Andrew Appel, Artistic Director of the Four Nations Ensemble, performs throughout Europe and the United States as soloist in many festivals including Italy’s Spoleto Festival, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Redwoods Festival. In 2023 Appel was invited to join the performers at Music from Marlboro. As recitalist, Mr. Appel has performed at Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls in New York, as well as halls from the Music Academy of the West to the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

The sonatas and partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001–1006) are a set of six works composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. They are sometimes referred to in English as the sonatas and partias for solo violin in accordance with Bach's headings in the autograph manuscript: "Partia" (plural "Partien") was commonly used in German-speaking regions during Bach's time, whereas the Italian "partita" was introduced to this set in the 1879 Bach Gesellschaft edition, having become standard by that time. The set consists of three sonatas da chiesa in four movements and three partitas (or partias) in dance-form movements. The 2nd Partita is widely known for its Chaconne, considered one of the most masterly and expressive works ever written for solo violin.

One of the key German composers before Bach with more than 500 surviving individual pieces, Heinrich Schutz wrote mainly church music, and is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Although he lived most of his long life in Germany, in his twenties Schutz made two visits to Venice.

This recording presents an unedited early classical repertoire by the Venetian composer and violinist Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen (1745-1760). As an outstanding pupil at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti in Venice, she was allowed to study with Giuseppe Tartini in Padua, who wrote her a long letter in which he explained his methods of violin playing and practising. This letter was copied in Padua even before it was sent and printed in Italy around 1770, followed by translations into English, German and French.

Orange Mountain Music is proud to present Philip Glass’s “Etudes for Piano” performed by Dutch pianist Feico Deutekom. Following up on his successful first album on OMM, “Musical Offering” Deutekom’s new album is a new examination of Glass’s piano Etudes, one of the landmark bodies of work in the 21st Century, from a new perspective. The most common approach for pianists is as “completists” and to simple record Glass’s twenty Etudes in straight order.

This record production represents for me a kind of “viaticum” towards the return to a complete musical activity, but it is also a farewell to Emilia Fadini, a great musician and musicologist specialized in the study and performance of late Renaissance, Baroque and Classical repertoire, with whom I had the privilege of studying for almost twenty years. The pieces in this recording are the last ones we faced together and I feel like to have to dedicate her this work. This is a way to remember someone who was a teacher, a friend, as well as a solid point of reference and an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me as well as for many musicians who, at least in Italy, are actually involved in ancient music.

Hans, le joueur de flûte is a ravishing opera, loosely based on the legend of Hamelin’s pied piper popularized notably by the Grimm Brothers, composed by Louis Ganne and premiered in Monte-Carlo in 1906. Rarely recorded, its best rendition is undoubtedly this beautiful 1967 performance with the best French singers of their time, including Liliane Berton and the amazing baritone Michel Dens in the title-role.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Pletnev (born April 14, 1957, Arkhangelsk) is a Soviet and Russian pianist, composer and conductor. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1989). Four times winner of the State Prizes of the Russian Federation (1982, 1993, 1996, 2006).

Five of the best brass players in the world united in a chamber music ensemble: The Reinhold Friedrich Brass Quintett was founded in 2022 and presents its first CD, UNITY.

“The Wagner Project” was recorded at the KammerMusikKöln’s “10+1” anniversary concert under the motto of Richard Wagner. With this album the ensemble, consisting of 15 instrumentalist and vocal soloist soprano Kathrin Zukowski, presents arrangements for chamber music ensemble of several rarities by the composer. Among other pieces, it contains the world premiere of Wagner’s extremely rarely performed French Songs in an arrangement commissioned from Simone Fontanelli coupled with the second public performance of Fontanelli’s arrangement of Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder, a further commission by KammerMusikKöln. In addition, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll is presented, in the composer’s own chamber music arrangement, a particularly gratifying piece for small ensemble.

Leonor de Lera has chosen the "Arcadia" described in Greek mythology as a transfigured place in idyllic nature as the title for her new CD. The genre of the pastorale, the Arcadian pastoral idyll, enjoyed incredible popularity during the Renaissance and all the great poets of the time wrote poems that were in turn set to madrigals by the great composers. Leonor de Lera plays a selection of such pastorals on her violin - accompanied by lute and guitar.

SOMM Recordings honours Franz Schmidt, one of the great symphonic composers of the 20th century, on the 150th anniversary of his birth with this double-disc set featuring two of his masterworks. Revered in his day in his native Austria as the nation’s leading composer and an elite teacher, cellist and pianist, his name will not be known to many. This is due, at least in part, to a perceived association with the Third Reich (against which there is ample evidence). This first release on CD of two premiere recordings, meticulously produced and restored by Lani Spahr, showcases Schmidt’s unique harmonic language, exceptional contrapuntal skill and mastery of form, qualities which prompted Hans Pfitzner to call Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4 “nearer perfection than Bruckner, more honest than Richard Strauss and more original than Reger”.

Harpist Lauren Scott's debut album, Beyond the Horizon, was a breakout sensation. Her scintillating follow-up, Sea of Stars, promises to follow in its footsteps.

This album aims to reveal or remind of the unique beauty of Robert Schumann's late compositions, characterized by an evolving writing style and a musical discourse rich in emotions and history. The alleged madness of Schumann should not be simplistically attributed to his music or his creative genius. On the contrary, this aspect adds a unique depth to his work.

Fauré: Symphonie en Fa Op. 20; Herbert, V: Suite für Cello und Orchester, Op. 3; Fauré: Elégie für Cello und Orchester, Op. 24.