Starting from our common passion for Italian instrumental music of the early twentieth century, we, Chiara Burattini and Umberto Jacopo Laureti, declare that we have composed a picture (as varied as possible) around the two key figures of the world of piano (Busoni) and cello (Mainardi) of the time. From the Kultaselle variations (a youthful page, dense and full of passion) and from Busoni's seraphic Albumblatt, we passed through the Art Nouveau drawings of the Wolf-Ferrari Sonata and the Two Album Pages of Alaleona, ending with the Malipiero Sonatines and by Mainardi (the latter, together with the songs by Alaleona, in the very first recording).

Lola Descours (First Prize winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, bassoon solo at the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra) tells us a musical story of Nadia Boulanger. Dubbed “The Queen of Music” by Leonard Bernstein and “The One Who Hears Everything” by Igor Stravinsky, Nadia Boulanger revolutionised music education. Her unique pedagogy, blending discipline and encouragement of personal expression, shaped generations of composers, leaving an indelible mark on the music of the 20th and 21st centuries.

If you ask classical music connoisseurs in this country about music by Turkish composers, the name Fazıl Say is likely to come to mind – but beyond that, there’s no idea! According to the British conductor Howard Griffiths, a lot has happened in the 100 years of the Turkish Republic’s existence: the Ankara Conservatory was founded in 1936 at the suggestion of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; music students were sent to Europe and the USA for training. Starting with the ‘Turkish Five’, the pioneering generation of classical Turkish composers, an independent classical music tradition was able to develop, and a rich and lively musical landscape has emerged in Turkey.

“I grew up in the jazz Manouche circles, which are dominated by swarms of guitarists – it’s not always easy to fit in as a singer! Most of the music has no lyrics, and the melodies are often too guitaristique to be sung. The microcosm fascinated me and I too wanted to participate in the Django repertoire… I saw only one option: I had to write my own lyrics, tell my own stories, reinvent his music in my own image.”

Anton Bruckner began the revision of his Third Symphony after completing the Fifth on 16 May 1876 and continued working on it sporadically until 28 April 1877. Then, after the Vienna Philharmonic rejected the Symphony for a third time, Bruckner’s friend, Hofkapellmeister Johann Herbeck, took matters into his own hands. He arranged to conduct the work himself on the concert series of the Society for the Friends of Music [Gesellschaftskonzerte] on 16 December 1877. After Herbeck passed away unexpectedly, Bruckner was forced to conduct the symphony himself. The performance proved to be one of the worst debacles of his career. The players were rude and unreceptive, and the audience left the concert hall in droves.

Tenor Laurence Kilsby, together with accompanist Ella O'Neill , performs pieces by Brahms, Wolf, Saint-Saens, Britten, Schonberg, Clarke, Heggie, Weil and more.

Lionel Hampton did a series of quartet and quintet sessions for Verve Records in 1953 and 1954, the group featuring Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich, with either Buddy DeFranco or Herb Ellis joining in for the quintet recordings.

The two piano concertos by Johannes Brahms occupy an uncontested place in the pantheon of the greatest works of this genre. At the same time they play a unique role in the development of the concerto form in the 19th century, particularly in view of their uneven history of reception. When the young Brahms started out searching the limelight in the early 1850s with his first major composition he was facing a musical world torn apart by ideological wars about questions of form, harmony, and the role of programme music.

An Adventurous Dream - the Music of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington At PizzaExpress Live in London is a recording made by Ian Shaw (voice), Tony Kofi (alto saxophone), Barry Green (piano) and Dave Green (bass) for PX Records, PizzaExpress's own label dedicated to fine live recordings made at its London venues in Soho, Holborn and Chelsea.

The jazz canon is full of outstanding material for musicians to use as vehicles for improvisation. The music of Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and his peers has been especially ripe for interpretation since the 1960s. Chromatic harmonica specialist Yvonnick Prené looked to the Brazilian jazz school for inspiration for his new duo recording with piano virtuoso Geoffrey Keezer, entitled Jobim’s World.

New album by idiosyncratic LA act Man Man draws on Krautrock, Italo-disco, oddball prog, and the films of Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder for a wildly entertaining art-pop romp.

Emmanuel Despax’s eighth release for Signum Classics delves into the dramatic and visionary world of Franz Liszt, from the great Sonata in B minor to the celestail Benediction de Deur dans la solitude. Despax offers a unique perspective on Liszt’s work through a very personal connection to the composer. His musical upbringing is rooted in a lineage of mentors which traces back to Liszt, creating a deep connection to the composer’s legacy. Despax comments “This lineage has deeply influenced my musical upbringing, instilling a unique perspective on interpretation, fostering an insatiable curiosity…emphasising engaging with the score with utmost integrity, without shortcuts or compromise. Above all, this tradition signifies a performance ethos… to serve as a conduit between the music and the audience”.

Scarlatti's Sonatas are baroque gems, full of sparkling melodies and Spanish swing. Accordionist Philippe Thuriot improvises these enchanting sonatas, breathing new life into them. After explorations of the oeuvre of Bach and Couperin, Thuriot now devotes an entire programme to the keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti. Although the latter called his sonatas Essercizi per gravicembalo (l'studies for harpsichord'), they are so much more than finger exercises.

Following the great success of BBE’s 2023 reissue of Remi Kabaka’s 1976 lost masterpiece 'Son of Africa' comes yet another neglected and hitherto-hidden slice of pure Kabaka goodness: 1980’s 'Roots Funkadelia'.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini’s activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the “chittara francese,” he received from his father his first musical grounding on a “mandolino genovese,” an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar.