In celebration of his 80th birthday, this four-disc set spans more than five decades of Michael Tilson Thomas' compositional career. It features 18 works, from premiere recordings to remastered archival recordings available for the first time. The deluxe collection also includes an extensive booklet containing composer's notes, original essays, and a timeline of archival photos chronicling MTT's life as a pianist, conductor, composer, recording artist, and teacher. All proceeds from GRACE: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas will be donated to brain cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco Brain Tumor Center.

The Sainte-Colombe family remains a source of mystery to this day: the first name and the origins of the father, who taught Marin Marais and composed numerous pieces for one or two viols, remains hidden in the mists of time. The same obscurity surrounds his son or sons: records show a few traces of him in London and Edinburgh around 1700, although all that is really known of him comes from the Pieces de viole recorded here; these five suites of dances in the French style, including a Tombeau pour Mr de Sainte-Colombe le pere, have survived in a non-autograph manuscript. The version presented here breaks with the usual interpretations of these Pieces de Viole, as it includes a reconstruction of a basso continuo part as was common in works by composers of the son's generation. The non-autograph source that has survived gives a general feeling that something is missing in the harmonic structure, a lack that is here filled by this new basso continuo part. Reconstructed in the musical language and style of the time, the music of Sainte-Colombe's son here seems to come back to life; these pieces have not only recovered their full meaning but also reveal a sublime music.

Since the Baroque revival of the late 1980s, Iphigenie en Aulide is Gluck's only French opera to have remained unrecorded (in the studio and released on CD) on period instruments. To celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2024, Julien Chauvin, Le Concert de la Loge, Les Chantres du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and a top-flight cast led by Judith Van Wanroij, Stephanie d'Oustrac, Cyrille Dubois, Tassis Christoyannis, Jean-Sebastien Bou and David Witczak have filled that gap with a new recording of the work which revolutionised the aesthetics of French opera. It is underpinned by in-depth musicological and stylistic research carried out by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles in collaboration with Julien Chauvin, in this, his first operatic recording.

"The performance was sublime in its own right, with musical heroes at every turn and leadership from the podium whose depth and acuity transcended normal expectations." - Musical America.

25 years of La Cetra Basel! To celebrate this anniversary, La Cetra and Arcana are releasing the "greatest musical masterpiece of all time", as the work was called in the 19th century: Bach's Mass in B minor. "It is a dream come true to have recorded this work for La Cetra's 25th jubilee - the best birthday present ever!" says maestro Andrea Marcon. Under his direction, La Cetra Basel has made a name for itself in recent years with acclaimed interpretations of J. S. Bach's most important sacred works. Featuring top-flight soloists, this recording presents Andrea Marcon's particular vision for this Mass, notable for the division of voices between "concertists" and "ripienists". The sonority and character of each movement emerge from the skilfully crafted balance between solos and tuttis, creating a three-dimensional sound reminiscent of a three-manual organ. The result is a unique tonality, full of fresh nuances and colours, and no doubt very close to what Bach had imagined.

This is the first recording of pianist Igor Levit, conductor Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic with Brahms’ two Piano Concertos. The release is a triple-CD album with Levit’s recording of Brahm’s late solo piano works opp 116-119. As a special encore Levit and Thielemann also play the four-hand Brahms Waltz op. 39/15 together. The album will be out internationally on October 4 on Sony Classical.

The casual observer might be surprised that 2004's The Best of Gary Hoey does not consist of a bunch of Christmas music culled from his Ho! Ho! Hoey albums, but as this 18-track collection proves, there's more to the high-riding guitar virtuoso than chop-laden versions of seasonal classics. There are also covers of classic oldies like "Low Rider," "Wipeout," "Linus and Lucy," Pink Floyd's "Money," "Misirlou," and "Frankenstein," along with a bunch of original material that functions as a vessel for Hoey's relentless playing.

The great French pianist Roger Muraro joins Alpha Classics for several recording projects. Born in Lyon to Venetian parents, he was a pupil of Yvonne Loriod and is regarded as the leading specialist in the music of Olivier Messiaen, to which he has devoted much of his career. But this noted pedagogue, a former professor at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris, is also renowned for his profound and sensitive approach to the music of Ravel, Chopin, Schumann - and Liszt, of whom he is particularly fond. He now presents a monumental masterwork by Liszt which is in his view a work of 'universal intimacy': 'I admire the freedom with which the evocations of the soul, of nature, of the colours of the masters of Italian painting unfold in succession. Everything Liszt saw during his pilgrimage to Switzerland and Italy contributed to a process of reflection, a journey, a quest to bring him closer to his ideal where silence became the ultimate authority.'

