Georgian composer Giya Kancheli wrote seven symphonies between 1967 and 1986, all sharing an organic one-movement form. If his work has been in danger of losing its identity amid the tide of spiritually motivated music to come out of the ex-Soviet Union in recent years, these persuasive performances will set the record straight. Both are distinctly Russian in character: grave, ritualistic, shot through with religious symbols – pealing of bells and fragments of Georgian ‘church songs’ – long paragraphs punctuated by crude blasts, in the manner of Schnittke or Ustvolskaya, and brief flashes of caustic vulgarity – sudden jazz ‘wowing’ in the brass or a sinister quoting of a Bach invention. The Second rises gradually from an ascending four-note scale, richly suspended across the brass. Kancheli’s control of its sustained, circular development is extraordinary, moving from a gargantuan anticipation of the melody with its wistful, downturned coda to bright, dancing Stravinskian ostinatos in the wind and back again. The longer Seventh Symphony is conceived on a more conventional and grandiose scale. Suffused with Georgian folksong, its powerful rhetoric and hefty orchestration hark back to the world of Shostakovich, though veiled in a prayerful introspection peculiar to Kancheli.

On this fascinating new release pianist Sigurd Slåttebrekk has attempted to recreate the performance of Edvard Grieg’s own pioneering acoustic recording from 1903 of several of his solo pieces. The session was recorded on Grieg’s own 1892 Steinway at Troldhaugen. On the bonus second CD he is joined by the Oslo Philharmonic and conductor Michail Jurowski in a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

World premiere recording of Anton Rubinstein monumental opera 'Moses'. The recordings were made by Polish Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra under Michail Jurowski together with Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and Artos Children’s Choir and a tremendous cast (staring Stanisław Kuflyuk (Moses), Torsten Kerl (Pharaoh, king of Egypt), Evelina Dobračeva (Asnath, Pharaon‘s daughter) and Małgorzata Walewska (Johebet, Moses’ mother)). The libretto was originally written in German and this recording maintains this language version.