Iskandar Widjaja just doesn’t line up with the image of a musician on the classical music scene. As the ambassador of a new generation he simply can’t be pigeonholed as representing this or that genre. He connects worlds: as soloist with internationally renowned ensembles – from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Munich, Warsaw and Shanghai Philharmonics to the Hong Kong Sinfonietta – and equally as a performer at mass-media events like Miss World or Miss Earth, the Milan EXPO or Paris Fashion Week. He has long been a TV star in East Asia with regular television appearances, commercial advertising contracts and “trending topic” status on Twitter. In his new project Mercy, Iskandar Widjaja presents a broad musical spectrum with a closely interwoven thematic structure, summing up his achievement to date and opening a new phase of his life.

Saxophonist/Clarinetist/Composer Ken Thomson has been an active member of the New York freelance scene for nearly two decades, as a performing member of the Bang on a Can All Stars and Asphalt Orchestra, among several others. Also an accomplished bandleader, Thomson releases his newest Sextet recording featuring ambitious, rhythmically incisive music (including an arrangement of Ligeti’s Passacaglia Ungherese) that flows seamlessly between elaborate contrapuntal textures, edge of your seat unison passages, and blistering improvisations from a first rate band of colleagues.

Having already mastered such French concertos as Poulenc’s on record, the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie and Edward Gardner now explore with the BBC Philharmonic the vigorous and progressive world of Camille Saint-Saëns, offering the first of two volumes to contain his complete piano concertos. The brilliance, virtuosity, and technical perfection of Louis Lortie’s playing encapsulate these unusual, yet exhilarating works. While the spirited, unconventional Concerto No. 1 centres round a slow movement consisting of a dialogue between the sober orchestra and virtuosic piano, the technical requirements of No. 2 are so high that Saint-Saëns himself after its premiere admitted that his fluent technique was not quite up to the challenge. Finally, the unusual form and mixed musical ideas of No. 4 make for a uniquely dramatic, passionate, and dream-like experience.

This album features both sides of Strauss’s musical persona (Brahmsian vs Wagnerism) with the Burleske in D minor as well as Ein Heldenleben. While the former is a playful, miniature quasi-concerto for piano and orchestra, the latter epitomises Strauss’s symphonic style: majestic, virtuosically orchestrated, full of grand ideas, but never without irony. In that respect, Ein Heldenleben has more in common with Burleske than one would expect. Strauss’s arguably satirical self-identification with the hero of his symphonic poem is underlined by recurrent self-quotations from previous compositions. The central role of the solo violin makes it another solo concerto in disguise, albeit less overtly than Burleske.

A broad and meticulous selection of orchestral works and concertos by Gerald Finzi is here matched by a first-class cast of soloists, supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis, expert in British repertoire and conducting this year’s Last Night of the Proms. Paul Watkins displays exhilarating virtuosity in the Cello Concerto, a central work on this album, composed in the wake of the devastating news that Finzi was terminally ill, but yet filled with ‘vigorous, almost turbulent thematic material’, as he wrote in the programme note for the work’s premiere at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1955. Louis Lortie, for his part, tackles the high-spirited and majestic Grand Fantasia and Toccata, the Fantasia originally conceived as part of a concerto for piano and strings and first performed on two pianos. This contrasts with the more restrained Eclogue for Piano and Strings, timeless, and blessed with a mood of benediction. This album also features the orchestral Nocturne (subtitled ‘New Year Music’), dark, misty, and at times ironic.

‘When we approach a composer, we like to immerse ourselves in his or her early works, in order to understand the evolution of the person behind the score.'

The great inventor and futurist Nikola Tesla, from whom the Tesla Quartet takes its name, talked of the invisible yet inseparable ties which bind people together. Through performance, teaching and outreach, the Tesla Quartet has for ten years strived to tap into this palpable feeling, using music to create meaningful connections with their audiences. Celebrating this first decade together, the quartet's debut album draws upon the need for reflection, and to look upon the familiar in a new light. None did this more effectively than Igor Stravinsky, two centuries after Haydn pioneered the string quartet, and Ravel's masterful contribution takes its place as a staple of the repertoire.

Bela Bartok and George Enescu were born in same Year - 1881, Bartok in the Austrian-Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklos (today Romania), Enescu in the Moldovian town of Liveni-Botosani (today Romania). Both pieces on this recording are youth works of theirs - 1900 (Enescu Octet) and 1907 (Bartoks 1st violin concerto). Both works were neglected - Enescus Octet for nearly a decade due to the challenges of the piece (being premiered in 1909) , and Bartoks concerto was neglected by its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer (who was also his young love), and was published only after her death, in 1956 (being premiered in 1958). Bartok and Enescu both died in self-chosen exile - Bartok 1945 in New York, Enescu 1955 in Paris - yet both were respected and admired for being contributers to the development of their countries’ culture and art, particularly as great «ambassadors» for the folk music.

Zazie a bien retenu la leçon selon laquelle un album doit, si possible, commencer avec un morceau qui marque les esprits. Essenciel s’ouvre sur une chanson étonnante, une sorte d’expérimentation autour de l’idée de tempo, que Zazie accélère progressivement tout le long du morceau, jusqu’à ce qu’il s’emballe sans retenue. A l’image de ce Speed, le disque de Zazie développe un style musical singulier que la chanteuse qualifie elle-même « d’électrock ». C’est avec Edith Fambuena (productrice d’Alain Bashung et Etienne Daho) qu’elle a pensé ce dixième opus dans lequel des ambiances électro se mêlent subtilement à un piano acoustique (Dire ce que l’on danse), des guitares rock planantes (Va chercher), voire une harpe (la douce valse Veilleurs amis).

When I first heard Egberto Gismonti’s Dança dos Escravos (Dance of the Slaves) it had been months since I’d listened to the Brazilian master, and the feeling of being wrapped in his brilliant passion again was a joy to say the least, for in his comforting embrace I can always far more than a gesture to relate to. Although he is an adept multi-instrumentalist, I’ve always felt that Gismonti excels alone at the guitar, and you will not likely find a purer distillation of his art than this. The 15-minute title track constitutes the album’s lungs, through which Gismonti respires in concise autobiographical detail. Upon waking, it hits the ground running, flipping space as if through the pages of a well-weathered book into which a photographic record has been pasted.

Steps Ahead, one of the most influential jazz groups since their first debut is an all-star jazz oriented R&B band that originally included such players as Mike Brecker, Don Grolnick, Eddie Gomez and Steve Gadd in it's original line-up. Mainieri has revived the group several times since with such musicians as Warren Bernhardt, Eliane Elias, Rachel Z, Mike Stern, Tony Levin, Victor Bailey, Peter Erskine, Steve Smith and Bendik. Vibe features a new generation of young players whose performances, though grounded in the jazz tradition, bring their individual voices to the project. Vibe is about energy, reflection, and …chemistry! The vision on Vibe was to capture the feeling, spirit and "vibe" embodied in the historic recording of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

Mad Bad and Dangerous to Know was more of a band effort than the Cross's first record, and found the group developing a solid hard rock sound. Roger Taylor's voice is far more suited to singing rock songs than dance numbers, and he mostly let the other members in the group pen the record, which consists of solid, if not spectacular, guitar-driven rock numbers…