Violinist Augustin Hadelich embarks on an American Road Trip, travelling the musical highways and byways of his adoptive homeland in the company of pianist Orion Weiss. The duo perform works by a melting pot of American composers, writing in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and drawing on a diversity of idioms, influences and inspirations … from European Romanticism to revivalist hymns; from blues and jazz to bluegrass; from the banjo and ukelele to Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, and from a little Mexican star to exquisite Japanese carvings. Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ives and John Adams take their place beside Amy Beach, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Eddie South, Howdy Forrester, Manuel M. Ponce and – flying the flag for today’s composers along with Adams – Daniel Bernard Roumain and Stephen Hartke.

On her first Pentatone album, pianist Tamara Stefanovich presents a highly personal selection of solo works by Bach, Bartók, Ives and Messiaen. Influences shows how these extraordinarily original and idiosyncratic composers let themselves be inspired by the exterior world, thereby demonstrating how authenticity comes from looking outside as well as inside. The repertoire spans from Bach's embrace of Italian musical elements in his Aria variata alla maniera italiana, Bartók's incorporation of folk elements in his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Messiaen's use of Hindu rhythms in Cantéyodjayâ to the collage of marching bands, sounds of trains and machinery, church hymns, ragtime and blues in Ives' first piano sonata.

Astounding debuts and legendary piano treasures on disc: newly remastered albums of 21 pianists from the analogue era, including many first-ever digital transfers.

"EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots. It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us, to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being. It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn't perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within." - Joyce DiDonato

This disc is supposed to hurt. Just look at the program: it starts with Crumb's Black Angels for electric string quartet, a work that is the aural equivalent of Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and ends with Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, a work that is either the aural equivalent of a monument to the victims of war and fascism written in the ruins of Dresden or the musical equivalent of a suicide note written before the composer joined the Communist Party. With the spooky and evocative performances of Thomas Tallis Spem in Alium, Istvan Marta's Doom. A Sigh, and Charles Ives' There They Are!, this disc is so painful it could be the soundtrack for an unmade Kubrick movie. The question is, is this disc supposed to hurt so much? The Kronos Quartet is a harsh and aggressive ensemble with an angular approach to rhythm and structure and an overwhelming need to assert its individual and collective identity.

Older Ives enthusiasts may recall the First Piano Sonata in performances by William Masselos who played the work for the first time in 1954, the year the composer died. Odd, but familiar in Ives, for such a masterpiece to have to wait 45 years to be heard! Masselos made two recordings (nla) which established the character of this richly inventive work. The one by Noel Lee (on a Nonesuch LP—only available in the USA) made in the late 1960s is almost as impressive. Joanna MacGregor's recording is now a landmark since there is effectively no competition in the British catalogue: DJF found little to recommend in John Jensen's performance on Music and Arts (9/90) so it is best to compare MacGregor, who is certainly busy in the recording studios these days, with these earlier Americans.

Released between 1991 and 2005, the selections in The Warner Recordings encapsulate the period when Pierre-Laurent Aimard was signed to Erato and Teldec, performing mostly 20th-century fare and some music from the 19th century. Aimard is famous for his contributions to the modernist catalog, and his performances of works by Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen are regarded as scrupulously executed and authoritatively interpreted. Aimard also recorded early 20th century pieces by Charles Ives, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy, as well as Romantic masterpieces of Beethoven and Liszt. A pianist's pianist, Aimard is well-rounded in his repertoire and a true master of keyboard technique, yet he has received considerably less fanfare than many of his flashier colleagues. Yet connoisseurs of piano recordings know that Aimard is indispensible, especially for his special feeling for French music, and his recordings are important documents that serious students and newcomers should appreciate.

December is a time of anticipation. We wait and we hope - veni, come! The songs on this album encompass many nuances and moods - from joy and jubilant celebration to deep melancholy and longing. They move between folk tunes, English carols and traditional Christmas songs from different times and parts of the world, between Bach and Ives, Bulgaria and Norway. Several of the songs refer to the passing of the year, the cycle of nature and rhythms of daily life: lullabies for peace of mind and comfort, and songs about surrendering ourselves to the unfathomable and unknowable in the midst of our everyday concerns: the stars will always shine in the sky - and dawn will come.

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré's Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell's Sleep, Adam, sleep with it's references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms's Salamander, Wolf's Die Bekehrte or Ravel's Air du Feu.

With this release, Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra round out their Ives cycle in superb form. Recordings of Ives, unlike Gershwin, by groups outside of the U.S. may still be comparatively rare, but Davis has nailed the essential diverse, dense networks of Ives' language, assisted by new performing editions and by excellent Chandos engineering in two different Melbourne venues, thereby keeping the multiple strands of the music clear.

The Sixteen, bright stars of the Baroque, have plenty to say on 20th-century repertoire (witness their excellent Britten series on Collins). Underpin them with the BBC Philharmonic and it might seem a magic formula. Ives’s unearthly The Unanswered Question holds few problems for instrumental players weaned on Maxwell Davies – no more than do the brilliant wind roulades of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Deft BBC teamwork and a chamber articulation to woodwind and brass helps this Koussevitzky-commissioned masterpiece to shed its often hammy ‘big band’ sound, creeping closer to the subtle, leaner sonorities of his later choral works. It gains. The singing varies. Too many dynamic shifts sound prosaic or under-prepared; fortes are forced, with muddy results. The vocal blend (happier in lower voices) can seem haphazard and colours the Tippett, where the men’s roars – contrast the lovely, sensual soprano solo – seem crude. Get this disc, instead, for the rare, late Poulenc – his New York-commissioned Sept répons. It is a curiously under-recorded devotional work, bleeding with pathos yet pumping energy, its exoticism enhanced by slightly breathy, tender solos, and scintillatingly sung with just those crucial missing qualities of awe and freshness. A million times more refined than what goes before.

Dedicating an album to the dark side of the Lied might seem inappropriate in these times of Covid, climate change and refugee crises, but as a mezzo-soprano Olivia has always been drawn to the darker roles in opera, the sad arias in oratorio and the deep laments in song. After our recent recording ('Dirty Minds'), which focused on 'la petite mort', it seemed a natural progression to turn our attention to 'la grande mort'! Darkness in the outside world and the inner self has always been - alongside Love - one of the chief themes of vocal music, and compositions and songs about death are legion during every period of musical history.