Nowadays, the oeuvre of Polish composers active in the 19th century can be considered one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of our national music. In recent years, works of many of them have experienced a well deserved renaissance, which is reflected in their increasingly marked presence in concert halls and among CD releases, which, in turn, is a direct result of intense research activity of musicologists as well as of the considerable interest of performers, who are more and more keen to include those pieces in their repertoires.

After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61.

Composer Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is one of the leading names in today's contemporary music. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with it's chief conductor Hannu Lintu includes three works by the composer, including Aura, one of the most prominent monumental orchestral works of our era, together with two other works completed in the 1990s, including Marea and the first recording of Related Rocks. Aura - in memoriam Witold Lutoslawski represents a grand synthesis of Magnus Lindberg's output in the 1990s. The work was written in 1993-1994 to a commission from Suntory Limited in Japan and was premiered by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra under Kazufumi Yamashita at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in June 1994. Clocking in at 40 minutes, Aura is Lindberg's most extensive orchestral work. Although not a symphony, this 4-movement work is closely linked to the symphonic concept represented by Lutoslawski. The composer heard of Lutoslawski's death while writing the work and decided to dedicate it to his memory.

As composer, musicologist and critic, Erkki Salmenhaara (1941-2002) was one of the major figures in Finnish musical life in the second half of the twentieth century. His music for organ charts his stylistic evolution, from a modernism influenced by his teacher, György Ligeti, to triadic harmonies spiced with dissonance. Even so, all these works manifest his fondness for the ability of the organ to generate massive and powerful blocks of sound, giving this music a monumental character in keeping with the grand spaces of the buildings in which it is usually heard.

Immensely gifted emerging artist" (New York Times) Daniel Lozakovich has been dreaming about recording the Beethoven Violin Concerto since he was eight. He first performed it on stage when he was thirteen, and at fifteen was invited by Valery Gergiev to perform the concerto with him in Moscow. A few short years later, he has reunited with his mentor Gergiev to record the Beethoven with the Mnchner Philharmoniker for Deutsche Grammophon.

L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) is often described as the first true opera, with good reason: it is made up of five acts, has a large gallery of characters, a detailed orchestral score specifying some forty instruments and, like so many later operas, its libretto is based on a classical myth. Monteverdi’s work thus becomes a sort of matrix for the entire genre – with one exception: the narrative of this ‘tale in music’ is direct, succinct and to the point.

American violinist Elizabeth Chang’s new album Transformations on Albany Records brings together works by Leon Kirchner (1919-2009), Roger Sessions (1896-1985) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951).

In a historic first, critically acclaimed Guitarist Daniel Lippel brings these three beloved masterworks in their original keys to a classical guitar refretted in Baroque well temperament. They were written at & for the keyboard, where each key has it's own unique Affekt. What a joy it is to finally hear them in all of their original key-colored glory. Composer/critic Kyle Gann has said, "Playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in today's equal temperament is like exhibiting Rembrandt paintings with wax paper taped over them." The same may well be said of Bach played on the modern equal tempered guitar. "Aufs Lautenwerk" is a co-release with John Schneider's Los Angeles based MicroFest Records and available in digital format through their catalogue.

It figured that some other prolific composer of Handel’s time would have composed a competing “Water Music,” but Telemann’s half-hour work–otherwise known as an Overture in C–remains relatively obscure. Written for the centenary of the Hamburg Admiralty a few years after Handel’s “Water Music,” it is an invigorating piece of work, consisting of an Overture and nine dance movements with various watery descriptions from mythology that the listener can take or leave.

For his third Erato album of harpsichord music, Jean Rondeau turns to Domenico Scarlatti and some 20 of the often-dazzling sonatas that the Neapolitan composer wrote during his years at the royal court in Madrid. Imbued with the spirit of the dance, they are works that Rondeau uses “to tell a story for the people who will listen to an album from beginning to end …

What we know as ‘Handel’s Opus 3’ is most likely little more than a brazen attempt by the London publisher John Walsh to make some quick money.

In the year of social distancing, the Mariani Piano Quartet dedicates itself to a today almost forgotten friendship and embarks with Audax Records upon a voyage of discovery in which the piano quartets of Johannes Brahms are juxtaposed with those by Friedrich Gernsheim. Gernsheim, a child prodigy trained at the renowned Leipzig Conservatory, occupied after a sojourn of several years in Paris, where he experienced the scandal-ridden Tannhauser performances, and became acquainted with Rossini, Saint-Saens, and Lalo important positions in Saarbrucken, Berlin, Cologne, and Rotterdam. Mahler and Strauss held him in high regard and conducted his music. However, after his death his musical legacy fall victim to the anti-Semitic climate in Europe. On the first album of a three-part series, the Mariani Piano Quartet presents Gernsheims sensuously indulging C-Minor Quartet alongside the perhaps best-known work of the genre: the Piano Quartet in G Minor, op. 25, by Brahms with its unbridled energy and symphonic radiance. An intoxicating journey through time into the Romantic period in a captivating interpretation.

World-famous and original piano works spanning 250 years of piano writing from Bach to Pärt gain aesthetic presence in Jimin Oh-Havenith’s sensitive interpretations.

Russia’s rich tradition of art song began with early 19th-century salon pieces: lyrical ‘romances’ that evolved to embrace grander themes yet never lost their intimacy. This selection explores some fascinating but less-trodden paths through this repertoire, inspired by the theme of distant lands and encompassing the enduring themes of travel, romantic landscapes, love and loss, life and death. In this recital, Borodin meets Taneyev, a Moscow composition professor from the next generation; Shostakovich stands alongside another major symphonist, his Moscow colleague Myaskovsky, and Shostakovich’s student Boris Tchaikovsky, a prodigy widely known for his film music, passes the baton to Elena Firsova, a post-Soviet émigré to England and a distinctive lyrical voice of today. Inspired by the songs of Taneyev, Myaskovksy and Firsova, countertenor Hamish McLaren embarked on distant travels of his own, journeying to Russia where he found two previously unreleased film songs by Shostakovich, heard here in their world-premiere recordings.

Although Auber was one of the most popular of 19th-century French composers, his music is seldom revived in the opera house. This series is restoring his overtures and orchestral excerpts from operas, a swathe of refined and elegant music showing his importance in operatic history. Featured in this volume are the overture from La Muette de Portici, his revolutionary masterpiece, as well as premiere recordings of music from La Barcarolle and Les Chaperons blancs, exuding both the drama and the charm that permeate all his mature works.