Hiraeth is a 2018 album by Josh Alexander, who creates modern electronic music with classical and acoustic touches, in the vein of Wendy Carlos. This was released by Moderna.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev is one of the most widely performed of all living Russian composers. Each of his new compositions constitutes a milestone in contemporary musical history. His ability to imbue his music with profound religious content, to unite diverse cultures and styles, to invent new ways of musical expression while remaining faithful to the centuries-old classical tradition, and to utter most profound themes using a simple and comprehensible musical language, singles him out among present day composers. His most widely performed work, the St Matthew Passion (2006), has received worldwide recognition. Following its premiere in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in March 2007, it has been performed more than seventy times in different countries by the most distinguished soloists, choirs and orchestras. Invariably it receives standing ovations from audiences at each concert. This SACD features five works by Metropolitan Hilarion that were produced over a thirty year period and performed by the excellent Russian National Orchestra.

Award-winning violinist Daniel Hope presents an eclectic and accessible mix of neo-Baroque, minimalist and soundtrack favourites, including works and arrangements by contemporary masters like Ludovico Einaudi, Arvo Pärt, Karl Jenkins, Max Richter, Gabriel Prokofiev, Alex Baranowski and many more. “Spheres” features a curated collection of repertoire celebrating the idea, first brought forward by Pythagoras, that planetary movement creates its own kind of music, bringing beauty, harmony and simplicity to our complex solar system. This idea has fascinated philosophers, musicians, and mathematicians for centuries. Featured as main soloist on Max Richter’s acclaimed “Vivaldi Recomposed”, Hope is known for an effortless classical sound and intriguing approach to repertoire. Music of reflection, contemplation and relaxation.

Inspired early on by the experimental pieces of Krzysztof Penderecki, Radiohead's guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood has pursued the idea of shaping orchestral sounds in enexpected ways to produce startling and innovative works. Just as Penderecki wrote for conventional instruments and turned dense bands of microtonal dissonances and extended techniques into the agonized cries of Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and the pulsating roars and shrieks of Polymorphia, Greenwood achieves comparable effects in his multilayered and highly varied orchestral music. The massed harmonies and swooping glissandi of Popcorn Superhet Receiver owe a considerable debt to Threnody, which Greenwood would gladly admit; because the title 48 Responses to Polymorphia openly acknowledges the connection to that work, it is easy to identify Greenwood's raw materials and how he brilliantly reworks them to his purposes. This 2012 release from Nonesuch consists of recordings made with the Aukso Orchestra in Kraków, Poland, with Penderecki conducting his own works and Marek Mos conducting Greenwood's compositions.

Catalan composer Bernat Vivancos's 'Blanc', released by Neu Records in 2013, was an acclaimed double album of premiere recordings by the Latvian Radio Choir, one of the world's finest chamber choirs, conducted by Sigvards Klava. This follow-up reunites the composer with these forces in a performance of his profound Requiem. The renowned musician Jordi Savall first encountered - and was greatly moved by - Vivancos's music through 'Blanc'. He says: "The innovative richness of the works by Bernat Vivancos are, I believe, the clearest and most striking proof of the vitality of a new musical Renaissance. His extraordinary talent and his profound spirituality are placed at the service of a process that is the invention of a new language which, in spite of its complexity and modernity, is capable of transmitting to us pure beauty and emotion." Vivancos composed his Requiem - scored for mixed choir, soloists, cello soloist (here Pau Codina), cello quartet, accordion and percussion - in memory of his father.

Orange Mountain is proud to announce the release of the world premiere recording of LIFE - A Journey Through Time with The Hague Philharmonic under the direction of Carolyn Kuan. Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and conceived of by nature photographer Frans Lanting, LIFE: A Journey Through Time is a multimedia experience with images by Lanting and music by Philip Glass that showcases the wonders of the natural world. The hour-long score is cast in seven movements and was drawn from previously existing music in the Glass catalogue from a variety of sources, orchestrated for the first time by Michael Riesman. Since its premiere in 2006, LIFE has been performed dozens of times including in an abbreviated version, ORIGINS, at the inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland for an audience of international dignitaries.

The Book of Genesis tells us that in the beginning was the Word and that the Word was sound. But what if it was music? What if God, in contemplating the creation of Creation, sang being into being? If so, it might have sounded something like the Sacred Songs of Valentin Silvestrov. In this seventh ECM album devoted to the Ukrainian composer’s music, we thusly encounter a sense of space unique to the Russian liturgy: the more the voices unify in movement, the more they lift from one another like temporary tattoos, leaving behind mirror images that wash away with baptism into infinite oneness with the Holy Spirit. Sin as sun. Firmament as fundament.