One of the leading brass ensembles of our time, Stockholm Chamber Brass, presents the first Genuin album recorded with Dolby Atmos sound. In this unique production, the world-class musicians compile exclusively commissioned works from five renowned composers: Djuro Zivkovic, Cathy Milliken, Molly Kien, Francisco Coll, and Mike Svoboda. The quintet demonstrates how to transcend boundaries and create new soundscapes at the highest technical level - an imaginative and highly inspiring musical journey!

The Speed of Sound is a 1988 all-instrumental album by American rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose, who led the bands Montrose (1973-77 & 1987) and Gamma (1979-83 & 2000) and also performed and did session work with a variety of musicians, including Van Morrison (1971–72), Herbie Hancock (1971), Beaver & Krause (1971), Boz Scaggs (1971), Edgar Winter (1972 & 1996), Gary Wright (1975), The Beau Brummels (1975), Dan Hartman (1976), Tony Williams (1978), The Neville Brothers (1987), Marc Bonilla (1991 & 1993), Sammy Hagar (1997), and Johnny Winter. In 1997, Ronnie stated that this album was his favorite instrumental record he had done so far. The track titles are words and phrases referencing aviation themes.

Throughout the 1950s, the concept of the instrumental track was wrestled away from the cloying strings of MOR orchestras and into the hands of screwdriver-wielding guitarists, sleazy saxophonists, primal garage bands and dance craze creators. The teenage generation demanded music with everything and non-vocal versions of the hits sat next to specially created rabble-rousing gems that transcended genres and styles. This was music where words were just not enough.

Ino was the wife of Athamas and thus the daughter-in-law of Aeolus, the god of the winds. For reasons that are not entirely clear, she incurred the resentment of Hera, the wife of the gods, who confused Athamas to such an extent that he shot one of his own sons and also wanted to kill the second - whereupon Ino threw herself into the sea with her offspring. In the end, mother and daughter are transformed into maritime deities. When Georg Philipp Telemann set this material to music, he was already well past eighty; musically, however, he exploded like a young man with a bright future ahead of him. The Ino of our new recording comes from the ranks of the Boston Early Music Festival: Amanda Forsythe, most recently celebrated as the irresistible "Serva Padrona", opens an aria recital with this demanding role, which portrays the opera composer Telemann from monodrama to lively comedy and looks ahead to upcoming productions.

Pianist Eric Le Sage, often praised for his ‘precious, noble and tonally subtle playing’ (Rondo), dedicates himself here to two unusual chamber music works from the French late Romantic period that are rarely heard in the concert hall. There is the Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, op. 21 by Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), a string sextet with a particularly virtuoso violin part (the dedicatee was the Belgian violin legend Eugene Ysaÿe) - which is indeed what its title suggests: a violin concerto with chamber music accompaniment. And the equally rare Piano Quintet op. 42 by Louis Vierne (1870-1937), who was primarily known for his organ music, but who wrote a touching and melancholy chamber music work here - out of personal sadness, as his son was killed in the First World War. Eric Le Sage is supported by Daishin Kashimoto, long-time concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, on the violin and the Schumann Quartet in Chausson's work, and by Yuri Zhislin (viola) and Claudio Bohórquez (cello) in Vierne's work, alongside Kashimoto and Natalia Lomeiko (violin).

“Dream” is an album by Duo Arnicans that pays tribute to one of the most powerful emotions: Love. The recording features 20 pieces that encompass various aspects of love, ranging from the excitement of engagement, exemplified by Robert Schumann’s “A ma Fiancée,” and Fritz Kreisler’s “Love’s Joy,” to moments of farewell, like Michail Glinka’s “La Sèparation,” and poignant reflections on painful memories, such as Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Do Not Sing My Beauty.” Additionally, the album includes abstract dreams about sentiment, like Francis Poulenc’s “Chemins de l’amour,” as well as glimpses into the personal lives of the composers themselves, with works that were dedicated or gifted as symbols of their own passion.

Joanna Kacperek’s auspicious debut album Variations (Rubicon Classics) brings a fascinating programme of challenging pieces fit for a virtuosic pianist from great romantic composers; Beethoven, Brahms, the Schumanns, Dutilleux, Chaminade and Chopin.The artist will celebrate the CD launch by performing a selection of pieces from the album and talking about the concept behind it.