Béla Bartók's masterpiece trilogy that set the tone for music in the 20th century. Bartók is a composer who best fits Paavo Järvi's agile and dramatic musicality. This album, which contains three major pieces for orchestra composed by Bartok in the European era, is an album that Jarvi longed for recording. "Music for Strings, Percussion Instruments and Celesta", composed in 1936, is an unconventional organization that divides stringed parts into two groups and contrasts them with percussion instruments / Celesta. The overwhelming virtuosity of the NHK Symphony Orchestra has been demonstrated with unprecedented strength. Both are the first recordings for both Paavo Järvi and the Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra.

"I don't think Mendelssohn gets the attention he deserves," said Paavo Järvi at the start of the 2020-2021 season. Faced with this observation, he undertook to record a complete cycle of Mendelssohn's orchestral works with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra for his second season as Music Director. On the programme are the composer's five symphonies, including the second, known as 'Lobgesang', half-symphony, half-cantata, with the participation of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, tenor Patrick Grahl and sopranos Chen Reiss and Marie Henriette Reinhold. Finally, A Midsummer Night's Dream , based on Shakespeare's play, the overture to which Mendelssohn composed when he was just 17, concludes this very fine cycle.

Ikuyo Nakamichi, who made her debut in Japan and Europe in 1987, is one of the most outstanding and sought-after pianists in Japan. With a broad repertory ranging from Classical to Romantic, Nakamichi has performed as a soloist with Japan's leading orchestras as well as many European and American orchestras. Nakamichi has an exclusive recording contract with Sony Music Japan International and has released many CDs, including an album which set a record as the top-selling classical music recording to date. Particularly with her recordings of the six piano concertos with Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under the baton of Paavo Järvi, she has firmly established her reputation as “Beethoven performer Ikuyo Nakamichi”.

Anton Bruckner called his Symphony no.8 in C minor a ‘mystery’; others have seen it as an ‘apocalyptic’ work. For Paavo Järvi, it is the composer’s ‘most unusual symphony’ and the ‘pinnacle’ of his symphonic output. In the history of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Eighth Symphony occupies a special place, since it was the first Bruckner the orchestra performed – in 1905, twelve years after the premiere in Vienna of what was then the longest symphony in the history of music, and Bruckner’s only work to call for harps: ‘A harp has no place in a symphony, but I couldn't do otherwise!’, the composer reportedly said.

For their fourth recording on Alpha Classics, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra - who bring together the best Estonian talent and leading musicians from around the world each year in Pärnu - celebrate composers from Estonia and Poland, two nations closely connected by their history. Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) is a composer whose ten symphonies tower at the top of Estonian orchestral music.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra boasts long tradition of Bruckner performances. Recorded live in Alte Oper in Frankfurt and edited from multiple performances, this new recording presents new insight into this neglected masterpiece by Bruckner. This is a magnificently recorded performance of a remarkable piece of music. The SACD surround has a sense of space in the mix that allows the beauty of the composition to unfold before your ears. This is music making of the highest quality.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra boasts long tradition of Bruckner performances. Recorded live in Alte Oper in Frankfurt and edited from multiple performances, this new recording presents new insight into this neglected masterpiece by Bruckner. This is a magnificently recorded performance of a remarkable piece of music. The SACD surround has a sense of space in the mix that allows the beauty of the composition to unfold before your ears. This is music making of the highest quality.

A thrilling album from Steven Isserlis couples the ground-breaking Prokofiev Cello Concerto from the 1930s with Shostakovich's eruptive response to it written for Rostropovich in 1959. These seminal works mark the cello's coming of age, enveloping its trademark rhapsodic lyricism in a newly visceral passion. Om this recording, Paavo Järvi makes his Hyperion debut, conducting an ebullient Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and providing the ideal foil to Isserlis's impassioned virtuosity.

In this programme, Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich celebrate one of the most important composers of our time with works from different periods and citing a wide range of references, autobiographical or typically American. John Adams has assimilated numerous musical influences, and his personal style cannot be reduced to one of them: he is neither Minimalist, nor post-Minimalist, nor neo-Romantic.

After two recordings released on Alpha Classics (including a monograph devoted to Erkki-Sven Tüür – ALPHA595 – that won a Diapason d’Or in 2020), the Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi present six works by five internationally renowned Estonian composers: Tõnu Kõrvits, Ülo Krigul, Helena Tulve, Tauno Aints and Lepo Sumera. Four of these pieces were commissioned by the Pärnu Music Festival, founded and directed by Paavo Järvi. This traversal of six original sound-worlds highlights the richness of Estonian musical creation and its multiple facets.