It took almost a hundred years for Charles Koechlin’s First Symphony to receive a recording worthy of its stature, and over a year for conductor Ariane Matiakh to prepare the performance materials. After her highly praised recording of Koechlin’s Seven Stars Symphony (C5449), this album is another welcome foray into the largely unexplored symphonic world of a fascinating composer, a sort of French chameleon who felt comfortable anywhere between Bachian counterpoint and the heights of French impressionism. The earlier Au loin, Poème symphonique and 3 Mélodies (orchestrated posthumously) complete the scintillating programme.

Emil von Sauer and Conrad Ansorge had the privilege of studying under the legendary Franz Liszt, who preferred to be known as an advisor, rather than a teacher. Even so, their lessons with the world-famous composer/pianist influenced and developed both their individual styles and extraordinary abilities. This Capriccio recording presents two significant and unjustly forgotten piano concertos by these pupils of Liszt that reflect both their versatility and their deep understanding of musical form and structure.

Remembered by ambitious amateur pianists for his Rustle of Spring, Christian Sinding was a more important figure in the music of his native Norway than this might suggest; there, in his time, he was second only to Grieg. Trained in Leipzig, he fell under the influence of Liszt and Wagner, producing a large quantity of music that, although it enjoyed contemporary popularity, remains forgotten in today’s concert programmes. In revealing the inherent fervour of his four symphonies, this album enjoys sensitive and enthusiastic interpretations from the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra under Karl Heinz Steffens, for whom Sinding has become a composer close to his heart.

Following the conclusion of his 12-volume edition of the Doppler brothers’ complete music for flute, including various arrangements, flautist Claudi Arimany here presents a number of additional works he subsequently discovered in different libraries. The project had already involved decades of research, inspiring many famous musicians to become involved in its realisation, and now he closes yet another gap in musical history.

Walter Braunfels’ music died twice: first, when the Nazis declared it “degenerate art”; and again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music. This was the period when arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music – which meant practically the whole pre-war aesthetic – to be tainted. We now reach the 10th volume in Capriccio’s Braunfels Edition, which features one of his most popular operas. What makes Jeanne d’Arc such an uncommonly effective music drama is not only the frequently sumptuous, post-romantic musical language, but also the libretto, which was assembled by Braunfels himself. The central thread of Joan of Arc’s story is known well enough: her vision, her contribution to the liberation of Orléans and the coronation of the Dauphin, and her subsequent arrest, trial, and burning at the stake. Braunfels somehow managed to put together a libretto from the original 15th-century French and Latin documentation of Joan of Arc’s trial, a snippet from George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan, and his own writing, which together make this story and its characters – in many ways so far removed from a modern audience’s sensibilities and experience – relatable to listeners today.

The Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz (the German State Philharmonic Orchestra of Rheinland-Palatinate), also known as the Rheinland-Pfalz Staatsphilharmonie, is a regional orchestra, based in the city of Ludwigshafen and serving several states along Germany's Rhine River. Funded by the Rhineland-Palatinate state, the orchestra has a long history and has served as a training ground for several conductors who have gone on to international careers. The Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz was founded in 1919. From the beginning it attracted attention beyond its home region; Richard Strauss conducted on occasion, as did the international traveler and liberal-turned-Nazi Hermann Abendroth.

After decades of neglect, many collectors will feel that it's high time to revisit the eight symphonies and grand orchestral passacaglia Mystery of Time by Miloslav Kabeláč (1908–1979); and those who are appreciative of those works will surely find this compendium of his complete chamber music highly attractive. The programme represents the full gamut of his fifty-year development as a composer, with examples of both conventional and experimental forms, and ranging from the early horn and cello sonatas, to his Suite for Saxophone, and concluding with the dramatic chamber cantata Osudová dramata člověka. This 3-CD set happily includes performers who are noted enthusiasts for Kabeláč's music, not least Albrecht Mayer, Sarah Willis and Jan Vogler.

