A string quartet was among the very first works that Edvard Grieg presented after completing his studies in 1861, but the Quartet in G minor, Op. 27, was the only such work to be published in his lifetime. In 1878, while composing it, Grieg wrote that ‘it aims at breadth, to soar, and, above all, at vigorous sound’, and the amplitude of the sound is indeed striking: the generous use of double-stops creates an almost orchestral effect, unusual for the genre. This caused some reviewers to criticize the quartet as being unidiomatic, while others, including Liszt, greeted it with enthusiasm. Some thirty years later, when Jean Sibelius composed his D minor quartet Op. 56, he too had previous experience of writing for the medium, but Op. 56 is the only quartet among his mature works. The often used 'nickname' Voces intimae is often taken to refer to the intimate interchange between the four voices in a quartet, but is probably a more specific allusion to a brief passage in the third movement: Sibelius wrote the remark into a score some time after the work had been published.

Patrik Kleemola (b.1981) is one of the most prominent Finnish guitarists to emerge in recent years. After winning the II Guitaristival “Takemitsu” International Guitar Competition in Finland 2004 and gaining prizes in other competitions such as Gargnano's International Guitar Competition, his concert career has taken him to London, Buenos Aires, Rome, Milan, Athens, Turin, Florence, Tallinn, Helsinki and other cities in South America and Europe.

Per Bloland studied at Stanford with Brian Ferneyhough and Mark Applebaum, has worked at IRCAM and Oberlin, and currently teaches at Miami University. His innovative sound world brilliantly blends custom built electronics with instrumental textures to create unique soundscapes unlike anything you’ve heard before. His work has been performed world wide to great acclaim and Tzadik is proud to present his first full CD release. Passionately performed by Ecce Ensemble Chamber Industrial is an exciting CD of acoustic and electroacoustic compositions filled with surprise and dramatic tension.

On this new release, Erica Nygård and Niels Burgmann display their core repertoire, which focuses mainly on music from the 20th century. Besides concentrating on works originally written for flute and organ they also perform arrangements of important compositions from the flute repertoire. Erica Nygård is the principal flautist in the Vaasa City Orchestra and Niels Burgmann is a church musicin in the congregation of St. Matthew, Helsinki. Both artists have built up successful careers as chamber musicians and soloists.

'Rolf Riehm is […] an unconventional artist. Before him, nobody has ever sensualized in music such a complex cosmos of philosophical reflections, historical facts, myths, fairytales, memories, scientific arguments, the sublime and the trivial, current sociopolitical findings, very personal ingredients and contributions' (Bernd Leukert).

One of the great flute players on today's musical scene, Tara Helen O'Connor is well known for her brilliant technique and musicianship. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, she is currently a season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Five of the seven works on Ms. O'Connor's new CD were composed specifically for her and long time collaborator, pianist Margaret Kampmeier. They perform this program with a combination of commitment and virtuosity that is truly compelling.

If Ligeti or Stockhausen were computer nerds this might be what they'd make… astounding. In 1999, Stephen Vitiello was given a residency on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center (tower one). Gazing at the lights of New York City, he decided he wanted to translate sights into sound. To do so he simply used a photocell to record the luminosity of various points around him and through the windows. A computer assigned sound parameters to the collected data. This interesting process could have generated arid music if applied to the letter. Luckily, Vitiello had something else in mind. He treated the "Light Readings" (the title of three tracks on this CD) as sound sources.

The distinctive soundscape of this CD stems from the unique church interior at Løgumkloster in the south of Jutland, Denmark. Beneath the high vaulting, in the cloisters and in the small hidden spaces of the abbey, the flautist Eva Østergaard (b. 1966) has recorded a series of layers of sounds on fl utes of all sizes from piccolo to bass. The music was written specifi cally for Eva, the church and this CD by five Danish composers, all of whom explore the remotest reaches of the instruments and the building.

