"For the second time in a matter of weeks, here we have an opportunity to hear more from guitarist Derek Bailey, this time performing with John Stevens. Neither man should need much by way of introduction: both were seminal figures in the world of free improvised music as it took shape in the 1960s and 70s. Thanks to Michael Gurzon’s recording, here they are, in 1989, performing together at The Duke of Wellington in London. The first track, ‘I’m Alright Actually’, begins with a series of slippery shapes, the noise-elements of Bailey’s guitar merging with those of Stevens’ percussion in a non-stop stream of invention. The music reaches a point of stasis before moving off into a series of angular shapes which give way to a stream of more slow-moving ideas. There is always a sense of restlessness though, a feeling that, at any moment, things might get more chaotic, which, inevitably, the do. The music ebbs and flows, but the inventiveness and the sense of restless energy is always there. A few seconds of applause have been left in at the end, which really captures the ambience of the venue (the same goes for both the other tracks, too). The second, ‘What’s the Time?’, begins with more spacious, harmonic-dominated ideas from Bailey, in dialogue with Stevens’ ‘pocket trumpet’. Almost seven minutes in, the music becomes more dense and agitated.

His17th album with Signum Classics, the Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams, brings a profound musical intelligence to his work as soloist, accompanist and chamber musician. His second album of Robert Schumann works explores a selection of works that span a substantial part of Schumann’s life. Llŷr Williams’ long and successful collaboration with Signum Records includes the 8-disc box-set ‘A Schubert Journey’ (2020), the 12-volume ‘Beethoven Unbound’ (2018), a ‘Wagner Without Words’ double album (2014) and highlights from Liszt’s ‘Années de pèlerinage‘ (2012).

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.

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.

This album is inspired by the fantastic physicality and variety of dance forms in which composers from Granados to Shostakovich excelled. There are some hidden gems as well as pieces that will be familiar to all - and they have the novelty, as transcriptions, of all having been 'stolen' from the original. These arrangements are creative, fun and often virtuosic.

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.

Orjan Hulten presents a brand-new quartet and a new album. Under the name "Peaceful Warrior," the quartet features some of the finest musicians, with the fantastic Isabella Lundgren as a guest. The music can be described as poetic, lyrical, and free. It is newly composed music by Orjan for the quartet. Isabella joins in performing the poem "Please Call Me by My True Names" by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as a reinterpretation of Shirley Horn's beautiful ballad "Where Are You Going?". The "Peaceful Warrior Quartet" may not create world peace, but we can start with ourselves. Peace is about a desire for a better world, but also about a journey inward to us. It's about finding a genuine and generous creative process together in the band and with the audience.

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!

Winner of the 2009 ARD International Music Competition, violinist Hyeyoon Park has made a name for herself as a soloist and chamber musician, performing with the likes of Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Kian Soltani, Timothy Ridout and Benjamin Grosvenor. On her first album for Linn, Silenced, she partners Gergely Madaras and WDR Sinfonieorchester in a beautiful programme that showcases two composers who were at odds with the system in place. Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto was banned for its ‘formalist distortions’ and only premiered in 1955 after Stalin's death. Refusing to join the Nazi-aligned Kultuurkamer, Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans’ work was banned. Her Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra, composed in grief, is introspective and bitter in tone. A youthful academic exercise, Shostakovich’s Variations Op. 3 brings the album to a rumbustious end.

One of Saxony-Anhalt’s oldest and most tradition-rich orchestras presents a compelling combination of two major orchestral works on GENUIN, marking the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus’s relocation from Weimar to Dessau: the Anhaltische Philharmonie of the Bauhaus city Dessau, under its general music director Markus L. Frank, pairs Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (in Ravel’s orchestration) with Feininger Fractals by Eisenach-born composer Thomas Buchholz (b. 1961) – two orchestral works closely connected to visual art. The finely spun textures of Buchholz, who in this work engages with Bauhaus master Lyonel Feininger, and the endless colors of Mussorgsky/Ravel are in the best hands with this Dessau ensemble. Magnificent but not pompous, virtuosic yet full of meaning, the orchestra plays with intelligence and nuance under its chief conductor.

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.

The new program "Opium" by the Duo Runge & Ammon reflects the creative, decadent and frivolous time of the 1920s - a time of awakening, turmoil, sensuality, ecstasy, seduction but also with a premonition of approaching catastrophe. With music by Korngold, Mahler, Bloch, Hindemith, Gade, Ravel, Gershwin, and new arrangement with excerpts from "Dreigroschenoper" and "Maria Galante" by Kurt Weill. The two artists also arranged film music for Tom Tykwer's internationally acclaimed tv-series "Babylon Berlin" including an exclusive permission to perform these pieces on stage

Het Paradox Jazz Orchestra is het huisorkest van de Tilburgse jazzclub Paradox. De band werd in 2019 opgericht door dirigent Jasper Staps en trompettist Teus Nobel, en bestaat uit topjazzmusici uit Nederland en België. Sinds zijn ontstaan werpt het orkest zich op als de hoeder van het bigbanderfgoed uit Nederland en daarbuiten. Het zet zich in om bijzondere en tijdloze jazzcomposities uit de wereld van de bigbandmuziek levend te houden en van een eigen(tijdse) draai te voorzien. Voor zijn eerste concert op Belgische bodem grijpt het orkest naar het repertoire van de befaamde Nederlandse bigband The Skymasters.

"Hotspot" was mostly recorded in Hansa Studios, Berlin, and mixed in The Record Plant, Los Angeles. It was produced and mixed by Stuart Price and features ten brand new Tennant/Lowe tracks including the single "Dreamland" featuring Years & Years, which was released in September. Another of the songs, "Burning the heather", features Bernard Butler on guitar and was recorded at RAK Studios in London.Pet Shop Boys say: "We've written much of our music over the last ten years in Berlin and it was an exciting experience to work on this album in the legendary Hansa studios there and add a new dimension to our sound."The album is the last instalment of the trilogy of PSB albums produced by Stuart Price, following "Electric" in 2013 and "Super" in 2016

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.