Here, a year after her sensational Metropolitan debut as Prokofiev’s Natasha from War and Peace, comes the debut solo recital album of 30-something soprano Anna Netrebko. She hails from southern Russia, and her emergence from the life of a conservatory student has a touch of the Cinderella tale—the bit, that is, about being discovered by Gergiev mopping floors for the Kirov as a part-time job and making her way into the Kirov's ranks.

Inspired by a time of war, protest, and a nation on the brink, Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 reflects upon the tumult and tragedy of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

While Luigi Dallapiccola is most remembered for his serial compositions, listeners may be surprised to find that much of his output is quite approachable and highly enjoyable. Dallapiccola occasionally wrote openly tonal works in a neo-Classical vein, and several of his milder twelve-tone pieces lean toward tonality in their triad-based rows and beautifully crafted themes. This 2004 release presents some of Dallapiccola's most accessible music, warmly performed by Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic, and richly recorded by Chandos.

The central panel of the opera is a monologue for the avaricious Baron, sung with terrific intensity by Ildar Abdrazakov. The impetuosity of his cash-strapped son, Albert, blazes from the singing of Misha Didyk, with Peter Bronder and Sergey Murzaev bringing astuteness of characterisation to the smaller but crucial roles of the Moneylender and the Duke. Noseda conducts the BBC Philharmonic with a sure feel for impetus and colour, etching in nuances of timbre and making the thematic fabric lucid while at the same time ensuring that the overall theatrical picture is vivid and emotionally telling.

Everyone – including the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the chorus of Turin’s Teatro Regio – gets a chance to bask in the spotlight. But it’s Aleko’s central Cavatine, where he ruminates on his lover’s infidelity, that defines the drama, and Sergey Murzaev seizes his chance, singing with the histrionic grandeur we have come to expect from Russian basses. Svelta Vassileva and Evgeny Akimov are scarcely less vivid as the ill-fated lovers… it [Aleko] manifestly works on CD, and Noseda can take much of the credit. Having served an early apprenticeship in St Petersburg, he relishes the colour of the music and profiles its fine contours, never resorting to cheap emotionalism.

Composed against a cataclysmic backdrop of Stalinist oppression and the Second World War, Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 is a deeply affecting poem of suffering. The composer described it as, ''an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war,'' and it contains some of the most terrifying music he ever wrote. Here, Gianandrea Noseda conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with intensity and understanding, allowing the music to tell its own story as it travels from darkness into light, yearning more for peace than for victory.

Four Symphonic Works features a collection by John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Composer-in-Residence, Carlos Simon. Each piece was recorded live in concert and initially released digitally, one at a time, throughout the season. The final release, a collection of all four works, will be available on CD and via streaming and download services on August 23. Four Symphonic Works will be released on the National Symphony Orchestra label and distributed by LSO Live (NSO0018).

Chandos signed Karen Geoghegan as an exclusive artist in 2007 following her wonderful performances on the BBC TV ‘Classical Star’ programme. This is her fourth recording with the label, following her CD of works by Hummel, Weber, Berwald, Jacobi, Elgar and Gershwin, her CD of French music for bassoon and piano, and her contribution, in the Suite-Concertino in F major, to Noseda’s Wolf-Ferrari CD. All of these received much acclaim, and the expressive maturity and sensitivity of her playing have quickly cemented her status as a rising star.

Prokofiev’s Symphony No 3 is dedicated to Myaskovsky and first performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris on 17 May 1929. It is one of Prokofiev’s most intense works, unleashing a barrage of confrontational energy that carries with it as much relentless forward momentum as pulverising anxiety. ‘I had never before felt anything similar when listening to music,’ remarked Prokofiev’s colleague, the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, on hearing the piece; ‘it felt to me like an apocalypse’.

Beethoven's Symphony No 9 is a landmark in the history of music, changing the concept of what a symphony could be. The use of solo singers and a chorus in the final movement was revolutionary, and the emotional journey to a glorious vision of a world of love and tolerance paved the way for idealistic symphonies to come.

The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda will release Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7 on December 1, 2023, available for pre-order on November 17. The release is the penultimate installment of a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies on the National Symphony Orchestra label.

Prokofiev sends an urgent musical bulletin from Stalin’s Russia with his Symphony No. 5—music of iron and steel, forged in a time of war and tyranny.

Dmitry Shostakovich's two concertos for cello and orchestra, both written for Mstislav Rostropovich (whose recordings remain standards), come from 1959 and 1966. Although the first one is a more rhythmic, outgoing work, both are cut from the same cloth, with intensely inward passages alternating with material in Shostakovich's light Russian-folk mold. In the more serious stretches the cellist often stands exposed and alone, required to carry quite despairing material over long arcs. Italian cellist Enrico Dindo, not a well-known name but one that you're likely to be hearing again, is exceptionally good here. For the high point of it all, hear the final movement of the Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126, which is somewhere between Beethovenian and Tchaikovskian in its affect although not in its language.

Unlikely his First Symphony, Symphony No.2 is standard orchestral repertoire. A recent concert at the Bridgewater Hall, elicited the review, ‘Noseda showed his remarkable affinity with Rachmaninoff’s style. He combines an ability to sustain the long structures of its emotional climaxes with a vocalistic approach to phrasing which lifts the tunes out of the texture and lefts them sing. It’s almost operatic in its vividness.’ City Life.