Future Releases

The city of Prague was a cultural hotspot in the 1920s and 30s. From 1918 to 1935 the country's president was the European-minded and remarkably liberal philosopher Thomas Masaryk, and his successor Edvard Benes was a kindred spirit.

The three population groups, enriched by emigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, Germany and Austria, competed with one another but also inspired each other. This was the Prague in which the composers on this CD were involved. In their music we hear the old and the new, tradition and renewal, but above all, imagination and talent.

When the border between East and West opened up in 1991, their music had hardly been heard in the West for some fifty years, having been suppressed first by the Nazis and then by suffocating communist rule. With the exception of Ullmann, even today these composers have hardly reached our concert halls.

An essential album for all new parents!

Lullabies – The New Born Collection features the world’s best-loved lullabies, including favourites by Brahms, Schubert and Schumann, as well as music by star composers of today; Karl Jenkins, Eric Whitacre and Paul Mealor - the young composer of choral music for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011.

Born on the West Wales coast and a native Welsh-speaker, Catrin Finch is the former official harpist to His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales. Hailed as “The Queen of Harps”, she delights audiences with performances around the world.

14CD/2DVD

Christian Thielemann’s reading of Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2011 was universally hailed as one of the greatest Wagnerian events of the last half-century and is now being released as a beautiful box set containing 14 CDs of the four Ring operas and 2 DVDs featuring introductory films to each opera.

With the Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera and an outstanding cast of today’s leading dramatic singers, these performances set the standard for Wagner interpretation in the 21st Century.

The 4 documentary films were directed by acclaimed producer Eric Schulz, complementing the audio recordings, providing an introduction, commentary and analysis by experts, including conductor Christian Thielemann. They will also be broadcast by the German/Austrian TV channel 3Sat in April – one feature per week starting on 4th April.

Booklet contains synopses in German, English and French and libretti in German and English.

This recording is the result of the passion the young musicians Camille Thomas (cello) and Beatrice Berrut (piano) have always felt for Russian music.

Whatever its period of composition, they find in this repertoire the profundity and complexity of the Slavic soul, taking to extremes the expression of human torments.

Camille Thomas: ‘For this recording we immediately thought of playing Russian music. In A Century of Russian Colours, we start with a very Romantic composition, Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata op.19. The programme continues with a very rarely recorded work, bearing the marks of Soviet communism, showing fear and anguish, but also the rigour and conformism of Dmitry Kabalevsky.

We end with a young composer who is very highly thought of in the musical world: Lera Auerbach, one of the last artists to be stripped of Russian nationality, who now lives in the United States and Germany.’

For their fourth Fuga Libera-project, the Russian orchestra Musica Viva recorded one very famous, and one forgotten piece by Antonín Dvorak. The well-known piece is the Serenade for Strings in E major, written by Dvorak in 1875. It is believed that Dvorak took up this small orchestral genre because it was less demanding than the symphony, but allowed for the provision of pleasure and entertainment. The other piece is the Cello Concerto in A major. Unlike its brother, the B minor Concerto Op. 104, this concerto has been more than overlooked. It was left un-orchestrated by Dvorak, existing only in piano-score form. It was only after his death that a few composers orchestrated this dazzling piece of music. Cello virtuoso Alexander Rudin, and Musica Viva let us taste from this magnificent forgotten treasure…

Written one after the other in the space of just three months and with unprecedented energy, Mozart’s last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer, touched by a grace that is already pre-Romantic, and thus form an exemplary musical testament. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, a pioneering collective among period-instrument orchestras, reveals a richness, a modernity, a visionary complexity that prepares the way for the Beethovenian revolution.

The approach of the orchestra founded and conducted by Philippe Herreweghe is to explore in depth the sonority and the motor rhythms of the symphonic writing of a Mozart here at the height of his powers.

To record this Mozart trilogy is a bold undertaking for any musician, and always an extraordinary event for the public!

Marin Marais, the most outstanding composer for the viola da gamba, was a master in the writing of so-called Pièces de Caractère, in which he called upon the most diverse subjects for inspiration: La Désolée (the desolate), La Guitare, Feste Champêtre (country fair), Le Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille (a description of a gallstone operation!) and so on. The choice of 'Images' in Marais’ five books of Pièces de violes is endless. A program full of worship, grandeur and sadness.

This disc is the counterpart of the 2012 Ramée publication "Hommages" (RAM1105).

This double album offers a portrait of the violinist Amandine Beyer drawn from the recordings she has made for ZZT.

The first CD selects highlights from her chamber repertoire, including works by Jean-Féry Rebel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Nicola Matteis, and Robert de Visée. The second is devoted to the concerto, with compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Arcangelo Corelli. This programme is an ideal introduction to the multiple facets of Amandine Beyer’s talent and to the grace and joie de vivre of her music-making. It also provides an opportunity to discover one of Corelli’s Concerti Grossi op.6, a preview of the complete set to be released on ZZT in the autumn of 2013.

Learning to Howl, Andrew Ford's song cycle for soprano draws on poetry from women across the centuries – from Sappho, Queen Elizabeth I and Christina Rossetti to Emily Dickinson to name a few. The recording is made all the more satisfying as soprano Jane Sheldon (the Voice of LloydsTSB’s TV and radio campaigns in the UK) responds to every nuance of the words with sensitivity and grace.

The other major work on this disc, Elegy in a Country Graveyard, grew out of the land and the community of Robertson, a village in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. The graveyard, perched high on a hill and looking out for many miles in all directions, is for the locals a favourite place to sit, to reflect, and to remember, and their affectionate musings on the place and the people buried there, recorded by Ford and woven into the musical fabric, lie at the heart of a rich soundscape that blends past, present and future.