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.

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.

The Pacific Quintet’s debut album on Fuga Libera is a reflection of the diversity of its members and core focus; it also offers a nod to the composer who inspired the ensemble: Leonard Bernstein. Going beyond the standard classical repertoire, the prize-winning quintet (clarinet, horn, flute, oboe and bassoon) presents music from their home countries of Japan, Honduras, South Korea, Germany and Ukraine/Turkey in a programme which transcends all differences of culture, language and tradition. Two pieces, one by the Honduran composer Jorge Santos and the other by the South Korean female composer Soeui Lee, were commissioned especially for this album, which also includes Fazil Say’s quintet Alevi dedeler rakı masasında and a medley of Japanese folk songs; Hanns Eisler’s Divertimento represents Germany, the Pacific Quintet’s home city. The album ends with an arrangement of music from West Side Story, an homage to its famous composer who founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo where the players first met. As this project shows, they are truly United in music.

The follow-up to Laura Hynninen’s award-winning Otilia album Ratsut album has been released. Yleisradio chose Hynninen’s previous Otilia album as Album of the Year 2021 and it was also nominated for Emma in 2022 in the Classic Album of the Year series.

After their first album dedicated to early trios, the Trio Zeliha uses its ardour and spontaneity to serve two monuments of the repertoire. In short, two radically different languages, but the same intensity pervades the recording from start to finish, uniting in a single breath Schubert’s nostalgic serenity and the raspy darkness of Shostakovich.

The Miró Quartet presents Home, a new album that explores the many concepts of what the term “home” can mean. Its complexity is woven in a variety of ways into the music: the pieces, all composed by Americans past and present, invite you to feel, reflect, and engage in Miró’s world.

With their new album "Chansons sans paroles", the young brass ensemble "Salaputia Brass" takes us through the history of French chanson. From the Renaissance madrigal to the present day, almost every era is represented. New arrangements specially tailored for the ensemble allow these works to be heard in a completely new tonal brilliance. Due to the expressiveness of the brass instruments and their tonal proximity to the human voice, the music speaks volumes, even without the words.

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.

The following recording sums up almost three decades of my work – work which has had diverse routes and focal points in its journey. It is not obvious how to apprehend the changes that my work went through during this long period, but that is exactly what Michael Kudirka has accomplished in this recording; from the meditative In Winter Garden to the full-blooded Lament’s Commentary, he has captured different facets of my music with great transparency and expressive subtlety. While some of my works have been composed with microtonal guitar in mind, Michael has envisioned the entirety of this recording reinterpreted and enriched with microtonal tunings. Here, every piece becomes a unique sound world.

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.

The Italian guitarist Angelo Marchese introduced the music of the Serbian-US composer Dušan Bogdanović to the Brilliant Classics catalogue in 2015 with an album of sonatas, bagatelles, studies and dances (95194). His second recording dedicated to Bogdanović concentrates on a single collection, the 48 Seasonal Preludes which gradually took shape over several years as a fusion of classical, jazz, and ethnic styles.

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives' birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer's "Concord Sonata" using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work.

Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time was composed between 1939 and 1942 as a direct response to the events leading up to (and including) the notorious Kristallnacht, in November 1938, in National Socialist Germany. Tippet first intended to write an opera, but quickly determined that this would inevitably be too literal, and that the (rather neglected) oratorio form lent greater scope for reflective and meditative interjections to the narrative. Hoping to persuade his friend and mentor T.S. Elliot to write the libretto, he sent the poet such an intricately detailed plan that Elliot responded by suggesting that Tippett, having thought so carefully about it, prepare the text himself – which he duly did. (He then went on to write his own libretti for all his future large vocal works).

‘Oxalys and the New World’: in its latest CD recording, Oxalys delves into American masterpieces for chamber music ensemble. From Pulitzer Prize laureate Aaron Copland with his nature fresco Appalachian Spring to Minimal Music icon John Adams’ mythical Shaker Loops and jazz idol Wynton Marsalis’ funky and groovin’ Meeelaan. Three unknown facets of a flourishing and inspiring musical culture, as always virtuosically captured by Oxalys, the jewel of our Belgian chamber music ensembles.