Recorded at Abbey Road last autumn, Rainy Sunday Afternoon is The Divine Comedy's thirteenth album and their first studio album since 2019's UK top 5 Office Politics.

For fifteen exciting years the manuscripts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's keyboard concertos have held me in their thrall. Both delightful and challenging at the same time, a hitherto unpublished and therefore completely unknown world revealed it's hidden beauties.With an eighth CD, my series comprising around half of all the available keyboard concertos now comes to an end. This musical form - according to Emanuel Bach himself his 'most personal' - occupied the composer repeatedly throughout his lifetime. From the astonishingly self-confident concerto Wq1 by a 19-year-old to the cheerfully ironic Wq47 from the year of his death, a long and very fruitful career is illustrated by the search for distinctive new means of expression. As later with the symphonies composed in Hamburg, Emanuel Bach here also took 'all the liberties he needed'. We find bold innovation as well as exuberant kinetic joy, exquisite chromaticism and demanding virtuosity alongside profound contemplation.

A leading figure of French piano, Jean-Philippe Collard has graced the world’s stages with rare elegance and unwavering dedication, from the Romantic repertoire to the subtleties of French music. A profoundly human interpreter, he combines the rigor of a craftsman with the inspiration of a poet, driven by a quest for inner beauty and sonic authenticity.

To mark the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s birth, the Berliner Philharmoniker have dedicated an edition to the composer in which they present five key works from all of his stylistic periods under the direction of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko.

For fifteen exciting years the manuscripts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's keyboard concertos have held me in their thrall. Both delightful and challenging at the same time, a hitherto unpublished and therefore completely unknown world revealed it's hidden beauties.With an eighth CD, my series comprising around half of all the available keyboard concertos now comes to an end. This musical form - according to Emanuel Bach himself his 'most personal' - occupied the composer repeatedly throughout his lifetime.

An exciting new violin album from Yeyeong Jenny Jin, Winner of the 2023
Michael Hill International Violin Competition, with pianist Jeonghwan Kim, winner of the 2023 Sydney International Piano Competition. A Winners' Recital.

Despite his age, 25, Sebastiaan Visser is already a household name among jazz fusion guitar aficionados in the Netherlands, known for his rich sound and energetic playing. He is part of a new emerging generation of jazz musicians, who musically think outside the box. Nevertheless, fusion is his great passion, and he finds inspiration in jazz-rock icons like Allan Holdworth and John McLaughlin. “Always There” is his 2nd album with Deborah Slijkhuis on electric bass and Sebastiaan Cornelissen/Christopher Verweij on drums and Igor Herstel/Matthijs Geerts on keys. Guest is Sean Freeman on tenor sax.

A leading figure of French piano, Jean-Philippe Collard has graced the world’s stages with rare elegance and unwavering dedication, from the Romantic repertoire to the subtleties of French music. A profoundly human interpreter, he combines the rigor of a craftsman with the inspiration of a poet, driven by a quest for inner beauty and sonic authenticity.

To mark the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s birth, the Berliner Philharmoniker have dedicated an edition to the composer in which they present five key works from all of his stylistic periods under the direction of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko.

Flugelhorn, double bass, and a drum kit played with brushes – the sound immediately puts you in the middle of it all, almost as if you were in the middle of it all. The closeness of trumpeter Quentin Ghomari's trio is immediately apparent. "The Peacocks," the classic by Jimmy Rowles, is a perfect vehicle for this.

Accordionist Théo Ould describes this new album as “my most personal — I had never allowed myself to feature the music of Astor Piazzolla. I wanted to raise the accordion above the clichés to concentrate on more classical repertoire”. Théo’s vocation became evident, however, when he heard Piazzolla’s Libertango at the age of 6. Now, 20 years later, this Frenchman from Marseille tackles this music with fervour and exaltation through tailor-made arrangements performed alongside the Quatuor Bilitis and the double bass player Blanche Stromboni, as well as mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, who appears in a beautiful and heart-warming rendition of Balada para un loco, Piazzolla’s setting of a poem by Horacio Ferrer. Théo Ould is passionate about this music, inviting us to share in his enthusiasm by joining in Ferrer’s Balada: "Climb up into my madman’s tenderness, Put a wig of larks on your head, Fly with me now! Come! Fly! Come!"

Nelson Goerner has always dreamed of recording these two masterpieces of the concerto repertoire. With Kazuki Yamada, he has found the ideal partner to approach Ravel’s two piano concertos with the sensitivity and poetry for which he is universally renowned. The two works, composed at the same time and both performed for the first time in 1932, are nevertheless very different: premiered in Vienna, the Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in 1914; premiered in Paris, the Concerto in G is renowned for its verve and its famous pianistic interpolations. Ravel had composed the Pavane pour une infante défunte, a famous miniature of exquisite nostalgia, some 33 years earlier. The programme is completed by the Valses nobles et sentimentales; Marguerite Long, who gave the first performance of the Concerto in G, saw these eight linked pieces as a “stylistic panorama of the waltz”.

Following his first album of French lute music, Alban Tixier invites us to join him as he explores the byways of European music dating from the 13th to the 15th century.

In addition to his reputation as a dancer, the Sun King was also a musician. Under the enlightened influence of his mother, Anne of Austria, the young Louis XIV learned to play the lute and then the guitar. Once relegated to commoners, this instrument became a symbol of royal refinement. Beyond simple entertainment, this musical craze served a political purpose: to seduce the court and the people, and to weave harmony between French, Italian and Spanish cultures. Like a new King David, monarch-musician par excellence, Louis XIV crafted the image of an Apollonian sovereign, master of the arts as much as of power. Together with exceptional musicians, Lea Masson reveals this forgotten facet of the guitarist king!

Nelson Goerner has always dreamed of recording these two masterpieces of the concerto repertoire. With Kazuki Yamada, he has found the ideal partner to approach Ravel’s two piano concertos with the sensitivity and poetry for which he is universally renowned.