Théodore Géricault’s hugely imposing painting The Raft of the Medusa has stimulated imaginative responses from numerous artists ever since its creation in 1819, including composer Hans Werner Henze and his librettist Ernst Schnabel, who were inspired by Géricault to write a political oratorio on the painting’s tragic historical subject in 1967. Noted for its harsh-edged sounds, and melding a tender depiction of suffering with scathing irony and gripping dramaturgy, the political scuffles and rowdiness that broke out at its aborted premiere lifted the work into the canon of great classical music scandals.

The Prophets, intended as the final act of The Eternal Road, was the last work that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German before personally and professionally adopting the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins to his Second Symphony, at the same time foreshadowing some of his later works for Broadway. In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the first recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing German Lied with American theatre, Berlin with Brooklyn.

As the Staatskapelle Berlin begins to look for its next music director (only the fourth since 1955!), this release finds the band’s own winds turning to Richard Strauss, who held the job some 110+ years ago. Together, they recorded their old chief conductors’ complete music for winds, including rarities like the Sonatinas “From an Invalid’s Workshop” and “The Happy Workshop” which Strauss dedicated to Mozart. Covering Strauss’ very early and very late creative output, the four pieces (plus the Eulenspiegel arrangement), give a fascinating insight into the development of Strauss, a horn player’s son.

Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied is a lighthearted and superbly crafted opera that bridges Mozart’s Singspiele and early Wagner. Despite its relative popularity, there are surprisingly few complete recordings of it around. How lovely to change that with this new recording from the very place for which the opera was written and where it was premiered in 1846: Vienna’s Theater an der Wien – and a wonderful cast that includes the stalwart Günther Groissböck and the supremely promising Miriam Kutrowatz to boot!

“Look, when they tell me that in my music, I am mainly concerned with bringing together a little nostalgia and a lot of good humor and optimism, well, I think that’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered: with a bit of nostalgia, lots of optimism, and good humor.” If we listened to enough of his music (and not just the film music), Nino Rota’s wish might well come true, not least when listening to the third of his ten operas, the snappy Florentine Straw Hat (Il cappello di paglia di Firenze). This is his most popular stage work, which Rota wrote in Bari following the end of World War II and orchestrated a decade later for its premiere in Palermo.

The loss of one sense, it is said, makes the other keener. What the concert pianist, organist, and composer Josef Labor lost in eyesight when smallpox left him blind at age three, must have been added to his ears. Although roughly a Brahmsian (and a friend of the composer), Labor wrote in an original style, informed by his knowledge of and love for early music. As a piano teacher, he taught Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Schindler, and Paul Wittgenstein. The connection to the Wittgenstein family explains his many works for piano left hand, including the two Clarinet Trios on this set (the clarinet was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s instrument) which are coupled with his Clarinet- and his Wind Quintets.

Rarities of a Forgotten Late Romantic: The closest Leo Blech (1880–1959) gets to fame these days is being mistaken for Ernest Bloch, although some might still remember his seminal work as an opera conductor in Berlin, where he worked for almost half a century (except for the Nazi years). But his compositions – either operas or involving the voice in some other way – have disappeared from the repertoire, which is a pity because his music, while less probing than that of his contemporary Bloch, is very much charming in the style of, say, Humperdinck or Rheinberger.

Maurice Maeterlinck completed his play The Blue Bird ("L’Oiseau bleu") in 1908. Several of his previous works had proved popular as operatic subjects (Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue) so it's no wonder that composers jumped at the opportunity to set his latest creation to music.French composer Albert Wolff based an opera on the story, which premiered at the New York Met but subsequently fell into oblivion. Prior to that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt adapted it as a Christmas play and staged a production in Berlin, inviting no less a person than Engelbert Humperdinck to write the incidental music for it. The music was never published, but Steffen Tast eventually located the score and salvaged it for us all to enjoy. A sweet story and newly discovered music by Humperdinck that's sweeter still? Truly a recipe for a fairy-tale ending!