Chie Ayado japanese singer, pianist, actress. Ayado has been working with her own bands since the 1990s, with which she recorded a number of albums for the Japanese labels Sound Factory and East Works. She worked i.a. also with Junior Mance and Calvin Hill.

Valentina Lisitsa marks her debut on the Naïve label with a release commemorating the 150th anniversary of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s birth. The program includes eighteen short pieces spanning his body of work, from his early anthology of 24 preludes – modeled after those of Frédéric Chopin – to works like the frenzied Flammes Sombres written in 1914, just one year prior to his death.

At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, as ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity… a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life honestly, decently, nobly…’ Originally intending to write an oratorio, Shostakovich set eleven poems on the theme of mortality, and in particular early or unjust death, for two solo singers accompanied by strings and percussion. This is the penultimate release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

This is a fascinating programme from Dejan Lazic who had some interesting detective work tracking down the score of the Cramer. His sonata is wonderful music that deserves to be heard, and Dejan is a superb advocate for Clementi & Cramer as well as Beethoven.

Yang has won numerous prizes in music competitions including the Stotsenberg International Classical Guitar Competition, the San Francisco International Guitar Competition and the Young Concert Artist International competition in the United States, and the Darwin International Guitar Competition in Australia. She was awarded first prize in the Ivor Mairants Guitar Award by the City of London's Worshipful Company of Musicians, and won the Dorothy Grinstead Prize for a recital at Fairfield Hall, Croydon.

Chie Ayado japanese singer, pianist, actress. Ayado has been working with her own bands since the 1990s, with which she recorded a number of albums for the Japanese labels Sound Factory and East Works. She worked i.a. also with Junior Mance and Calvin Hill.

This quietly delightful recording by organist Kei Koito and vocal ensemble Il Canto di Orfeo pairs works from this golden age of German organ music with chorales, hymns and chants. The result is neither quite liturgy nor concert but a sort of musical meditation in which we often trace a single chorale melody or hymn tune from its origins through embellished organ arrangements and variations.

Like the three previous ones, this new volume of Bach organ works contains masterpieces, first and foremost, but also works that have not been clearly authenticated – incertum – and transcriptions of Bach works not originally composed for the organ, but that have definite value.

Kei Koito plays the incomparable 1730s-era Volckland organ in Erfurt’s Cruciskirche on her fifth volume dedicated to Bach's organ works. Rich in colour and character, the instrument is considered one of the most remarkable Baroque organs ever made and is the perfect match for these pieces.

Making his debut on Chandos, Sakari Oramo, who with the BBC Symphony Orchestra this year has championed new and rarely performed works, presents in surround sound the extravagant musical world of Florent Schmitt. The recording follows two exceptional Barbican performances with the same forces, a ‘sensuous and exotic’ Antoine et Cléopâtre, according to the Financial Times (2016), and the first performance for nearly a dozen years of Symphony No. 2 (2017).