With this new album the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Klava is turning its attention to the music of Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956), one of the masters of Russian liturgic music. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil is a fitting continuation to the choir’s albums of sacred music by Sergey Rachmaninoff and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Together with the two latter names, Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil belongs to the central repertoire of Russian liturgic music.

Charlie Parker with Strings is a jazz album by Charlie Bird Parker. The compact disc, released in January 1995, is based on the two 10-inch long-playing records Bird with Strings (Vol. 1/2), which were recorded on November 30, 1949 and July 5, 1950 by Mercury Records in New York City and released in 1950.

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher (b. 1963) is one of the great symphonists of our era. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Hannu Lintu includes the first recording of his 2nd Symphony, ‘Kenotaph’, and the song cycle ‘Die Nacht der Verlorenen’ performed by the world-known baritone Andrè Schuen.

William Sabatier relishes the improvisational freedom Piazzolla allowed in his exciting new interpretation of the Concierto para bandoneón and the Doble concierto - Hommage à Liège.

Michael Graves, the Chairman of the Peter Warlock Society, writes: “Warlock’s songs are among the most exquisite, inventive and original to emerge in Britain in the early part of the twentieth century. Generally under-represented in today’s song repertoire, they are particularly so for the soprano voice. This very welcome collection of Warlock’s songs, many of them rarely performed or recorded, showcases the breadth of his extraordinarily diverse oeuvre. Soprano Luci Briginshaw and pianist Eleanor Meynell here offer insightful, sensitive and highly accomplished performances”.

The expansive deluxe editions of the release are jam-packed with rare and more previously unreleased and never heard before pieces of music chronicling The Tragically Hip’s Road Apples era, including: Road Apples, the original album re-mastered in 2021 by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in Nashville. Saskadelphia, as released earlier this year.

The French-Cypriot soprano Sarah Aristidou joins Alpha and here presents her very first album. Twice named ‘Best Newcomer’ by Opernwelt for two contemporary creations, she is a favourite interpreter of Jörg Widmann who has already written two works for her, and has sung under the direction of Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle and François-Xavier Roth.

You have understood nothing of my simplicity’, wrote Paul Verlaine in Child Wife. And that is precisely what Julien Joubert’s music seems to whisper to us with each note.The composer and pianist works regularly with the Maîtrise de Radio France, which has premiered many of his works.

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos (‘poems’) by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo.

The lute by Sixtus Rauwolf heard on this recording was probably built in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Some hundred years later, in 1715, it was converted to suit the musical tastes and demands of the baroque period. For this disc, Jakob Lindberg has chosen works that could have formed part of the repertory of the presumably German owner of the instrument at around the time of its final conversion.

With Beethoven’s Piano Concertos no. 4 and op. 61a, the latter being the composer’s own transcription of his Violin Concerto, Gianluca Cascioli, Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz present two milestones of the piano literature.

Jean-Marie Leclair's Violin Sonatas were published in four volumes between 1723 and 1743. David Plantier here presents a selection of Sonatas from the final three opus numbers of the collection.

Maurice Ravel, a versatile and eclectic composer, took his inspiration from many sources, but especially and most constantly throughout his life, from music of the Eighteenth Century: that of French Baroque.

In the Europe of the first half of the seventeenth century, instrumental music became a source of sonic and expressive experimentation. Influenced by vocal rhetoric, composers sought to replace words with a new musical language. The virtuosity of the instrumentalists developed, as did invention, improvisation and the search for surprising sonorities. Along with the organ or the harpsichord, the violin was the instrument of choice for experimenting with these new techniques.

This album ranges widely over Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan’s substantial output of sacred music and gathers together a few pieces that haven’t made it into the studio, such as the lovely St Anne’s Mass. Many of the pieces have personal significance, including works written for the weddings of family members and a Requiem Mass for his father.