Hungarian-born pianist Klára Würtz has amassed an astounding catalogue of recordings for Brilliant Classics, celebrated this year (a milestone birthday year for Klára) with this rich set of piano solos, song and chamber music collaborations, and concertante outings.

These soulful Spanish and Argentinean songs arranged by violist Kim Kashkashian and pianist Robert Levin are well suited to their expressive and expansive playing. Most of the songs, ranging from works by Granados, de Falla, and Montsalvatge to early Ginastera, are written in a late romantic to early modern idiom, and many incorporate a strong folk element. The selections include rowdy, rhythmically charged dance-like songs, tender lullabies, and many flavors of love songs, from the exultant to the despairing. In addition to the better-known composers, Argentineans Carlos Guastavino and Carlos López-Buchardo make extraordinarily fine contributions. The choices of repertoire are excellent; each one of these songs is a jewel, and the ordering of the selections artful, including the surprisingly effective repetition of two songs at different points in the program. The transcriptions are inventive and imaginative, with the vocal lines idiomatically adapted for the viola's expressive capabilities.

Jan Vogler's new album was recorded in a small studio in New York. He teamed with the fantastic Finnish guitarist Ismo Eskelinen for this recording. ''Songbook'' presents partly pieces originally written for cello and guitar such as 3 Nocturnes by Friedrich Burgmüller (1806-1874) and the first movement of the Sonata for Guitar and Cello by Brazilian composer Radames Gnattali (1906-1988). ''Songbook'' also features several famous works in arrangements for guitar and cello: Cantabile by Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840), the Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie (1866-1925), the Suite Popular Espanola by Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) as well as the famous Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras by the most famous South American composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959).

Festive baroque or sparkling virtuoso: the trumpet has many faces, and it is still an absolute exception to find a woman among the great virtuosos of this instrument. The young British trumpeter Alison Balsom is one of these exceptional phenomena. In 2006, Alison Balsom was crowned "Young British Classical Performer of the Year" by the quality watchdogs of classical music; the British Gramophone magazine also awarded her a Gramophone Award 2006. Their current album "Caprice" combines exotic and high virtuosity, lyrical and romantic.

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”.

“Unquestionably one of the greatest pianists of all time” is how Gramophone magazine has described Martha Argerich. Her relationship with the label goes back to 1965 and her victory at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Over several decades it has produced a rich catalogue of live and studio recordings, embracing a repertoire that spans three centuries, a diversity of genres, and collaborations with such figures as Charles Dutoit, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and Itzhak Perlman. The complete recordings for EMI Classics, Teldec, Erato and Warner Classics are featured in this box.

This is a wonderful collection of Spanish Baroque harpsichord music. Of course Scarlatti, who came from Italy, is the king. Igor Kipnis plays one of Scarlatti's single sonatas and the great triptych, K. 490- 92. He gives an object lesson in performing Scarlatti with imagination, virtuosity, taste, and ornamented repeats, the latter adding a great deal of interest to the music. José Nebra and Josep Soler aren't quite on Scarlatti's level, but the way Igor Kipnis plays their entertaining music is bound to hold your attention.

Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez is performed and recorded more than all the other guitar concertos put together, and the outer movements are full of Spanish warmth and color, framing a central adagio that builds in intensity like a poignant prayer. This recording is justly famous for "Bonell's imaginative account of the solo part" and "an exceptionally clear, atmospheric recording".

The repertoire we have chosen for this album consists mainly of pieces that have been with me since my childhood. With this recital, Johan Dalene, accompanied by Peter Friis Johansson, offers us a selection of popular violin pieces that have accompanied him since his early years. After hearing them in the family car on long journeys, he went on to learn them and then play them in competitions and in concerts. He now gives us (and himself) a treat and continues the tradition of great violinists such as Heifetz, Perlman and Vengerov, who have all made recordings of favourite encores and recital pieces.

The music of Spain has exercised an exotic fascination, but often in forms adapted by foreign composers. Manuel de Falla is representative of a group of Spanish composers who won international recognition. He was born in 1876 in Cádiz, where he first studied, moving later to Madrid and then to Paris, returning to Madrid when war broke out in 1914. Strongly influenced by the traditional Andalusian cante jondo, he settled in Granada, where his friends included the poet Federico García Lorca.

Named after the 18th-century dance-style movement 'Badinerie', this beautiful new album from flautist Julien Beaudiment and harpist Marie Pierre Langlamet offers a diverse span of repertoire, with a rich collection of works from across the centuries. At the heart of the album lies Francis Poulenc's Sonata FP 164, with it's three emotive movements, each painting a vivid musical picture. The wistful Allegro malinconico and the playful Presto giocoso show Poulenc's stylistic intricacies, while Mozart's soul-stirring Adagio from K 285 transports listeners to a realm of serene beauty. Johann Sebastian Bach's iconic Badinerie infuses the collection with Baroque charm.

Works of Manuel de Falla - widely regarded as the most distinguished Spanish composer of the early twentieth century - are strongly influenced by Spanish folk music in which the guitar is central. Although he composed only one piece for that instrument his inspiration was flamenco and early Spanish music, including the guitar works of Gaspar Sanz. The guitar also features in Falla‘s first great success, the opera ‘La Vida Breve’. For this recording, we have selected and transcribed works in which the influence of the guitar was dominant thus translating these pieces back to their original source of inspiration.

Elīna Garanča reflects facets of night-time on her latest Deutsche Grammophon release “When Night Falls”. The soprano chose a selection of orchestral songs, as well as works for voice and piano or guitar, that she performs together with the Orquestra Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, the Berlin Music Ensemble and the DG artists Albrecht Mayer and Raphaël Feuillâtre, among others. Commenting on the spectrum of rich colours from sunset to the silence of the night, Garanča notes: "I hope this music will allow listeners to tune out the world for a few minutes and completely immerse themselves in the special magic of the hours of night.”

On October 6, 1953, RCA held experimental stereophonic sessions in New York's Manhattan Center with Leopold Stokowski conducting a group of New York musicians in performances of Enesco's Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1 and the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. There were additional stereo tests in December, again in the Manhattan Center, this time with Pierre Monteux conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In February 1954, RCA made its first commercial stereophonic recordings, taping the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.