Following on from his phenomenally successful Grammy-nominated first Puccini album in 2015, “Nessun Dorma”, Jonas Kaufmann now presents a new album of Puccini highlights to mark the composer’s anniversary year 2024. “The greatest tenor of his generation” (The Guardian) has selected for his new recording six great duets and scenes with six outstanding sopranos – legendary love scenes, emotionally-charged Love Affairs. He is joined by sopranos Anna Netrebko (in Manon Lescaut), Asmik Grigorian (in Il Tabarro), Malin Byström (in La Fanciulla del West), Maria Agresta (in Madama Butterfly), Pretty Yende (in La Bohème) and Sonya Yoncheva (in Tosca). Two famous tenor arias “E lucevan le stelle” (Tosca) and “Che gelida manina!” (La Bohème) complete the attractive programme, with Asher Fisch conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The album is presented in limited edition deluxe packaging, including printed interview with Jonas Kaufmann, full lyrics, photos and many of the original Ricordi opera posters.

Sony Classical is proud to present ‘Dvorák: Cello Concerto’ by OPUS Klassik award- winning cellist Raphaela Gromes, released on September 13 th on CD. Following the tremendous success of her album "Femmes" (2023), Raphaela Gromes releases a new album, "Dvorák: Cello Concerto", featuring one of the most renowned cello concertos alongside inspiring and moving pieces by Ukrainian composers. It was inspired by Gromes' visit to Kyiv in December 2023, where she performed the Dvorák Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and its chief conductor Volodymyr Sirenko, to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

Formed by Phish drummer Jon Fishman as a kind of all-star experiment from local players in Burlington, Pork Tornado delivers a mismatched set of solo noodles, tight rhythm jams, spacy synth pads, saloon laments - songs set in styles that have nothing much in common other than the spirit of the musicians as they hopscotch from genre to genre. Their authenticity on country cuts like "Home Is Where You Are" and "Blue Skies" makes it almost impossible to believe that the same guys are responsible for the funk track "Kiss My Black Ass," which they execute with a street energy, crisp backbeat, virtuoso stuttering bass, and collage mentality that reach back to James Brown and War for inspiration. There are enigmatic moments as well, which range from Dan Archer's somewhat stiff solo guitar fragment "Fellini" to a few seconds of Fishman goofing around on the keys in "Organ"…

In 2023, Big Big Train were rapturously received by audiences across the UK and Europe, concluding the tour with two triumphant appearances at London’s Cadogan Hall. ‘A Flare On The Lens’ features the band’s full show at Cadogan from the second of their two nights there last year and also includes seven songs which were played only on the first night. 'A Flare On The Lens’ is the sight and sound of Big Big Train back on an upwards curve and re-establishing itself as one of the rock music scene’s most compelling live bands.

The Saint of the Pit, Diamanda Galás’ fifth studio album and the second in her trilogy, The Masque of the Red Death, is an urgent record. Its theme is essentially passion, in the sense of suffering, although here, and unlike the passion of Christianity, there is little to offer solace. Re-released on Galás’ own Intravenal Sound Operations (ISO) after its initial release on Mute in November 1986, The Saint and the Pit is a masterpiece of witnessing, forged from grief and fury during the HIV-AIDS epidemic. While its precursor, The Divine Punishment (originally Mute, now ISO), released only five months before in June 1986, invoked Old Testament laws around the clean and the unclean, as a way of raging against the inhumanity of systemic neglect of people with HIV-AIDS, this album is focussed on a more interior response.

The new album by Suki Waterhouse is a masterful slab of exuberant, emotionally vulnerable pop with hooks galore. It features her hit songs “OMG”, “To Love”, “My Fun”, plus 15 brand new songs.

Tsotne Zedginidze is a descendant of Niko Sulkhanishvili, considered one of the greatest Georgian composers of all time, and a renowned pedagogue. Recording on our joint label Verbier Festival Gold, the prodigious talent Tsotne Zedginidze, born in 2009, releases the full recording of his debut at the Verbier Festival in 2022. He is not only a virtuosic pianist, but also a composer and has been heralded by some great musicians such as Daniel Barenboim and Giya Kancheli as one of the most exceptionally gifted musicians of the century. The album contains works by Debussy, Schoenberg and Bartók as well as two original compositions by the artist himself.

The passion that is the root of Stella Almondo’s character permeates this first studio recording. Born in Monaco in 2006, a disciple of Amédée Briggen in Nice, then of Igor Lazko in Paris, Stella Almondo proclaims here her unconditional love of music, an art that she perceives as the quintessence of love and which allows her to explore in depth, as she did from a very young age, the bewildering diversity of emotions and human experiences. Throughout this recital, Stella Almondo delights in the most lyrical moments, her crystalline sound radiating in majestically deployed phrases. The fierce energy of her playing, the fluidity of the musical impulses are felt throughout this album, played with conviction and sincerity. This program, which weaves together works by three great composers born in Imperial Russia in the second half of the 19th century, pays homage to the music, this universal language which, through the exaltation the inner world of man, the elevation of the soul, becomes a vehicle for the expression of passionate feelings.

Paradise Cinema is a project led by multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) with contributions from Khadim Mbaye, Tons Sambe and Laurence Pike. The first, eponymous, Paradise Cinema record, released in 2020, was recorded in Dakar and featured the dense rhythms of Mbalax music combining with Wyllie’s textural saxophone and synth playing.