This latest instalment of Angela Hewitt’s Beethoven is bookended by the great ‘Tempest’ and Op 109 sonatas. The performances—incentive enough to acquire this release—are as usual complemented by Angela’s own booklet notes which provide real insight into how she approaches these masterworks.

Two of Beethoven’s most magnificent symphonies are featured on this new release from Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the WDR Sinfonieorchester. Jukka–Pekka Saraste writes of this new album: “I endeavor to disclose Beethoven’s emotions. That is the key to understanding his music. One has to constantly keep those currents of optimism and pessimism in balance. For that, you need to have access to an orchestra’s full sound spectrum in a highly flexible, dynamic manner. I believe that Beethoven’s impact is paramount because his message can be felt everywhere.

The music of Richard Cameron-Wolfe is not intrinsically abstract, instead residing in various realms of non-abstraction - each composition’s seed-ideas emanating from an extra-musical impulse. Here we find, for example, psychodrama (three micro-operas), sound-portraits (Inventory, Lilith), esoteric symbolism, and ritual processes – all articulated in macro- and micro-structures based on the irrational elasticity of the prime-number series.

It is clear and undisputed that the Sonatas belong to the outstanding clarinet music-literature. Brahms succeeds in his two Sister Sonatas to show the full sonority of the woodwind instrument while treating the piano as an accompaniment, but equal chamber music partner. Clarinet and piano always stay together in support and in dialogue. The composition in all of these works can be experienced as a contribution to any understanding of expression and inter-musical relationships: this becomes clear on an inter-musical level of the composition and on an inter-humane level of the interpreters.

Cristo Barrios and Andrew West write of their new release Deep Light: “We were inspired to gather together this collection of chamber works for reasons beyond the obvious prestige of the individual composers and the importance of their works. We wanted to present the listener with a satisfying musical journey, as much through the formal variety as the expressive content of the pieces, full of contrasts that are to be found among different movements of the same piece, as well as among the five works on the recording.

'This music is silent because its audition is internal… Its emotion is secret and does only take a sound shape in its resonances under the huge cold dome of our solitud'. Federico Mompou described this way in his admission speech to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint George not only the profound significance of his work titled Silent Music, but also his essential values and the sensitive attitude of both interpreter and listener to submerge in the asceticism that its course proposes.

There’s an uncanny quality about Daniel Lopatin’s music as Oneohtrix Point Never, the sense of a half-remembered past arranged in ways that only make it feel further away. Pivoting from the nu-metal memories of Garden of Delete, Age Of—produced in part by electro-soul auteur James Blake—has a compact, almost baroque quality, with touches of medieval music (“The Station,” “Myriad.Industries”), hymns (“Warning”), and pastoral bits of ambience (“Toys 2”), balancing the avant-garde with an instinct for melody and play that have always set Lopatin’s music apart. Most striking—and unexpected—are Lopatin’s forays into conventionally structured, vocal-based songs (“Babylon,” “Black Snow,” featuring ANOHNI), which bring his music to the brink of familiarity without ever settling in.

Impressive swinging jazz piano and quartet: I’ve had many pleasurable years composing and playing my own music and am very grateful to finally have a musical photograph of the colours and moods I’ve created over the years.

In late 2016, I sang at a couple's wedding. It was one of the most beautiful weddings, simply because I could feel the love in the room - between the couple, their friends, their families. Sometimes there is just magic. The glowing bride was also pregnant. In December of that year, I received a message from the father of the groom (who is the one who originally found me and asked me to sing at the wedding), to let me know that their child, his grandson, was stillborn. Also to let me know that my own music was providing a comforting soundtrack during this difficult and heartbreaking time.

The band has a very individual sound which draws inspiration from many genres of music, from Alternative Rock to Modern Jazz to Contemporary classical music. In their last album Dugong experimented with different kinds of musical structures other than the usual jazz approach of theme, improvisation and final melody. They also worked on the potential of linear counterpoint, drawing inspiration from Classical composers such as J. S. Bach and Frederic Chopin.

Sony Classical will release a soundtrack album for the survival drama Adrift. The album features the film’s original music composed by Academy Award nominee Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka) (Lion, Patrick Melrose, Gunpowder, The Current War).

The music of Dohnányi (admired by figures as disparate as Brahms and Bartók) embodies virtues of taste, humour, impeccable control of form and beauty of style; all qualities relished by The Nash Ensemble in wonderful new recordings which can only assist with this composer’s continuing rehabilitation.

Sir Simon Rattle’s last Asia tour as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker was a triumph, and is documented here in selected audio and video recordings. At the heart of this edition are audio recordings of the two final concerts at the legendary Suntory Hall in Tokyo – the musical and emotional highlight of the tour. “The quality of the orchestra delighted audiences,” said one critic. “It was a virtuoso display of ensemble playing that is simply indescribable.”