This is Alison Balsom's first CD recital with piano – here played by her long-standing recital partner, Tom Poster. Balsom describes the programme as embracing “the most important repertoire for trumpet and piano” – taking a fascinating journey through 20th century works by such composers as Enescu, Hindemith, Martinů, Françaix, Bernstein and Maxwell Davies. That being said, the final piece on the official programme – preceding ‘American Songbook’ encores by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern – dates from the 21st century and was composed by the team of Balsom and Poster themselves. Called The Thoughts of Dr. May, it is inspired by another British musician: Brian May, lead guitarist of the rock band Queen – and also, as it happens, an astrophysicist.

Les Noces is a screaming, shrieking, flat-out masterpiece. Leonard Bernstein himself has referred to it as Stravinsky's greatest work, and listening to this incendiary performance, it's awfully hard to disagree. Scored for voices, four pianos, and percussion, the work provided the inspiration for the entire career of Orff (of Carmina Burana fame), but it's so much better as sheer music than anything Orff wrote. And what a cast! The pianists for this performance include Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Cyprien Katsaris, and Homero Francesch, four certified virtuoso performers, while the singers of the English Bach Festival Chorus really cover themselves with glory in both works. A stunner.

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.

Over 40 years of collaboration between Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra is among the most dazzling and longest connections in the history of classical music. In this unique edition, all mono recordings from the period from 1944 to 1958 appear on 120 CDs for the Columbia label. They also reflect an important section of record history in the changing cover design. Ormandy, a master of orchestral brilliance and timbres and also appreciated as an excellent companion, created the famous "Philadelphia Sound" with his orchestra.

Carl August Nielsen (Danish: ; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's greatest composer. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. He initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the prestigious Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played in 's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death.

Born in Tallinn in 1962, Paavo Järvi is renowned for his dynamic interpretations and innovative programming. He has held prominent positions with leading orchestras, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, or the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich more recently. Paavo Järvi's approach combines technical precision with expressive depth, making him a favourite among musicians and audiences alike.

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.