The Minimal Piano Collection for one piano (BC8551) ended with “In C” by Terry Riley. Many of the composers on this new 11 Cd box have stated that this particular piece was a starting point for them to compose in a new way, exploring the ways that were created, the spaces between the notes, the emptiness, the freedom. Elizabeth Bergmann & Marcel Bergmann, Tamara Rumiantsev and Sandra van Veen & Jeroen van Veen recorded 83 compositions. From two pianos up to six pianos, from Steve Reich ‘standard’ Pianophase to Six Pianos. On the included Cd-ROM you can find all the biographies, background information and some sheet music. Van Veen recorded many pieces on his own using multi track technique.

Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt have both called the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov "one of the greatest composers of our time”. He is also one of its true originals; though a leading figure in the former Soviet Union’s avant-garde in the 1960s, he subsequently came to realise that "the most important lesson of the avant-garde was to be free of all preconceived ideas – particularly those of the avant-garde." Silvestrov was born in Kiev in 1937 and studied the piano at Kiev Evening Music School, then composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His early experimental orientation meant that his work received official criticism in the Soviet Union and, despite prizes and some prominent champions, recognition in his homeland and beyond was hard won. Over time, Silvestrov’s compositional practice evolved into what he would come to call his “metaphorical style” or “meta-music.” The composer wishes his works to be seen as “codas” to musical history because “fewer and fewer texts are possible which… begin at the beginning”. He has declared that “I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.”

Howard Shore's is one of today’s most prolific and accomplished composers - his compositions are performed in concert halls around the world by the most prestigious orchestras & his numerous film scores are heard in cinemas across the globe. Most renowned for his score for the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy & 'The Hobbit’ series, these scores have garnered him three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, as well as numerous critics’ and festival Awards. Ruin & Memory: This piano concerto was written for Lang Lang in 2010 for Chopin’s 200th anniversary year & was commissioned by the Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation & artistically supported by Long Yu, Chairman of the Artistic Committee of the Beijing Music Festival. The concerto has romantic touches, including a cadenza in the third movement, but its musical forces owe much to the classical era. Mythic Gardens: This Concerto for Violoncello & Orchestra (2012) was written for Sophie Shao & sits as a companion piece to ‘Ruin & Memory’. Sophie Shao is the winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant & top prizes at the Rostropovich and Tchaikovsky competitions in recent years.

Expériences Bimes is a 2010 3CD project by Arsène Souffriau. This was released by Metaphon.

The London Sinfonietta combine two works from Thomas Adès, one of the most distinctive and popular voices in modern composition. Both works feature accompanying films (by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements) that are included in this CD/DVD set. 'In Seven Days' is a musical interpretation for piano and orchestra of the biblical ‘creation’ by Thomas Adès, composed in collaboration with a film-piece by the artist and filmmaker Tal Rosner. B

The origins of Philip Glass' Voices, for didgeridoo and organ was specific: a commission from the city of Melbourne, Australia, in 2001. Yet the instrumental combination works so well that it seems almost foreordained, and Glass went on to write further music for the soloist here, Mark Atkins. In this performance, the didgeridoo and organ tracks were recorded separately, in Australia and upstate New York, respectively, and in Glass' metronomic world this works well enough. Yet one hopes that this release on Glass' Orange Mountain Music label is enough to spur future live performances with both players in the same room. The addition of the didgeridoo to the relatively homogeneous texture of Glass' organ writing is dramatic, but it doesn't disturb the basic shifting fields of the composer's music. It just deepens their color and variety in an immensely attractive way.

My Flame Burns Blue is the twenty-second album by Elvis Costello, released on Deutsche Grammophon. It is his second official live release after the El Mocambo bonus disc issued with the 2½ Years box set. It consists of recordings from the North Sea Jazz Festival in July 2004, made with Steve Nieve and The Metropole Orkest, with Vince Mendoza conducting. With this album, Costello joined the ranks of songwriters adding lyrics to jazz instrumentals, a practice encompassing classic pop, jazz standards, and vocalese. In addition to the Mingus tune, he drafted words for "Blood Count" by Billy Strayhorn, appearing here as the title song "My Flame Burns Blue." The initial release included a bonus disc of an abridged version of his 2004 ballet score recording Il Sogno, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Sony Classical presents legendary soprano Kathleen Battle in nine of her foremost studio recordings in her ‘Complete Sony Recordings’.
In the course of a remarkable career, launched in 1973 by mentor James Levine in their shared hometown of Cincinnati, Kathleen Battle has captivated international audiences. She has taken home numerous awards – among them five Grammys and London’s Olivier Award for her 1985 Covent Garden debut as Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, the first American singer to win that prestigious prize – and become one of classical music’s best-selling artists.
Described by the Washington Post as “one of the very few most beautiful in the world” she will make her first appearance at the Met in more than 20 years on 17th November 2016.