When it comes to modern music from the 20th-century repertoire to scores on which the ink is barely dry , Het Collectief is one of the finest European ensembles. With their sixth disc for Outhere and their first on the Zig-Zag Territoires label, the ensemble returns to the roots of the modern repertoire, interpreting Weberns Passacaglia and, with soprano Katrien Baert, Bergs Sieben frühe Lieder, Zemlinskys Maeterlinck Gesänge.

Avishai Cohen impressed a lot of listeners with his soulful contributions to Mark Turner’s Lathe of Heaven album in 2014. Now the charismatic Tel Aviv-born trumpeter has his ECM leader debut in a programme of expansive and impressionistic compositions for jazz quartet (trumpet, piano, bass, drums), augmented by tenor saxophone on a few pieces. Into The Silence is dedicated to the memory of Avishai’s father David, reflecting upon the last days of his life with grace and restraint. Avishai’s tender muted trumpet sets the emotional tone of the music in the album’s opening moments and his gifted cast of musicians explore its implications. Israeli pianist Yonathan Avishai has played with Cohen in many settings and solos creatively inside the trumpeter’s haunting compositions, sometimes illuminating them with the phraseology of the blues.

A "dream team" trio of interpreters for these deeply emotional masterpieces of Russian Romanticism. Gidon Kremer is celebrating his 70th birthday on (February 27th, 2017) with a special chamber music program together with outstanding young pianist Daniil Trifonov and renowned cellist Giedre Dirvanauskaite, both of whom he personally chose for this recording.

Reger is one of those composers more talked about than listened to—caricatured as a prolific writer of organ music with a penchant for dense musical textures. But he certainly wasn’t averse to a good tune: the two Romances abound in lush lyricism, while the magnificent A major Violin Concerto shows him continuing in the tradition of the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. An unashamedly symphonic work, it’s nearly an hour long—around the same length as the nearly-contemporary Elgar Violin Concerto. No less a figure than Adolf Busch championed it—first performing it when he was just sixteen.