The Symphonic Prologue to Dante's classic 'La Divina Commedia' is indeed quite brilliant, a very emotionally charged piece full of tragedy and victory in a rich orchestral garb. The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra play with superb conviction and intensity, and are quite admirably conducted by Gomez Martinez. The same goes for the First Symphony, an intensely personal work all round that shows Woyrsch's admirable sense for long symphonic breadth that is uncannily prescient of Mahler and his contemporary Rott, whose First Symphony is one of the gems of late romantic expressionism. Again, both orchestra and conductor are completely immersed in the beautiful music that permeates the symphony and their performance is certainly one of the best that one could hope for.

V. Williams is a composer representing British late-blooming nationalist music. Synthesizing the influences of his country's folk songs, musical traditions, and Impressionism, he has established a gentle, conservative, yet unique style. These symphonies, which express the anxieties and hopes of modern people, are his signature works, and are characterized by their grandeur, beauty, and familiarity. Slatkin's performance is a masterpiece with a very clear and clean interpretation.

The Krein family, with its origins in Lithuania, became a musical dynasty of considerable importance in Imperial and then Soviet Russia. The seven sons of its patriarch, Abram Krein, were all musicians, with Alexander and Grigory becoming respected composers, and Grigori’s son, Yulian, adding another generation of Krein compositions. The dances and cantillation of their Jewish background was an important part of their musical make-up, combining at various stages with Russian folk-music, Skryabinesque harmony and French Impressionism. All three shared a predilection for the clarinet, developing a repertoire for the instrument that is only now beginning to be discovered – in what one might call a Krein scene investigation.

On May 15, 1953, five of jazz's most influential musicians - Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Bud Powell - met at Massey Hall in Toronto for their first and only known recording as a quintet. Although only a small audience had the opportunity to experience this historic evening in person, it was captured on tape. The resulting album, The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall, became one of the genre's most important and acclaimed releases.

On Musikalische Exequien (Musical Exhibitions) featuring Concentus Konig, you will find a dialog between two of the most essential funerary musical works of the German Baroque.

New digital album from pianist Olga Kleiankina explores rarely recorded works by women composers of the classical period. Recorded on the first 88-key Steinway piano built in 1876 and includes works by Elisabetta de Gambarini, Anna Bon, Marianna Martinez, Maria Hester Park. Josepha Barbara Auerhammer and Marianna Auenbrugger.

Simon Gaudenz conducts the Jena Philharmonie in the second of a series of recordings of the complete Mahler Symphonies, interspersed with world-premiere recordings of pieces by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini that reflect each symphony and pay homage to Mahler's soundworld. This second volume features Mahler's Second and Third Symphonies, the Second preceded by Scartazzini's orchestral Torso (2018) and Epitaph for choir and orchestra (2019) for soprano and orchestra, and the Third by Spirit (2019). The Jena Philharmonie is joined by a host of stellar artists: soprano Jana Baumeister, contraltos Evelyn Krahe and Ida Aldrian, and the Philharmonischer Chor der Jenaer Philharmonie Knabenchor der Jenaer Philharmonie, chorus master Berit Walther.

The initial inspiration for this project came to me while I was writing a monograph on Schönberg’s “Verklärte Nacht”, Il labirinto e l’intrico dei viottoli [The Labyrinth and the Tangle of Pathways]. Schönberg, like Mahler, was attuned to the relationship between music and venues for music, and in my research, I discovered that Mahler was particularly concerned with the chamber-music aspect of his own Lieder from the Wunderhorn collection. He had even conducted some of them in what was then known as the Small Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein (now Brahms Hall), a space only suitable for a chamber orchestra—too small for the ensemble required for some of these Lieder. I consequently wondered about the kind of adaptation Mahler had made for that performance, while I was already considering undertaking a similar operation myself.