As a specialist of Baroque and classical eras, the albums Neville Marriner dedicated to modern music are quite rare among his discography, making them all the more interesting! This 1978 recording highlights two Genevan composers, the greatest Swiss figures of their generation. Ernest Bloch (famous for his hit for cello and orchestra Schelomo) composed a beautiful and lively neo-classical Concerto grosso for piano and strings, as for Frank Martin, one of his most celebrated compositions is the Petite Symphonie concertante and its unusual distribution – a double string orchestra accompanied by a piano, a harp and a harpsichord. Featuring Osian Ellis, Francis Grier, Philip Ledger, and Simon Preston.

"'Magnolia' is my 6th album and it is entirely filled with my original compositions. This time I decided to combine the roles of a composer, pianist and producer and the vast majority of this music - with the exception of grand piano part - I have recorded at my new home studio. I invited amazing musicians - with whom I collaborate the most and who became my close friends: countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, guitarist Łukasz Kuropaczewski, cellist Marcin Zdunik, folk flutist Michał Żak and horn player Konrad Gołda. The pieces of „Magnolia” are cinematic and the whole album has a soundtrack structure. As a producer, my approach to these compositions is manifested by the use of various modern post-production techniques. Some pieces I wrote in a way that one musician performs several parts. e.g. in „Cedar Tree” Jakub Józef Orliński sings several layers, forming the whole vocal ensemble."

The album "Back Home with the Moon" comprises 17 pieces written by the French composer Christian Schittenhelm for the Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski. The pieces, recorded for the first time, are the fruit of their musical and artistic encounter and shed a new light on Peter Jablonski's piano art: lightness and sensitivity allow the music to subliminally oscillate between romanticism and jazz.

A significant number of women were active as professional composers in inter-war France. Although they worked alongside their male peers and were accepted by concert organisers, performers, critics and audiences alike, they are little known today, and their works are rarely performed in concert or recorded. Composer, conductor, pianist and teacher Marcelle de Manziarly is one of these forgotten musicians.

Anyone who has seen the conductor Elim Chan on stage is familiar with the immense energy produced by her baton. With the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, of which she has been Principal Conductor since 2019, she celebrates a genre dear to her heart, ballet music, which places the emphasis on both physical movement and orchestral power. More than a century of ballet music is presented here, with excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suites, oscillating between passionate love and fatal violence; Suite no.2 from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé , the fruit of his first collaboration with Diaghilev in 1912, which he described as a ‘choreographic symphony’; and finally a work by Elizabeth Ogonek, All These Lighted Things , premiered in 2017. Although the title of these ‘three little dances for orchestra’ comes from a poem that evokes a soothing union with the earth at the dawn of a sunny day, the piece ends with a sort of folk dance that degenerates into an orchestral storm.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved and admired France, and especially the city of Paris – ever since my first visit as a young boy: I was captivated by the powerful charm of the country to the point of falling in love with it and later settling there. And today, after living there for over a decade, I still feel the same sense of wonder for this city. In this album, I pay homage to my two homelands with a selection of pieces and songs that grasp the essence of the 20th century, from the period between the two wars and in the 1950's.

Continuing their project to record all the Shostakovich string quartets, award-winning artists the Carducci Quartet return to Signum Classics for their third album of string quartets by Shostakovich.

This release brings together ALL of Morton Feldman’s compositions for cello and piano, including unpublished works and a first recording.

The ballet Miracle in the Gorbals (named after the working-class quarter of Glasgow), still rarely recorded, is a very somber and violent piece of music, one of the most intense among the works of Arthur Bliss. The suite recorded by Paavo Berglund finally makes its digital debut, coupled with a late cello concerto (of a quite different kind, cheerful and optimistic), premiered by Mstislav Rostropovich at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival in 1970, and here performed by Berglund fellow countryman Arto Noras.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City presents the world-premiere recording of Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s opera The Shining (2016). Based on the novel by Stephen King, this opera “elevates the tale from horror story to a human drama” (Wall Street Journal) thanks to Moravec’s atmospheric, electrifying score and Campbell’s deft libretto. While staged performances have received critical and public acclaim, this engaging masterpiece can now be enjoyed as a recording for the first time.

To commemorate the 75th anniversary year of Turina’s death, this album presents some of the composer’s most admired works heard in arrangements for strings, performed by Spanish ensemble Concerto Málaga directed by Gil de Gálvez. Two of his best-known works – La oración del torero (‘The Prayer of the Bullfighter’) and Orgía, from Danzas fantásticas – open and close the programme. Other examples include a sinuous Andalusian Tango and a rare example drawn from his incidental music, Aparición del Arcángel.

Franco Alfano is remembered today for his completion of Turandot after Puccini’s death. His catalogue of works, including operas, orchestral and chamber music, reveals him to be a sophisticated and original composer. Alfano possessed an innate melodic facility combined with a talent for unexpected timbres, as heard in the luxuriously orchestrated Suite romantica which, in the composer’s own words, aims to convey ‘the feelings of two lovers travelling through Italy’. From the neo-Classical Divertimento to the noirish postwar Nenia, and from the lightness of touch of Amour… Amour… to the impressionistic and iridescent Una danza, each work reveals a different aspect of this multifaceted composer.

With their recording of Dmitri Shostakovich's complete string quartets, the Quatuor Danel has crafted an impressive opus that delves into the composer's life with deep musical understanding and establishes unparalleled standards in interpreting his chamber music. These new live recordings, stemming from their 2022 residency at the Mendelssohn Hall of the Gewandhaus Leipzig, capture the full spectrum of emotions embedded in Shostakovich’s quartet cycle, from the ethereal to the profound, from the whimsical to the contemplative. With their interpretation of this extraordinary cycle, the Quatuor Danel has forged a distinctive Shostakovich style that cannot be found in any other quartet. Primarius Marc Danel reflects on the resonance with the audience in Leipzig, describing it as nothing short of sensational. “I hope the recordings will also convey the collective spirit we permanently felt during our residency in the Mendelssohn Hall."

For this their fourth album of music for string orchestra, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London present a programme of works by three composers from the Franco-Belgian school of string pedagogy, who were all themselves virtuosic string players. George Enescu studied in Paris and Vienna, spent much of his life in France, and was internationally lauded as a concert violinist and conductor in both Europe and America.

After Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók and Stravinsky, Isabelle Faust now tackles Britten with Jakub Hrůša and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, revealing a little-known facet of the British composer. This concerto, highly personal in its language, combines drama with humour, seriousness with satire, in music of overwhelming emotional depth. The programme is completed by early chamber works.