‘Our quartet is a story of friendship. We know each other since our childhood and we always have shared the passion for playing music and learning. That decided us one day, around six years ago, to make playing quartets the main endeavour of our lives - because our common ardour was strong and because the differences between our personalities make our music making more vivid.

Hailed for her "generous temperament" and "agile and radiant voice", French soprano Julie Fuchs is a rising star in the operatic world.

The most-talked about artist of the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition created huge excitement and world-wide media attention with his riveting background and “genius-like playing” (Boris Berezovksy). Debargue, who is 25, started the piano late at 11 years old, learning mostly in isolation. After dropping the instrument for three years to play in a rock band and study literature, he started formal piano training aged 20. Placed 4th, he was described by media as “the real winner” of the competition and received the Music Critics’ Association award as “the pianist whose incredible gift, artistic vision and creative freedom have impressed the critics as well as the audience.”

In 1724, Sébastien de Brossard hailed Jean-Baptiste Drouard de Bousset as ‘indisputably the best of our composer-authors’. Although, at the beginning of the 18th century, the Master of Music at the Académies des Sciences et des Inscriptions imposed himself as the unquestionable leader of the genre, his 875 airs sérieux are little known nowadays and deserve to be brought back into the light. Such is the desire of Elizabeth Dobbin and the ensemble Le Jardin Secret, who recreate with artistry and intelligence the ‘noble, pleasant and natural’ songs of the composer, described by Titon du Tillet in his Parnasse françois (1732).

'The Ring - An Orchestral Adventure' is a symphonic version of Wagner's 'The Ring of the Nibelung', arranged by Dutch composer Henk de Vlieger (1953).

Featuring the members of the Berlin Piano Quartet, strings from the world-renowned Berliner Philharmoniker and the French pianist Kim Barbier, this first album by the Berlin Piano Quartet on Sony Classical brings together works by Brahms, Fauré, and Schnittke. Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, op. 15 begins with a grand gesture. The piece was premiered on 14 February 1880 at a concert of the Société National de Musique, established to promote French orchestral and chamber music works. With irresistible momentum, it comes to an end in a rhythmically agile Finale, textured by juxtaposing triplets (predominantly in the piano) against punctuated rhythms in the strings.

Khatia Buniatishvili's new recording Kaleidoscope, a unique combination of masterful and challenging pieces, shows her true virtuosic playing and features the well-loved Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, Ravel's La Valse and Stravinsky's Petruschka.

Whether singing, conducting, dancing or acting, the Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan is a source of fascination. Alpha Classics is proud to enter her world today and to present in 2017 her very first album as singer and conductor: with the Amsterdambased orchestra Ludwig, of which she is associate artist, Barbara Hannigan has devised a programme including Berg’s Lulu Suite and Gershwin’s Girl Crazy in a Suite newly arranged by the multiaward-winning American composer Bill Elliott. To complement these two pieces, she has recorded Berio’s spectacular Sequenza III for solo voice.

Each of these three pieces for orchestra pays tribute to a country and culture particularly dear to me. The Germany that is full of the drama and joy in Flammenschrift finds a response with the light of Italy in E Chiaro nella valle il fiume appare, before the colourfully festive Russia in Maslenitsa.

German cellist, Jan Vogler presents his 2nd recording of Schumann's Cello Concerto (1st recording on Edel, 2001) but this time with his own orchestra, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, (alongside Ivor Bolton), that consists of more than 50 members from Europe's most renowned early music ensembles. Exploring Schumann's 'original sound', Jan Vogler plays on gut strings and the orchestra on period instruments. In addition to the cello concerto, the orchestra is playing Schumann's 2nd symphony.

Memory Lane is the second Album by the Berlin-based composer, producer and pianist Benjamin judge. He is shown as of the Piano Poet of the day: cover versions of current chart hits such as I see Fire , Faded, or Don t Let Me Down, he connects with his own compositions that remind you of dreamy film soundtracks of Yann Tiersen and Hans Zimmer. With Memory Lane, he has created a sonic journey full of well-known melodies, inviting you to Dream and to Think. Memories of happy evenings with friends, lonely sunsets, or the first Date to pull over when you listen to Richter's Arrangements, in which he connects the melodies on the piano with the sound of electronics and strings.

For the third time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe gives us the opportunity to (re)discover three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101, Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103 and Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115. After two albums of cantatas written during the composer’s first year in Leipzig (LPH006 and LPH012), the Belgian conductor and his Collegium Vocale Gent, orchestra and choir, will be performing three cantatas he composed during his second year as Kantor at St Thomas’s.

There is a broad consensus that Jascha Heifetz set a standard of violin playing that has yet to be surpassed. Fellow violinists have called him the High Priest of our profession (Carl Flesch), the greatest violinistic influence since Paganini (Ruggerio Ricci), The Emperor (Henryk Szeryng), the King of us all (Pinchas Zukerman), and God (Itzak Perlman). His playing continues to inspire new generations of musicians.

Widely recognised as the finest flautist performing on the world stage today, Emmanuel Pahud has joined forces with the Kammerorchester Basel for his new album of flute concertos by composers from the time of the French Revolution. The album, to be released early March, reveals how the form and the instrument underwent their own musical revolution during this tumultuous period.

20 years after her critically acclaimed début at the Salzburg Festival as Susanna In Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro, Dorothea Röschmann releases her first solo Mozart album, including famous arias from Don Giovanni and Le Nozze Di Figaro. Dorothea Röschmann is in the prime of her voice and referred to 'as one of the leading Mozart sopranos today“ (Der Tagesspiegel). The CD track list not only reflects her at her glorious best, but is also a dream come true for Dorothea: “Mozart is the reason I wanted to do opera,” she says.