"An eagle whose wings are grown", according to his father Alessandro, the young Scarlatti left his native Naples for Venice, "escorted only by his own ability". Born in Italy in 1685, Domenico Scarlatti spent the majority of his career in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families – with the latter appointment enabling him to devote his full attention towards composing for the harpsichord. This unusual cultural background accounts for why the Italian’s music, though contemporary with that of Bach and Handel, differs so much in comparison; Spanish dance rhythms (such as the flamenco), and folk tunes with Moorish and gypsy-like flavours, indicate that day-by-day-street life was a great source of inspiration to Scarlatti.

HOME can be seen both as an homage to and as a statement of belonging to northern Norway, with its naked landscape and its Arctic location. The title can also allude to a quest for identity, both from a personal and from an artistic perspective. All these sentiments and aspirations find expression in the music on this album…

Not only was Manuel Ponce the leading figure in the emergence of Mexican nationalism but his music embodies a wide variety of influences. Nowhere is this more evident than in his writing for solo piano, and this album, the third of eight volumes, explores three specific facets. The first is his youthful concert studies, which are virtuosic, atmospheric and memorably evocative.

John Matthew Myers is rapidly in the ascendent. His debut album, "Desiderium", coincides with his Metropolitan Opera debut in Brett Dean’s Hamlet. "Desiderium" – "an ardent desire or longing, a feeling of loss or grief for something lost" – beautifully showcases Myers’ mellifluous voice. His thoughtful program of works by American and American émigré composers opens with Samuel Barber’s yearning Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – rarely heard sung by a tenor – and transitions to Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ similarly searching settings of 3 Poems of Fiona Macleod, and Andre Previn’s 4 Songs for Tenor and Piano.What follows is A Letter from Sullivan Ballou, set to the words of a poignant letter by an American Civil War officer, by John Kander (of Kander and Ebb musical theatre fame). Rounding out the recital are 4 Walt Whitman Songs by German-born composer Kurt Weill, including the classic O Captain! My Captain!John Matthew Myers says “Call me a big-hearted Romantic. Each song on this album conveys yearning, separation, loneliness or distance but also a sense of intimacy and longing for connection". It certainly does. "Desiderium" is an auspicious album.

The late G major sonata followed such landmarks as the ‘Great’ C major symphony and Schubert’s last string quartet, and explores similarly expansive terrain; the A major is an earlier, genial work. These frame the brief D769a fragment, which adds to the uniqueness of Stephen Hough’s marvellous recital.

A whole piano revolution was launched in the west (meaning USA) in October and early November 1960. Richter had arrived. He came and conquered. Both in Chicago, where RCA recorded the Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 and New York, where he launched his career outside Russia with performances, not of the usual piano career intros of Tchaikovsky or Grieg, but a bunch of Beethoven Piano Sonatas…

The voice of one of the best known singers in the international opera scene, that of bass Michele Pertusi, is certainly the ideal interpreter of the romances by Francesco Paolo Tosti, composer that became famous for his chamber lyrics, as well as the protagonist of the most important artistic salons of the era and singing teacher of Princess Margherita of Savoy. The texts of the romances contained in this full bodied double album are all by the great Gabriele D'Annunzio, whom with Tosti formed one of those artistic combinations that are rarely found in the history of music, given the congeniality expressed by the two authors, each giant in his own art.The pianist Raffaele Cortesi, expert connoisseur and performer of the chamber vocal repertoire, shows his elegant and refined style in accompanying Michele Pertusi on the piano.

Charlotte Sohy – for a look at women's piano music, a field that was forcibly privileged for women composers between 18 and 20 centuries.

Rachel Podger, “the unsurpassed British glory of the baroque violin” (The Times), and Grammy award-winning pianist Christopher Glynn recorded Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano Nos. 1, 5 and 10. Following the critically acclaimed Mozart/Jones Sonatas "Fragment Completions" (2021), this Beethoven album marks Podger & Glynn’s second release together…

Piano Classics presents the first volume in a major new series which promises to become the most comprehensive recorded survey of a central but now little-known figure in 19th-century Italian music.Born in Rome in 1841, Giovanni Sgambati cut an impressive but relatively familiar figure as a prodigious young virtuoso until, as a 21-year-old keyboard lion in the making, he was introduced to Franz Liszt. The encounter changed Sgambati’s life. Liszt, perhaps the single most influential figure in European musical life in the middle of the 19th century, took the young Sgambati under his wing, and his faith was richly repaid. Still in his 20s, Sgambati conducted the Italian premiere of the Dante Symphony and even the premiere of the first (lengthy) part of the Christus oratorio.