Older Ives enthusiasts may recall the First Piano Sonata in performances by William Masselos who played the work for the first time in 1954, the year the composer died. Odd, but familiar in Ives, for such a masterpiece to have to wait 45 years to be heard! Masselos made two recordings (nla) which established the character of this richly inventive work. The one by Noel Lee (on a Nonesuch LP—only available in the USA) made in the late 1960s is almost as impressive. Joanna MacGregor's recording is now a landmark since there is effectively no competition in the British catalogue: DJF found little to recommend in John Jensen's performance on Music and Arts (9/90) so it is best to compare MacGregor, who is certainly busy in the recording studios these days, with these earlier Americans.

"The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said." Taking a cue from these lines of Philip Larkin, pianist Simone Dinnerstein casts her album of the music of J.S. Bach and Franz Schubert in poetic terms. Her understanding of the composers is summed up in her own words: "The music of Bach and Schubert share a distinctive quality, as if wordless voices were singing textless melodies." Of course, Bach and Schubert were masters of setting texts to profoundly expressive music, so it is fruitful to look for the lyrical impulse in their keyboard works and appropriate to find songful interpretations. Yet Dinnerstein doesn't merely serve up rhapsodic renditions or treat the music as some kind of tuneful vehicle for idiosyncratic or personal reveries. Her playing is quite in character for both composers, and her treatment of the material is far from self-indulgent.

The soundtrack of the 1927 film Napoléon, directed by Abel Gance, was the first film soundtrack ever composed. It was written by Arthur Honegger, a close collaborator of Abel Gance, and consists of twenty minutes of music. In the 1990s, Marius Constant composed a film score for a screening in Paris of the Kevin Brownlow cut, here performed by the composer himself conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, enhanced by the original compositions by Honegger.

Originally recorded in 1977, this splendid re-release per of Haydn’s sacred masterpiece in its original fully orchestral version was never released as a CD or in digital, making it one of the highlights of our Marriner centenary jubilee!

Here comes an album as part of our Paavo Berglund retrospective: a superb rendition of César Franck’s major works, previously unavailable to digital partners, with the Variations symphoniques, featuring Argentinian pianist Sylvia Kersenbaum, newly remastered in high resolution.

Respighi: Pines of Rome, Bernstein: Symphony No. 2 "Age of Anxiety", Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazate, Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 "From the New World", Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4, Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. No. 3 “With Organ”, Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2, Mahler: Symphony No. 6 “Tragic”, etc. Recorded 2006-2019.

Antonius Gerhardus Michael Koopman, known professionally as Ton Koopman, is a Dutch conductor, organist, harpsichordist, and musicologist, primarily known for being the founder and director of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir.

In 2019, I began to think about making concept albums. Of all the ideas I developed, one of the most potent was that of collating works that we would like to listen to in the morning and evening. This was the sentiment behind the creation of the albums Morning and Evening.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, is a work for piano and orchestra completed by Johannes Brahms in 1858. The composer gave the work's public debut in Hanover, the following year. It was his first-performed orchestral work, and (in its third performance) his first orchestral work performed to audience approval.

On this exceptional album, Dóra Kokas and Marianna Shirinyan focus on two great masters: Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. The record features their only cello and piano sonatas which have become two of the most significant works in 20th-century cello literature. Additionally, the program closes with a shorter, yet equally charming, lyrical piece by Rachmaninov.

For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can Çakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert’s completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital. In this third instalment, Çakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek’s completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As Çakmur says, ‘I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn’t specified in the score.’ Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.