download and streaming

* WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING

Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem brings to life the complexities of colonisation, identity and survival through the story of Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Gulf Coast of Mexico who was given to the Spaniards as a young slave. Using a fusion of Western liturgical traditions, indigenous Nahua poetry and Latin influences, this powerful work deals with the fundamental question of how to reconcile a legacy of historical violence that continues to shape modern issues. Antonio Estévez’s wildly popular Cantata Criolla – considered one of the greatest choral pieces of the 20th century in Latin America – is the composer’s most celebrated work.

Singaporean composer and conductor, Darius Lim, incorporates theatrical elements into his choral compositions, taking audiences on an emotional journey. The 14 works in this album attest to his belief in the passion, joy and transcendence of the human spirit, whether as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, or to the beauties of nature and imaginary fantasy worlds. Lim’s music embraces the mystical, the magical and the ethereal in ways that stir the imagination and touch the heart.

This album features four Austrian composers from the late 19th to the early 20th century: Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Presenting four contemporaneous yet stylistically diverse song cycles, it captures the artistic essence of Austrian songs during this transformative era. Soprano Yuanming Song, an award-winning international artist, graces prestigious stages worldwide. Viennese cultural media acclaim her as ’a pure lyric soprano with remarkable vocal elasticity – evenly magnetic, tender yet powerful’. Recorded in Vienna with pianist Charles Spencer, this album showcases their remarkable artistic synergy.

Only available for download and streaming

The New & Now playlist features all that is new and exciting in the world of classical music, whether it’s new music, new presentations or new performers. With more than 200 new releases each year, and artists from around the world, there is always something new to discover with Naxos.