William Youn's first orchestral album for Sony Classical in cooperation with Deutschlandradio Berlin is dedicated entirely to the exuberant flair of fin-de-siècle Paris with rare repertoire by Reynaldo Hahn, Nadia Boulanger and Gabriel Fauré - a musical excursion into the salons of the Belle Époque full of dazzling rediscoveries.

It has long been known that William Youn has joined the ranks of the world's leading Mozart and Chopin interpreters. The complete recording of the Mozart piano sonatas, made for the Oehms label by the South Korean pianist based in Munich, is already setting new standards of excellence in their interpretation on the modern grand piano.

Anájikon, the second ECM album after Music for piano and string quartet (ECM New Series 2309) by Athens-born and Munich-based Konstantia Gourzi, incorporates her chamber and orchestral music of the past decade. The composer also conducts the Lucerne Academy Orchestra here: "I see composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship," she says. Gourzi is particularly concerned with making connections between the arts, which also relates to the question of her own artistic identity and the influence of her origins. In Gourzi's sound language, elements of different musical traditions repeatedly merge, and East and West enter into a dialogue. This album presents three of her compositions: her Third String Quartet Anájikon, her orchestral piece Ny-él (commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, in August 2016 with the orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy) as well as Hommage à Mozart, three Dialogues.

Franz Schubert had just turned eighteen when in February 1815 he wrote his first keyboard sonata within a matter of days. The three surviving movements of the Sonata in E Major D. 157 are complete, and yet the work does not appear to have been finished. In final position is a quick Menuetto in B Major – a final movement in the tonic is missing. By this date Schubert was already an experienced composer who could look back on a sizeable work-list. He had written his first symphony, composed a series of Masses and completed a large number of string quartets and songs, including Gretchen am Spinnrade, which was later to become one of his most famous lieder.