On the 'Sony Classical' label - In this world premiere recording, one of the greatest cellists of our time, Yo-Yo Ma performs the first ever Cello Concerto by internationally renowned composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Yo-Yo Ma performs this stunning concerto alongside the world’s most contemporary minded orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen has dedicated this work to Yo-Yo Ma. The Cello Concerto made its debut in Chicago, where it was performed by Yo-Yo Ma and conducted by Salonen. The concerto was lauded by critics who praised the collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and Salonen. The Cello Concerto will be performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall on 24th February 2019.

This portrait album of composer Colin Riley is a charmer: fun name, fun cover art, opening track a taut and wonky disco called Purl. But it’s more than that, too, and there’s something very endearing (and possibly very British?) about the way Riley deflects the beauty and sincerity at the heart of his pieces by giving them names such as Bob or A Cool Carfuffle, and framing his serious moments with music that fools around. Inspirations include Genesis, John Martyn and ; there’s a delicate set of Lyric Pieces, and a closing piano solo in dreamy soft-grain called . The title work is a collection of six miniatures, whose lopsided rhythms are cut with snippets of gentler stuff. The performances (violist Jessica Beeston, clarinettist Tom Lessels, pianist Kate Halsall and others) get the right balance of wry, fond, understated and slightly bonkers.

For Thierry Pécou, to live is to travel, and to travel is to write, as if to compose were at once to plunge into another universe, to take affective possession of the space, and, above all, to stand back and choose to live in the margins of one's everyday cultural milieu. The works presented on this CD bear witness to a constantly renewed artistic standpoint; they have been entrusted here to the expert fingers of another great traveller.

The Unchanging Sea is the latest collaboration in a long-running partnership between composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. This is their fifth work for orchestra over the course of nearly two decades; starting with "Decasia" in 2001, the two developed a style that combined Gordon’s haunting, hypnotic music with Morrison’s artful manipulations of old, deteriorating film reels to craft a dreamlike experience that’s by turns whimsical, nostalgic and inspiring. Co-commissioned and performed by the Seattle Symphony and featuring piano soloist Tomoko Mukaiyama, The Unchanging Sea flows from Gordon’s fascination with our connection to our watery source, in all its turbulence, majesty and mystery.

As the title and subtitle imply, this is a kind of greatest-hits album, with music selected by ECM label producer Manfred Eicher from the 12 albums on the label devoted to the music of Arvo Pärt. Pärt's music is so malleable that people tend to make their own versions of it rather than collect it, but if you wanted an anthology as a starter box, this would be the one to choose. Eicher has worked closely with Pärt since the 1980s, and he has indeed made a sensible "sequence" out of works that do not have a lot of contrast among them.

On the occasion of its 40th anniversary (1974-2014), the Arditti Quartet, one of the most famous groups in contemporary music, has chosen to record, for the second time and this is an occurrence sufficiently rare that it bears emphasizing , the complete string quartets of Brian Ferneyhough. The pieces on these discs immediately weave an auditory spell and well illustrate this composer's brand of complexity, i.e., writing reputed to be unplayable for the instrumentalists but providing a definite pleasure for the listener, caught up in the headiness of a universe without limits or vanishing point. This 3-CD set will not only be one of the indispensable releases of 2014 but also the best way to apprehend the music of a fundamental composer whose intense writing, emancipated heir of Schoenberg, remains radically expressive, chaotic in appearance but sublimated here by the freedom and excellence of the interpretation.

William Howard performs the solo piano music of Howard Skempton in a collection that includes Skempton’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, inspired by J.S. Bach’s example but in a contemporary style. Skempton’s piano miniatures are concise, crystalline gems: clear, colourful and bright. There is a neoclassical quality to Skempton’s Preludes and Fugues, which exude a serene, almost otherworldly atmosphere, tempered with a sense of intimacy and refinement. Each Prelude consists of a spare, canonic piece, and each Fugue is woven into an intricate but delicate texture of interlacing lines.