José de Nebra was to Spanish opera what Rameau was to French opera, both pioneer and architect of the revival of the genre in the eighteenth century. His pastoral melodrama ‘Venus y Adonis’ is recorded here for the first time almost 300 years after its premiere, by Alberto Miguélez Rouco and his ensemble Los Elementos.

Dvořák’s chamber music is amongst the most extensive and significant of the 19th-century and the four surviving piano trios embody his command of the form. The first two were written in rapid succession, with No. 1 in B flat major marrying Schubertian lyricism with Slavic inflexions, serenity with joy. No. 2 in G minor is rather more classically conceived though it shares the same formal structure as No. 1 and exudes a similar quotient of lyric beauty.

The Paris-based Quatuor Tchalik is notable not least because its members are four siblings. Raised in a Russian-French family with Ukrainian roots, in which music played a central role, they have been making music together since their earliest childhood. This early and intimate contact with chamber music has allowed the four young musicians to develop their own, entirely natural approach to expressive and versatile quartet playing, creating an extraordinary artistic connection between them.

Kelly Green is a brilliant pianist, vocalist, and composer who has an inimitable presence on the NYC Jazz scene. Having headlined iconic venues including The Kennedy Center, Dizzy’s Jazz Club, and the DC Jazz Festival and having shared stages with jazz giants such as Steve Wilson, George Coleman, and Scott Robinson, it is no surprise that Green’s first three albums were received with great acclaim through written reviews and consistent radio play. Armed with this manifold experience and equipped with mastery from her time as a protege to legendary pianists Harold Mabern and Mulgrew Miller, Green strikes forward once again and presents Seems.

The award-winning duo of flautist Silvia Schiaffino and guitarist Renato Procopio present a musical travelogue ranging from Western to Eastern Europe before journeying further afield to Japan, Iran and Korea. As well as masterpieces such as Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, and a rip-roaring Monti Csárdás, this evocative selection includes the colourful and piquant, such as the music of Sakura, as well as Procopio’s own vibrant arrangement of Korean folk songs.

Peter Erskine and Vienna's JAM Music Lab All-Stars celebrate the music of two iconic Viennese composers who, after moving to Hollywood in 1929 & 1934, transformed the dynamics of film as they set the standards for movie scoring. Through their work on Gone With the Wind, King Kong, and many dozens more, their role in shaping popular culture since is legion. First exposed to the music in the late '70s as he was touring with Weather Report, Erskine heard Joe Zawinul playing a beautiful melody and learned it was by Korngold, a fellow Viennese composer.

Back with a newly formed quintet, gathered together for a particularly fruitful 2024 session in Southern France, the German pianist Benjamin Lackner presents a different and exciting side of his composer-approach. Trumpeter Mathias Eick is the sole returnee from Lackner’s debut Last Decade, and can be heard in striking dualism with Mark Turner’s idiosyncratic saxophone dialect, forming a key-characteristic of the interplay that permeates Spindrift.

From the first listening to Héritage, the much-awaited fourth album by Songhoy Blues, it's clear that the 4-piece rock band from northern Mali are in a new frame of mind, moving into a more acoustic, creative re-imagining of the "desert blues" style that has brought them to world fame.

For the third in this series of recordings drawn from his archive of concerts with Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa (see also Prokofiev and Rimsky-Korsakov on FHR146; Abril, Falla and Weber with Teresa Berganza on FHR153), Alvaro Cassuto has turned to music from the late Classical and mid-Romantic eras in a coupling of Schubert and Wagner. Written less than 15 years apart, these two pieces inhabit very different aesthetics while having a common link in Beethoven.

The award-winning duo of flautist Silvia Schiaffino and guitarist Renato Procopio present a musical travelogue ranging from Western to Eastern Europe before journeying further afield to Japan, Iran and Korea. As well as masterpieces such as Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, and a rip-roaring Monti Csárdás, this evocative selection includes the colourful and piquant, such as the music of Sakura, as well as Procopio’s own vibrant arrangement of Korean folk songs.

Dvořák’s chamber music is amongst the most extensive and significant of the 19th-century and the four surviving piano trios embody his command of the form. The first two were written in rapid succession, with No. 1 in B flat major marrying Schubertian lyricism with Slavic inflexions, serenity with joy. No. 2 in G minor is rather more classically conceived though it shares the same formal structure as No. 1 and exudes a similar quotient of lyric beauty.

The Paris-based Quatuor Tchalik is notable not least because its members are four siblings. Raised in a Russian-French family with Ukrainian roots, in which music played a central role, they have been making music together since their earliest childhood. This early and intimate contact with chamber music has allowed the four young musicians to develop their own, entirely natural approach to expressive and versatile quartet playing, creating an extraordinary artistic connection between them.

From the first listening to Héritage, the much-awaited fourth album by Songhoy Blues, it's clear that the 4-piece rock band from northern Mali are in a new frame of mind, moving into a more acoustic, creative re-imagining of the "desert blues" style that has brought them to world fame. For over a decade, when not on tour, the four members of Songhoy Blues, three of whom are originally from the north, have been based in Bamako, capital of Mali, unable to return to their homeland, where musicians are in real danger of their lives because of religious fanaticism that sees music as 'haram' (a sin). Charismatic, articulate and creative, the band burst onto the scene in 2013 with a powerful style and stage manner once described as "Timbuktu Punk".

Peter Erskine and Vienna's JAM Music Lab All-Stars celebrate the music of two iconic Viennese composers who, after moving to Hollywood in 1929 & 1934, transformed the dynamics of film as they set the standards for movie scoring. Through their work on Gone With the Wind, King Kong, and many dozens more, their role in shaping popular culture since is legion. First exposed to the music in the late '70s as he was touring with Weather Report, Erskine heard Joe Zawinul playing a beautiful melody and learned it was by Korngold, a fellow Viennese composer. He was moved to search out transcripts and recordings ever since. With his artist-in-residency at Vienna's cutting-edge JAM Music Lab University, his desire to reimagine this music in an improvised jazz setting finally became a reality. "… Erskine and the Jam Music Lab All-Stars demonstrate virtuosity, versatility and a keen attention to detail… creating a fitting tribute to the most influential figures in 20th-century music." The New York City Jazz Record

David Gray is back doing what he does better than almost anyone, and fans of complex, serious, lyrical songcraft should rejoice. Dear Life may be the deepest, strangest, loveliest album this pioneering British singer-songwriter has ever delivered. Years in the making, it is an album of emotional crisis and resolution, mortality and faith, reality and illusion, love and heartbreak, magic, science, loss and acceptance. Dear Life is David Gray’s 13th album. It’s the result of “a starburst of songwriting… it just seemed like the gods of songwriting were being kind. An album of emotional crisis and resolution, mortality and faith, reality and illusion, love and heartbreak, magic, science, loss and acceptance. While it is full of yearning and hope, there is an undercurrent of darkness, a tension between competing forces of hope and despair: a cavalcade of emotions in what is his most lyrically-focused collection to-date.