Mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and pianist Fazıl Say share some tantalising, captivating and sensuous Secrets in this album of songs, centred on Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis, Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Fazıl Say’s own Gezi Park 3 – which he and Crebassa premiered in 2014. Describing the recording sessions, Marianne Crebassa says: “Sometimes we worked in a kind of trance … there were some moments when nothing seemed to exist around us …”

Lang Lang presents a treasure trove of musical discoveries in this album: Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, recorded with the Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons, is a true romantic masterpiece for Lang Lang that rivals the great concertos by Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky. Pairing it with Carnival of the Animals, a whimsical menagerie that has captivated young hearts for generations, Lang Lang continues his heartfelt wish to promote the love of classical music to young people and it also gives him a chance to collaborate with his wife, pianist Gina Alice. These two large scale orchestral works are complemented with solo compositions, including hidden gems by five female French composers as well as beloved French Classics.

From the overt Romanticism of Saint-Saëns to the nostalgia-laden modernity of Poulenc, Bruno Philippe takes us on a journey through (almost) a century of French cello music. Alongside Tanguy de Williencourt, he also performs the cello version of Franck's famous Violin Sonata, one of the absolute peaks of nineteenth-century chamber music.

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré's Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell's Sleep, Adam, sleep with it's references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms's Salamander, Wolf's Die Bekehrte or Ravel's Air du Feu.

With the release of each new album, violinist Arabella Steinbacher proves again and again that she not only performs an impressively wide and diverse repertoire, but that she commands different facets of it with incredible precision. This installment features works for violin and piano by French composers Fauré, Poulenc, and Ravel, whose output traverses three generations of wonderfully contrasting music.

Even in an age of thrilling countertenors, Max Emanuel Cencic stands out for the heroic scale and brilliance of his voice, his expansive lyricism, and his imagination and enterprise in choice of repertoire. Cencic has excelled as both a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, and Fantastic Cencic showcases his extraordinary interpretative range – from the great and lesser-known masters of the Baroque to the bel canto of Rossini and composers of the Romantic era from Schubert to Strauss. The third of these three CDs comprises recordings from the early 1990s, shortly after Cencic left the Wiener Sängerknaben, which are released here for the first time.

The music in this collection, inspired by religious thought and liturgical text, has been selected in honor of Pope John Paul II's visit to Paris in August of 1997 to celebrate Mass as part of the Worldwide Days of Youth. Much of the music here is very familiar to even casual listeners to classical music. From J. S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," to a rousing version of "Hallelujah" from Handel's 'Messiah,' this CD plays like a greatest hits of church music from the last 400 years.

Arthur Grumiaux (1921-1986) was never a technical daredevil and his playing has been described as being "for conoisseurs only." Indeed, his style was quite refined and his repertoire tended towards pieces that which suited his musical gifts. His Beethoven Concerto and Sonata recordings and performances are most definitely among the best ever done of those works. This large set of 30+ smaller pieces (with a couple larger ones thrown in) focuses on Grumiaux's ability to touch the listener and indeed there is a thread of imperturbable calmness that runs through this recording upon a casual listening. This discing on Philips came out around 1996, presumably to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. I'll just touch on a few of the highlights of this 2 CD set. In all of them, we hear Grumiaux at his best - polished and radiant, with Istvan Hajdu as the competent piano partner for all of the numbers.

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) inhabits a "sound world" uniquely his own: moody, harmonically complex, sometimes neurotically so, melodically elusive. Less readily accessible than either of his French contemporaries, Debussy and Ravel, Faure's chamber music, nonetheless, is infinitely rewarding and certainly should be more widely recorded and available.
This remarkably rich offering of Faure's only two piano quartets (in C Minor, Op. 15 and G Minor, Op. 45) will, no doubt, go a long way in re-energizing interest in this coupling of the composer's most "popular" ensemble works.

Leave the "Anthropocene" theme aside for a moment and revel in Renée Fleming's voice on this album, released in 2021 when the singer was in her early 60s. The instrument is in fine shape, and Fleming's decision to forgo operatic performances in favor of art song is looking better and better. The top notes don't have the force of a 30-year-old's but have a rather eerie precision. Perhaps there's a bit of strain in the register just below the top, but the burnished quality of her low notes is absolutely gorgeous and more than compensates. As for the music, the new term "Anthropocene" denotes the current epoch in which the effect of human activities on the climate is fundamental.

Gabriel Fauré has frequently been termed “the father of Impressionism”; the Parisian music world of Fauré’s time was characterised by emancipation from German hegemony in chamber music after the traumatic outcome of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and by the beginnings of an original French musical language beyond the opera. Fauré shows himself from his Late Romantic and passionate sides: already the beginning impetuously rushes forward, but for all its passion it quite strictly and surprisingly follows the formal conventions in its polyphony. The Mozart Piano Quartet skilfully combines the traditional with the new; in three-dimensional sound the enormous dynamic expressive breadth of the ensemble develops its full potential.

Michael Collins MBE is one of the most complete musicians of his generation. Continuing his distinguished career as a soloist, he has in recent years also become highly regarded as a conductor and in 2010 took up the position as Principal Conductor of the City of London Sinfonia, and works with leading orchestras around the world both as a soloist and as a conductor. Committed for many years to expanding the repertoire of the clarinet, he has premiered works by some of todays most highly regarded composers, including John Adams, Elliott Carter, Brett Dean and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In addition to commissioning and supporting new compositions, he is also a champion of well-crafted arrangements of other works for the clarinet.

Together with photographer Mat Hennek, French star pianist Hélène Grimaud, comes up with a multimedia concert project at the Grand Hall of Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. Grimaud's virtuous piano performance is accompanied by Hennek's highly praised photo series "Woodlands", which depicts genuine portraits of trees, Grimaud's piano recital includes works by romantic and impressionistic composers. They are connected by seven "Transitions", written exclusively for Grimaud by British composer and DJ Nitin Sawhney. The motives of Hennek's Woodlands series create an extraordinary visual backdrop, which in combination with Grimaud´s pianistic "impeccable clarity and articulation" (Hamburger Abendblatt) and the Elbphilharmonie's splendid acoustics grants a concert experience of a special kind.

This is a beautiful anthology of sacred liturgical music. Chung coordinates his forces in larger choral pieces with power and vertical balance. Contributions by Cecilia Bartoli find the mezzo in top form, and Bryn Terfel brings charismatic presence to “Pie Jesu” from the Fauré Requiem. Also included are the interminable "Song for Athene" by John Taverner and a great performance by Andrea Bocelli in Eric Levi's hymn for the world, "I Believe".

A violinist in a class of his own, Renaud Capuçon shows why he is 'Le Violon Roi'; (The Violin King) in this 3-CD collection. As the leading French violinist of his generation, Capucon records exclusively for Virgin Classics and has a rich discography. The set brings together not only some of his best and most popular performances as a soloist but as a collaborator.