Georgios Axiotis was a leading and historically significant Greek composer who was opposed to the ‘Germanisation’ of music education in Greece. His training in Naples led him to conceive of national music of a mediterranean quality related to the naturalism of Italian verismo. The works on this album are his most important and lasting contributions to Greek orchestral music. Axiotis possessed an exceptional instinct for balance and timbre and was a splendid orchestrator. The lyricism in these pieces exudes Greek late Romanticism, while his nature depictions are strongly atmospheric.

Darko Nikčević and Srdjan Bulatović, the internationally renowned guitar duo from Montenegro, are acclaimed for their virtuosity and for exciting performances that blend influences from the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This programme captures the spontaneous nature of their musical creativity and documents the strange period in which the world first stood still under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a shared Balkan heritage and using eloquently transparent melodies, these pieces express uncertainty and isolation as well as the deepest and most beautiful of emotions, from inner peace and contentment to a cheerful appreciation of life itself.

With delights from composers such as Sir Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams, performances from UK classical artists including Dame Sarah Connolley and Ian Bostridge, and stunning works evocative of the great British landscape, British Classical Selections offers an eclectic insight into classical repertoire from and about Great Britain. This compilation is the first in a series of country focused selections, including selections from France and Germany.

The legendary, Grammy Award-winning harpist takes some truly blessed left turns on what could have been just another pedestrian new age Christmas collection…

Based on their first four works (Deus Ex Machina, Dark Wave, Broken Land, IH x Moondog), with "Polar Star" the big band presents another real suite, just as David Haudrechy likes to compose his works.

The Who will release a new version of last year's album WHO featuring an updated version of "Beads On One String" newly remixed by Pete Townshend and acoustic tracks from the band's only live shows of 2020.

"The Squirrel (subtitled Live in Montmatre, Copenhagen 1967) is a live album by American saxophonist Dexter Gordon recorded at the famous Jazz house Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1967 by Danmarks Radio and released on in 1997.

Pianist Danae Dörken is embarking on a musical journey: on April 22, 2022, her new album "Odyssee" will be released by Berlin Classics. The repertoire is a varied selection and leads the listener through different eras. Among them are well-known classics by Franz Liszt or Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, but also works that the pianist associates with her Greek origins, for example by Manos Hatzidakis and Vangelis.

When Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash passed, they left behind what John Carter Cash, their son and Johnny Cash: Forever Words co-producer, describes as a "monstrous amassment" of things, including a treasure trove of undiscovered material that includes Johnny Cash's handwritten letters, poems and documents, penned across the entirety of his life.

The idea of bringing together Eastern European folk dances and tango nuevo is a sound one. Astor Piazzolla, tango nuevo’s founding father, surely heard similar folk dances as a kid growing up in New York City’s East Village, and one can discern their echoes – however faint – in his music. On this brief programme, violinist Zachary Carrettin and pianist Mina Gajic´ interweave a set of Seven Balkan Dances for solo piano by Serbian composer Marko Tajčević (1900 84) with a half-dozen contemporary takes on tango nuevo by Ray Granlund (b1975).

Together with the Alma Quartet (all strings of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), double bassist Dominic Seldis and his regular percussionist Vinsent Planjer, Frerichs took an entirely new and unexpected path. He brought the improvisational element back into classical music: a practice that was common in the time of Mozart and Beethoven. Composers then wrote out their orchestral parts and came up with their solo parts during the performance. Frerichs follows this pattern in his first two piano concertos.

Few if any composers equalled Schumann in the breadth of his literary taste. His reading encompassed the major figures of European literature in German translation, as Die Weinende, a setting of Byron in his Jugendlieder collection, amply illustrates. The three sets of Lieder und Gesänge in this volume are among his most expressive, the earliest dating from his magical ‘year of song’ of 1840. They take as their subject matter a panoply of romantic concerns: love of nature, the changing of the seasons, parting from one’s beloved, the allure of mermaids, as well as more cheerful strophic songs. This is the final volume in this acclaimed series.

“Seikilos Epitaph’s Fantasy” project explores a rich diversity in compositional styles, ideas, textures, sonorities and archetypes.

Those who still think of Wagner’s Tristan as quintessentially erotic music should definitely reconsider: in the list drawn by The Most Erotic Classical Music of All Time, an album with a provocative cover featuring a woman’s derriere and suspenders, in good company with an obvious Bolero and a punctual isottesque finale and a less-obvious Moonlight Sonata or a Good Friday Spell (all by the German from Leipzig), one finds the Centone di Sonate for violin and guitar by Niccolò Paganini (Genoa 1782 – Nice 1840) and precisely with the opening movement of the Sonata in A minor placed in the opening of the present collection.

A repertoire gap provided the impetus for a genuine new discovery: there is plenty of repertoire for the flute from the Baroque period and again since the 20th century. However, the productive Romantic era treated this instrument somewhat neglected. The Terragni/Sarasin duo wanted to remedy the situation and resorted to the tried and tested means of adaptation, which has been common in music for centuries.