Internationally acclaimed violinist Arabella Steinbacher presents a dazzling album which brings together two of the most challenging concertos of the 20th century: Britten's Violin Concerto, Op. 15 and Hindemith's Violin Concerto. Full of intense and emotive moments alongside vivid virtuosity, Steinbacher shines with the support of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and conductor Vladimir Jurowski.

Alexej Gorlatch was born in 1988 in Kiev and has been living in Germany since 1991. He began his piano studies at the age of seven with Eduard-Georg Georgiew in Passau, before becoming a junior student of Martin Hughes at the Berlin University of Arts at the age of twelve, continuing his music studies two years later with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the University of Music and Drama Hanover and subsequently with Bernd Goetzke. On this recording Alexej Gorlatch plays Stravinsky with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin and Alondra de la Parra.

Anton Bruckner had to wait an age before bagging his first and greatest success. The Austrian composer’s Seventh Symphony, first performed in Leipzig in 1884 shortly after his sixtieth birthday, proved an immediate hit. Vladimir Jurowski’s visionary interpretation of the work with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, stands as the utterly compelling outcome of the conductor’s profound study and long experience of performing Bruckner’s music. He’s backed to the hilt by superlative playing, remarkable for its intense focus, lyrical warmth, and jaw-dropping beauty.

Maria Herz, née Bing, was born in Cologne in 1878. By the 1920s, she had become recognised as a dynamic element of the contemporary music scene. New music’s ‘chief theoretician’, Theodor W. Adorno, became interested in her works and their style, which was rooted in late Romanticism and aimed at Modernism by way of Expressionism, New Objectivity and Neo-Baroque, all the while retaining its playful, charming air.

William Youn's first orchestral album for Sony Classical in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Berlin is dedicated entirely to the exuberant flair of fin-de-siècle Paris with rare repertoire by Reynaldo Hahn, Nadia Boulanger and Gabriel Fauré - a musical excursion into the salons of the Belle Époque full of dazzling rediscoveries.

César Franck’s only symphony came at a time when the French music world was seeking to rival the great Austro-German tradition. The ‘darkness-to-light’ narrative of the Symphony in D minor owes a debt to Beethoven and there is a unique power within its distinctive themes, innovative cyclic form and general gravitas. Franck’s student Ernest Chausson was no doubt inspired by his teacher’s thematic metamorphoses, but the anguished influence of Wagner is also ever present. The published score of the Symphony in B flat major includes many errors which conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud has meticulously corrected after careful study of Chausson’s autograph manuscripts.

On this Hyperion's release, Alban Gerhardt performs the three concertos by Hans Pfitzner. Pfitzner's early Cello Concerto in A minor was scorned by his teachers (although liked by the composer himself). His Cello Concerto Op.42 is a beautifully constructed work that derives its material from a lyrical cello solo heard at the very start of the work. The Cello Concerto Op.52 is dedicated to Ludwig Hoelscher, a pupil of two giants of German cello-playing: Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel. As a bonus, the recording also includes Pfitzner's Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra.

The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and conductor Carlo Montanaro present a powerful interpretation of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, together with a cast of soloists including Melody Moore (Tosca), Ștefan Pop (Cavaradossi) and Lester Lynch (Scarpia). Tosca has been an audience favourite from the onset. Premiered in 1900, it marks the beginning of twentieth- century opera, in which sex, violence and the uncanny abysses of the human psyche would be explored, inspiring composers to expand the musical means of expression in all thinkable ways.

Pentatone presents a new album full of world-premiere recordings of orchestral songs by Hans Sommer, sung by an excellent quartet of soloists – Mojca Erdmann, Anke Vondung, Mauro Peter and Benjamin Appl – together with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under the baton of Guillermo García Calvo.

Although the originality of Georgi Catoire's musical language paved the way for Russian modernism, his output still followed the artistic ideals of Russia and not the new culture of the Soviet Republic. His highly expressive work is characterised by polyphonic density, heightened expressiveness, variety of colour, and a wide rhythmic and harmonic mix. Catoire's music was rarely performed in his day, his name being largely unknown. He left behind 36 works, including symphonic pieces, a piano concerto, chamber music, songs and piano cycles. This music was written in the fin de siècle style, which combined brilliance and nobility with fragility.

Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He is one of the few Jewish composers who survived the terror of World War II. His tale of survival is complicated and involved him, as a Czech Jew, having to seek refuge in post-war Germany, whereas contemporaries and colleagues like Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, and Hans Krása died in the concentration camps. He saw his music as “a bridge” between the Slavic East and the West and admitted at one point that his musical starting point was Schoenberg.

Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester continue their PENTATONE journey through the heights of German late-Romantic repertoire with a recording of Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie. The Alpine Symphony was inspired by the composer’s experiences during a mountain trail, and is an audience favourite thanks to its picturesque, idyllic charm and powerfully evocative score.