he Focusyear Band 21 is an international group of students with an exciting new project.

Virtuoso chamber music from the 18th century by four composers: Johann Gottlieb Graun, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda. They all worked for the Prussian king Frederick The Great, who was himself a flautist and composer of professional ability. Although this music probably was not performed for the king himself, it is preserved in manuscripts associated with one of the musical “academies” that sprang up during and after his reign (1740–86) in the Prussian capital city of Berlin.

Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is one of the most important post-war composers, known for his highly complex music and extreme demands on the performers.

Marcus Anderson s thirteenth album HERO features thirteen original compositions, which is the quintessential soundtrack of our lives with a common thread of inspiration, perseverance, passion, and resilience.

Miklós Rózsa and Bernard Herrmann were two composers leading a double life: Educated as serious classical composers who worked for the concert hall, they found their greatest success and life-long careers in the medium of motion pictures – more specifically, in Hollywood. Both men composed some of the most distinguished film scores of all time: Double Indemnity, Ivanhoe, Ben-Hur, King of Kings, El Cid (Rózsa); Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Psycho, and Taxi Driver (Herrmann).

The new Solo Musica recording "Promenade" of Frédéric Chopin's Préludes, Op. 28 and Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition brings together two prominent piano cycles that are almost emblematic of their creators' oeuvre.

Stylish new recordings of two expansive psalm settings from 18th-century Venice.
The catalogue boasts no shortage of fine recordings of the cello sonatas and other chamber music by the Venetian nobleman Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739).

While Segovia's famous Paris recital of 7 April 1924 was no doubt a major turning point in 20th-century guitar music, inspiring composers like Albert Roussel, Georges Migot, Alexandre Tansman and many others, the city of Vienna was simultaneously the setting of a quieter, yet nonetheless important, revolution.

A Catalan contemporary of Scarlatti, Manuel Espona (1714-1779) is known now, if at all, as the teacher of Antonio Soler, one of the fathers of Spanish keyboard literature. Melani Mestre’s recording, the only modern album dedicated to this composer, reveals that Espona was a fine composer in his own right.

“An insightful and versatile guitarist.” (All About Jazz). “He has found a sound that is his own - and it is always imbued with both beauty and excitement” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). The responses to Munich-based guitarist Philipp Schiepek’s 2019 debut album marked him out as a musician of real sensitivity and one to watch.

This story begins with just one sound, originating in the place which Berlin jazz people think of as their living room, the A-Trane. Back in December 2019, the club was host to four leading figures in today’s improvised music scene, who turned this cozy space into their blank canvas, their research lab. In eight sets over four nights, piano phenomenon Michael Wollny, re-inventor of the soprano saxophone Emile Parisien, electric bass icon Tim Lefebvre, and that free spirit of the drum kit Christian Lillinger were given free rein.

The energy and the unassailable virtuosity with which Marius Neset burst onto the scene have not been forgotten. Back in 2004, as a nineteen-year old student recently moved to Copenhagen, he won the Talent Award at Norway’s Nattjazz Festival.

1826. The Chopin family lives in Warsaw. Frederic is still a young man, just on the edge of adulthood. His catalog is already rich with some piano pieces, rondos, variations, waltzes, mazurkas and polonaises. Living in a certain material comfort and having taken refuge in relative solitude – he who desired so much to drop out of school – Chopin studies counterpoint - only counterpoint because he already masters piano technique to perfection - with Józef Elsner (1769-1854), at the Higher School of Music. He also registers at the University of Warsaw, as an auditor, to history and literature classes.

Eudora Records is thrilled to welcome Javier Laso to the label. As the great pianist Josep Colom states in the accompanying liner notes, “Javier Laso is inspired”, for “he connects directly with the music, a music which shows us a mysterious place which extends beyond the vicissitudes of life and only a performer who sees that place can reveal it to us.”

The three works on this recording are among the earliest compositions in the history of music to recognise the roles of the piano and cello as equally important. This provided a wonderful opportunity for a creative dialogue between the two instruments and for seeking out new methods of musical interaction.