A world removed from the grand and awesome visions of the Last Judgement that so often characterize settings of the Mass for the Dead, Brahms conceived a work of ‘consolation for those who are suffering’. Having spent more than ten years absorbing this German ‘humanist’ Requiem, Pichon and Pygmalion have meticulously shaped every bar of this compact work, achieving a form of polyphonic transparency that confounds the senses and transcends the universality of the Requiem's message.

"The Voice of the Beloved" is a forthcoming choral album by the Netherlands Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor) featuring 20th-century works by Frank Martin (his Mass for Double Choir), Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (his Le Cantique des cantiques), and Olivier Messiaen (O sacrum convivium).

Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra have begun to record the complete symphonies of Shostakovich, starting with his Fourth and Fifth symphonies. Shostakovich dared to express human suffering, passion, fear and catastrophe in his music, but always asking the same nagging question: what is man? In this sense, these two symphonies open with a question — an idea of martyrdom that was to become one of the central ideas of his later symphonies and, of course, of his Lady Macbeth of Mzensk. Both symphonies are dated between 1935-1937 when Shostakovich was in his thirties; this was one of the darkest and most difficult phases of his life, marked as it was by the repercussions of some of his writings and the arrest of many people close to him, including members of his family.

Other Lives is an American band formed in Stillwater, Oklahoma, by multi-instrumentalists Jesse Tabish, Jonathon Mooney, and Josh Onstott.

This captivating new release from PENTATONE celebrates the glittering world of 19th-century opera and the timeless beauty of the golden age of bel canto.

For the third volume of their complete Mozart series, Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d’Oro bring together the Haffner and Linz symphonies, composed in 1782 and 1783. At this point, Mozart had fully established himself as a composer of opera and dramatic works, and he conceived these symphonies with the mindset of a man of the stage – boldly!

Ain't Got Time To Die began as recorded songs in the WW2 installation on Waiheke Island called Stoney Batter by Nick Abbott onsite in 2023 ( Call My Maker, Apocryphal Flood Blues) ALL other tracks were recorded between then and Dec 2024 at Vanguard Studios Waiheke Island.

On the occasion of her first recording, Sophia Liu has chosen to highlight the romantic music repertoire through performing contrasted pages by Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, themselves pianists. Along with her virtuosity, the young quick-handed soloist achieves a perfect symbiosis of lyricism and a sense of poetry in addition to an uncommon maturity that already places her among today’s rising stars of the keyboard.

French-Hungarian pianist Suzana Bartal joins Sébastien Rouland and the Saarländische Staatsorchester in this release of two warhorses of the Romantic repertoire, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor. Although not successful at its premiere with the composer at the piano, Saint-Saëns’ 2nd went on to be beloved by the public, and is probably the most played of his 5 concertos for piano. Very few pieces of music are as iconic as the only concerto Grieg ever completed: his famous Piano Concerto in A minor. Liszt famously sight read and lavished praise on it when it was written in 1870, and it has been a perennial favourite since then.

The Dartington Trio was formed in 1980 from the larger Dartington Ensemble, maintaining a continuous thread of Dartington's public music-making set for so many years by the Dartington String Quartet.

Mari Eriksmoen is a Norwegian soprano and opera singer with a repertoire including roles for coloratura soprano and lyric soprano.

Borodin (choral adaptations): A useful trick question for music quizzes is: what was Borodin’s first published work? Answer: a treatise on chemistry! He was not alone among his Russian contemporaries in having two professions: Tchaikovsky started out in the civil service, Mussorgsky was a soldier and Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer. However he alone managed to achieve pre-eminence in both careers: more to the point, his scientific work still allowed him time for a substantial musical output. Only his opera Prince Igor remained unfinished, to be completed by others; we would have been much poorer without the Polovtsian Dances and Overture from that work.

Often described as “too easy for children, too difficult for artists,” Mozart’s piano sonatas reveal a world far deeper than their graceful surfaces suggest. Behind their clarity and charm lies a universe of drama, lyricism, and invention—music that continues to challenge and inspire performers to this day. With this first volume, Gábor Farkas embarks on a journey through the complete sonatas, bringing to life the freshness, brilliance, and emotional depth of Mozart’s earliest masterpieces. Expect elegance, wit, and a new light cast on works that remain timeless in their beauty.

André Antranik Manoukian (Armenian: Անդրե Անդրանիկ Մանուկյան; born 9 April 1957 in Lyon) is a French songwriter, arranger, jazz musician and actor of Armenian descent.

The Dartington Trio was formed in 1980 from the larger Dartington Ensemble, maintaining a continuous thread of Dartington's public music-making set for so many years by the Dartington String Quartet.