The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles.
This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schlüren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an ‘Indian Summer’ of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist’s death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s – ‘The Early Recordings’ – and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino’s particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt.

Camille Saint-Saens, a virtuoso pianist and prolific composer, enriched the repertoire of sonatas for solo instruments and piano with works characterized by elegance, technical mastery, and lyrical beauty. The Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75 (1885) stands out as a master- piece. A tour de force of Romantic expression, it traverses a wide emotional spectrum, from fiery passion to serene introspection. Similarly, his Cello Sonatas balance dramatic intensity with moments of tender lyricism, offering a richly textured dialogue between cello and piano.

The Pieces de Clavecin by Charles De Mars (1702-1774) are written in the rich tradition of French Baroque harpsichord music. A composer largely overshadowed by luminaries like Francois Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau, De Mars nonetheless contributed to the genre with his distinctive style, characterized by elegant ornamentation and a refined sense of harmony. De Mars's harpsichord works are steeped in the galant aesthetic, bridging the ornate Baroque style with the more expressive and accessible traits of the early Classical peri- od. His music often features dance forms like the allemande, courante, and sarabande, which were central to the French clavecinistes. One of the hallmarks of his Pieces de Clavecin is his innovative use of ornaments, or agrements, which add a shimmering quality to the melodies.

Timo Lassy, one of the leading lights in the current generation of Finnish Jazz, releases a new live album with his hard-cooking trio on We Jazz Records. That's Lassy on tenor sax, Ville Herrala on double bass and Jaska Lukkarinen on drums – each member a We Jazz recording solo artist on their own right. Recorded at G Livelab, Helsinki's premiere live music spot, in 2023 and including new versions of tracks all accross the sax man's celebrated catalog, Live in Helsinki proves why Lassy usually packs the house when he plays a hometown show.

The new CD by the Trio Unterholz is being released these days on the Swiss label UNIT Records. To mark the occasion, a release concert will take place at the Kulturbunker Kassel, featuring a special guest. With their music, Unterholz draws on references to the African-American musical tradition of jazz, as it developed as a self-confident expression since the 1960s. Based on their own compositions, the musicians combine subtle musical poetry with high-energy expressiveness. Their collaborative playing process lacks any standardized predictability, which lends the constant interaction between the three musicians its innovative freshness.

Luis Rivera, born in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Ohio, initially pursued psychology after graduating in 1948. However, his passion for music soon led him to leave his career as a clinical psychologist to fully embrace life as a musician. As a pianist, Luis performed with Roy Milton’s band in Texas and later accompanied Billie Holiday at the Tiffany Club in Los Angeles in 1953. That same year, inspired by “Wild” Bill Davis’s organ sound, Luis adopted the Hammond organ and quickly gained recognition. He formed his first trio and performed at major venues like the Oasis, Morocco, and the Keyboard in Beverly Hills, while also recording tracks for the Federal label.

This unique programme of four works for cello and piano by significant twentieth-century composers is a reflection of the greater interest in writing for the cello that the inspiration of two highly gifted instrumentalists was to have during that period. For many music-lovers, the major cello virtuosos of the century were Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich, each of whom dominated the instrument in their respective halves of the century. However, one ought not to assume that all the music in our collection was invariably written with those artists in mind. With one exception, it was not.

The oeuvre of the Argentinean composer Sergio Parotti is not only large in quantity, but also in variety of formats. His extensive catalogue includes symphonic and operatic works as well as chamber music and works for solo instrument. Contrary to what common sense might presuppose, the task of composing for a single instrument is often more complex and challenging than composing for a larger organ. The reason is simple: in such cases, both the composer and the performer must take up the challenge of maintaining the audience's attention and enjoyment with limited resources.

With her upcoming CD "Echoes of Latvia" Laura Zarina presents women composers from her homeland Latvia - featuring many world premiere recordings and inspired by the literature of her native language. For more than 10 years, Laura Zarina has been bringing the music of Latvian composers to a wider audience. This includes the rediscovery and recording of a previously lost violin concerto by Latvian-Canadian composer Janis Kalnins, released in 2019 by the Canadian Music Centre label, as well as the European premiere of the violin concerto by Latvian-Canadian composer Imants Ramins, which was broadcast live on Latvian Radio Klasika in 2023.

Not long ago, the West developed an overwhelming love for all things Korean: cuisine, romance dramas, pop groups. Much less notorious is the emerging Korean scene of serious music composers. Internationally-acclaimed pianist Eun-Hee Park aims to shed light on its abundance with her new release, KOREAN SOUNDSCAPES.

On the occasion of her fiftieth birthday, Agnes Palmisano presents a cross section of diverse Viennese Dudler and so-called coloratura yodels from two centuries under the album title “Dudel-Diva”. The Viennese Dudler (the urban form of yodelling that emerged from the tradition of today’s Theater an der Wien), listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO since 2010, has in her one of the best and most successful interpreters today, who, together with a select ensemble of specialists in this cultural heritage, is able to bring the entire range of Viennese Dudler to the point and to the ear in a unique way. To this end, she is collaborating with the duo Wiener Blond, Die Gebrüder and members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Inscribed to the memory of Grace Williams’s friend Nancy Elizabeth Jenkins, who died of cancer shortly before the work was completed, Grace Williams’s Missa Cambrensis is a full-scale setting of the Mass in Latin and Welsh, scored for soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists, mixed chorus, boys’ choir, orchestra and speaker. The orchestral forces required consist of two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, (second doubling cor anglais), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion (two players: cymbals, glockenspiel, tubular bells, tamtam), piano and strings.

The album's musical material based on the use of chorale and hymn themes as a significant and fundamental element of world musical culture over the past few centuries, especially within the European musical tradition. The solo piano compositions are improvisational; with only the themes are approximate form prepared. In contrast, the pieces for the cello and piano strictly notated and require the most precise adherence to the written text.

The Promises of Darkness marks the next chapter in the visionary collaboration between Roger Reynolds and Mathias Reumert. This landmark album showcases world premiere recordings of four major works, tracing four decades of Reynolds’s trailblazing contributions to contemporary music. The title work, The Promises of Darkness (1975), pays homage to Reynolds’s mentor Roberto Gerhardt. Scored for an ensemble of 11 players, this piece masterfully conjures vivid colours and an almost cinematic sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. This release follows the critically acclaimed Wind Concertos, the first in the Reynolds/Reumert series, which earned Album of the Year (The Five Best) from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 2024.

This music was written by Chris Jonas over the course of three years of winter solo camping during the pandemic. The location was the 2 million acre Barry Goldwater Missile Range in the far southwest corner of Arizona along the USA-Mexico border. Accessible by permit only, the scorched white playas or the Missile Range are bombed regularly, but the “sky islands” of its many mountain ranges are wilderness preserves that contain unique species of animals and plants that were stranded here after the ice age.