Beethoven’s final symphony was also the first in the history of music to go beyond the scope of purely instrumental music and open itself up to the human voice. Conceived in several stages between 1817 and 1824, his D minor Symphony op.125 enlists the services of a choir and four vocal soloists in its final movement, effectively becoming a cantata. With its setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy from 1785, it conjures up a dream of humans coexisting in peace – assuming that foes can become brothers. Beethoven’s own contemporaries believed that his Ninth Symphony represented the ne plus ultra of symphonic music and that the genre’s traditional parameters had been definitively exhausted with this work, whereas in fact the Ninth marks the beginning of a new symphonic age, providing the impetus for a whole series of unorthodox successors from Berlioz and Liszt to Mahler and Shostakovich.

Beethoven’s piano concertos occupy a special place in the output of this master of both piano and orchestra. They are among the most telling examples of the composer’s stylistic evolution — in the concerto form as well as in his pianistic and symphonic writing. With Concertos Nos.4 and 5 Beethoven transports the genre of the concerto into the realm of the theatre (his benefit concerts, for example) and large halls. This had its limitations, however. When in 1824 Beethoven asked his pupil Carl Czerny to play the Fifth Concerto in the Großer Redoutensaal in Vienna,Czerny categorically refused, out of respect for his teacher’s composition and because of the hall’s specific problems: ‘And now I am supposed to play … at the Großer Redoutensaal which is the most unfavourable venue for this instrument, and all pianists who have played there so far have regretted it.’ The Großer Redoutensaal was one of the largest halls in Vienna at that time, corresponding most closely to the dimensions of a modern concert hall.

This album presents extraordinary works of three twentieth-century composers with diverse cultural backgrounds, underlining the versatility and legacy of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in its centenary year. Richard Strauss’ Schlagobers (Whipped Cream, 1924) is a playful ballet set in a Viennese Konditorei, of which the orchestral suite is featured on this album. With its lively mix of Viennese waltzes and modern harmonies, light-versed tunes interspersed by sudden outbreaks of ravishing beauty, all brilliantly orchestrated, it can be considered a further exploration of the composer’s “Rosenkavalier style”. Claude Debussy is featured with Jeux, Poeme dansé (1912), another piece created for a ballet performance, built around an erotic nocturnal search for a lost tennis ball that Pierre Boulez characterized as a “Prélude a-l’Apres-midi d’une Faune in sports clothes”. Debussy’s Jeux has been a major source of inspiration for post-war avantgarde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen, and, therefore, the transition from Jeux to Györgi Ligeti’s Melodien, für Orchester (1971) is not jarring.

The Blues is and always has been a source of inspiration for Samuel Blaser. Touched by the expressiveness of this style, the multi-faceted virtuoso trombonist uses all the resources of today’s jazz and yesterday’s to make its heritage bear fruit in a contemporary vision. Early in the Mornin’, produced by Robert Sadin, aims to celebrate the universality of the Blues and takes its place as a unique album midway between jazz and modern urban music. On this album, Samuel Blaser reinterprets the tunes that lie at the origin of the Blues, derived from work songs, country music or English and Irish folk music. Hailed several times by The New York City Jazz Record, Downbeat and Jazz Magazine as one of the trombonists and composers who count today, Samuel Blaser is a musician sensitive to the character of simple melodic lines, who seeks to widen the musical scope of his instrument while preserving the personal touch of his tone quality.

The works on Viktoria Mullova’s new album devoted to Arvo Pärt’s music for violin stem from the composers study of medieval church music, and are products of what Arvo Pärt himself describes as a ‘tintinnabuli’ style, developed by the composer in the 1970s through studying medieval church music ‘I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements – with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation.’

"Sacrum Convivium" presents a vision of French music over two millennia: from Gregorian chant through Guillaume de Machaut’s extraordinary ‘Lai de Nostre Dame’ to the Twentieth Century of Maurice Duruflé, Francis Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen, all three of them influenced in some way by the spirituality and sensibility of Gregorian chant, which Messiaen himself described as “the greatest treasure we possess in western music.”

