To celebrate its fifteen-year career, the Quatuor Ellipsos wanted to pay tribute to the wind orchestras which unite so many amateur musicians all over the world. With blazing brass, jazz swing, African rhythms and sounds from Asia, along with a touch of tango and Irish fiddle, “United Colors” is a melting pot of sax culture. Their fifth album, crafted with playfulness and collaboration, combines new creations for saxophone quartet with pieces for wind orchestra, alongside the Philharmonie de Nantes.

The sonatas of Franck Bridge and Benjamin Britten have always had a special place in my cello repertory. The expressive and deeply lyrical richness of the first sonata keeps up with the sublime austerity of the second one. As a prelude, I decided to start the disc with the stunning Fratres by Arvo Pärt, dedicated to B. Britten, the gentle and beautiful melancholy of which invites us to fully enjoy the two amazing sonatas. Hoping you will appreciate! David Louwerse

The career of Italian pianist Gianluca Cascioli was launched with his victory at the 1994 Umberto Micheli International Piano Competition before a jury that included Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter, Maurizio Pollini, and Charles Rosen. He has since appeared in the major music centres of Europe, North America, and Japan.

“The idea to record our debut album emerged when we met Maestro Evan Christ in Ingolstadt, where we performed two concerts together. We were also honored to perform together with Evan in Israel. Thanks to his suggestion of making the recording with the Cottbus Philharmonic Orchestra, we are now privileged to hold our first album in our hands.

Monique Haas was one of DG's principal pianists in the 1950s. Her play is marked by its elegance, passion and wonderful articulation.

Each appearance of Atsushi Sakai and Christophe Rousset leaves an unforgettable memory with those who have had the good fortune to hear them commune on stage. Long-standing partners, they now join together for the first time on disc for a composer they worship: the mysterious Antoine Forqueray. Born in 1672 in Paris, he was, with Marin Marais, one of the greatest gambists of all time. Famed for his virtuosic improvisations, he published none of his 300-odd pieces and died in 1745 in Mantes where he had moved in 1731, after having suffered serious financial setbacks, especially in the course of Law’s bankruptcy. Aside from a few handwritten pieces copied in the collections of other composers, Forqueray’s pieces have been lost.

Pianist Laurent Martin has made a personal speciality (amongst many other activities) of rediscovering overlooked French composers, left by the wayside of the mainstream repertoire. And so he has performed Castillon, Dubois, La Tombelle and Gouvy. He was one of the main architects of the resurrection of George Onslow, the composer Mel Bonis and Charles Valentin Alkan. Here he is getting into the, sadly rarely-performed, repertoire of Déodat de Séverac, who has something of the air of a nice regional Toulouse composer – but who's anything but!

Alteration and transformation, influence and interaction! The horn and the piano have gone through immense changes over the course of time, as this recording with works by Beethoven, Schumann and Klebe intends to illustrate. The natural horn, the Romantic valve horn and the modern horn enter in dialogue with the fortepiano, the Romantic piano and the modern grand. We embarked on an adventurous musical expedition in the recording studio by dealing with three different types of horns and three different keyboard instruments in the course of three days, thereby attempting to span a wide musical range that depicts the transformation of the historical timbre ideal, condensed as in a time lapse.