Desire, adventure, loneliness, and darkness: the night holds all this for the insightful pianist Eva Barta. On her new Genuin CD, she has compiled a program of intimate and poetic literature, ranging from wellknown and popular pieces such as Debussy's "Clair de Lune" and Rachmaninoff's "Préludes" to exciting discoveries by Weill and Bartók and lieder by Schönberg and Sibelius. Eva Barta herself has transcribed the selected art songs for piano and incorporates her extensive experience in lied interpretation into these expressive, differentiated first recordings.

Once again this year, the MDR Radio Choir is delighting us with a programme of Christmas carols: the elite vocal ensemble is continuing its successful series, showcasing carols from Germany and around the world. Popular and well-known titles as well as rarities are here to discover. We travel through Spain and Scandinavia, through Slavic countries, to the North American and Australian continents. "Glory to God in the highest", from tender lullabies to magnificent angelic praise and heartwarming winter magic: Gloria in excelsis deo!

Dorothee Eberhardt's fifth portrait on Genuin is made up of new and recent works for unusual instrument combinations. First-class ensembles and musicians such as the Monet Quintet, the Trio Tricolor (Korbinian Altenberger, violin, Christoph Eß, horn, and Boris Kusnezow, piano), Zoltán Kovács (clarinet) Axel Gremmelspacher (piano), and Catherina Lendle (violin) take part.

Tilman Sillescu is one of the most successful composers of our time for video games and film music. He has won many awards for his game scores, including compositions for the great ANNO series and Age of Empires 4. Now Sillescu has composed his first symphony and is releasing it on Genuin: the Staatskapelle Weimar has recorded the large-scale work under the direction of Christian Klaus Frank with full musical sensuality. The Symphony "Nachtlichter" is composed in four thematically interwoven movements: it is not a crossover between film music and symphonic music, but a veritable, unique tonal painting in terms of its musical language and structure!

Guitarist Anne Haasch sets the mood for a dialogue across centuries in her new Genuin recording with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Manuel María Ponce. She combines the rarely recorded 24 Preludes by the Mexican composer with the Lute Suite No. 2 by the Leipzig Thomaskantor, whom he revered. However, the juxtaposition of these works is a dialogue not only across time but across continents as well. Like Bach, Ponce has mastered the art of creating dense, eternal spheres of tension, but within ostensibly inconspicuous forms and simple, poetic lines. Anne Haasch captures this immensely expressive music's architecture, rhetoric, and content with her clear and vibrant playing.

As Richard Wagner penned in Das Rheingold, "Traulich und treu ist's nur in der Tiefe" (Tender and true 'tis but in the depths). This recording is a truly sensational debut full of dizzying depths, presented by the up-and-coming bass trombonist Lisa Hochwimmer on her debut Genuin recording together with the Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra. The program features fascinating compositions for the lustrous golden low-pitched instrument, which is rarely heard as a solo instrument with an orchestra. Lisa Hochwimmer embarks on wide-ranging musical expeditions, taking on powerful original repertoire by Derek Bourgeois, Alexej Lebedev, and Chris Brubeck, as well as imaginative arrangements of opera arias by Peter Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi, and Richard Wagner. And with this smoothness and depth, some of Walhalla's gods are guaranteed to be green with envy.

What doesn't resonate with the expression 'Fin de Siècle'! It encompasses the rich cultural diversity of the period around 1900, the breadth of which still amazes us today. It is best approached in individual works, for example, in the music from different European spheres, which Duo Aust presents in its new GENUIN CD. Bettina Aust, clarinet, and Robert Aust, piano, have won international awards and have been sponsored by Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now and the German Academic Exchange Service. They have complied musical works ranging from the throwback approach of Camille Saint-Saëns to the virtuosic and visionary sounds of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky.

Johann Sebastian Bach is commonly understood as the starting point of the violin repertoire. But there was unaccompanied violin music before him, too — and it is truly exciting! The renowned baroque violinist Nadja Zwiener presents this music with her solo debut album on GENUIN. Her inspired recording shows that Bach was able to build his repertoire on a great foundation: Composers such as Johann Georg Pisendel, Johann Westhoff, and even Arcangelo Corelli and Giuseppe Tartini wrote highly challenging works for the incredibly versatile instrument. The concertmistress of the English Concert and the Gaechinger Cantorey takes us on a fascinating journey.