Vladimir Ashkenazy’s first recordings as conductor were of the symphonies of Rachmaninov, a composer he’d long championed as a pianist. This very fine pairing of the Third Symphony—perhaps the hardest to do really well, which he does—and the Symphonic Dances is a delight. Ashkenazy coaxes rich, multicolored playing from a Philharmonia at white heat, and the live recording captures the frisson of the occasion. The symphony is done with great love and the Dances, almost another symphony in their ambition and spirit, are fabulously played.

The Pretty Things are an English rock band, formed in 1963 in London. They took their name from Willie Dixon's 1955 song Pretty Thing. A pure rhythm and blues band in their early years, with several singles charting in the United Kingdom, they later embraced other genres such as psychedelic rock in the late 1960s (with 1968 S.F. Sorrow being one of the first rock operas), hard rock in the early 1970s and new wave in the early 1980s.Despite this, they never managed to recapture the same level of commercial success of their very first releases.

Collecting two decades of smash hits on one blockbuster release, multiplatinum music icon Kid Rock will unleash Greatest Hits You Never Saw Coming on Friday, September 21 via Warner Bros. Records.

Period-instrument Philip Glass? Who’d have thought. If Handel was the rock-star opera composer of the mid-18th century, then there’s a strong case to be made for Glass as his equivalent 250 years later. Pairing these two composers on the same album is not only an intriguing idea, but it’s also a very successful one. Costanzo’s rich countertenor voice wraps itself effortlessly around Handel’s mellifluous lines just as it rides Glass’ driving rhythms with ease. He has performed Glass’ Akhnaten on stage and sings the role with a real sense of the character’s predicament; his way with Handel is equally convincing.

The artist behind such infamous, progressive, cult, chamber-oriented projects as maudlin of the Well and Kayo Dot injected new life into his long-dormant solo project early last year with his first album in a decade.

Following its highly acclaimed album featuring the three most richly scored Ouvertures (Gramophone Editor’s Choice – shortlisted for the 2017 Gramophone Awards and included among the Top 10 recent Bach recordings), Zefiro comes full circle with the famous collection of Concerts avec plusieurs instruments, that kaleidoscope of colours that seems almost tailor-made to highlight the salient qualities of the ensemble founded by the three historical wind specialists, Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo and Alberto Grazzi. Thanks to experience gained in countless performances and recordings with the leading conductors and ensembles, but also to thorough research into the most appropriate instruments and pitch (398 Hz, i.e. the ‘authentic’ French pitch), this brand new recording exudes liveliness, flair and knowledge, and features some of the greatest names on the Baroque music scene, among them Cecilia Bernardini, Gabriele Cassone, Francesco Corti, Lorenz Duftschmid, Marcello Gatti, Gaetano Nasillo and Dorothee Oberlinger. Also included is the more intimate B minor Suite with flute (BWV 1067), thus filling the gap left by the earlier recording.

The tenor Julian Prégardien joins Alpha for several recording projects that will showcase every facet of his talent, notably lieder and oratorio. His first album on the label is devoted to one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Winterreise, but in a version with orchestra composed by Hans Zender in 1993. He scored the work for orchestral forces very different from the ensembles used in the nineteenth century (including, for example, a soprano saxophone, an accordion, a harmonica, a wind machine, a guitar and a very large percussion section).

‘Shortly after Luigi Boccherini’s death on 28 May 1805, two journalists in Leipzig and Paris agreed that he had been (for the former) “an excellent cellist capable of bewitching audiences with the incomparable sound and expressive melody of his instrument” and (for the latter) “a wonderful cellist. He especially charmed us with his incomparable sonority and the very expressive song of his instrument”. However, posterity in the nineteenth century was most unkind to him, allowing him to “survive” thanks to a Minuet chosen at random, transposed for and endlessly churned out by every possible instrument (and even the voice), a somewhat “doctored” concerto, and finally editions of a small batch of “sonatas for cello and piano” adorned with an improbable arsenal of technical and performance markings far removed from the Boccherinian spirit . . .’ Yves Gérard.

Lonnie Holley has signed to Jagjaguwar for the release of his next album, MITH. MITH is the improvisational artist’s first album since 2013, and sees him joined by Laraaji, jazz duo Nelson Patton, the late Richard Swift, saxophonist Sam Gendel, Ismaily, Anna & Elizabeth and Courtney Hartman.