Prison Episodes, an opus five years in the making, is Pouya Pour-Amin's cry of anger and sorrow against our times. Structured as a series of sketches, this harrowing and powerful album explores the experiences of a political prisoner from her or his incarceration to breaking point.

Since their first encounter in May 2011, Lavinia Meijer has worked with some frequency with Philip Glass, even though he has never written solo works specifically for the harp. However, many of his piano works and piano transcriptions, after minor adjustments, prove to be well suited to the modern pedal harp. Initially, Lavinia Meijer added Glass's five movement Metamorphosis to her repertoire, on the instigation of the undersigned, the Amsterdam gallery owner Robert Malasch and the American composer himself. After a first and successful performance (in the composer's presence) in the Amsterdam 'pop temple' The Melkweg, a first official recording was made for Channel Classics in June 2011 in the Dutch town of Schiedam. Since this recording was exclusively intended for a brief national marketing campaign, it has now been followed up by this complete Glass CD for international distribution. Lavinia Meijer is recognized worldwide as one of the most successful rising stars. Besides performing the standard harp repertoire Lavinia Meijer is very keen on playing modern music.

Music For Trombone is the 1992 CD by James Fulkerson performing the works of John Cage. Released in the Netherlands on Etcetera, this was recorded at The clocktower Studio at the University of Keele in Sstaffordshire in the United Kingdom on 1 June, 1992.

A deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time whether relating to harmonic rhythm or human experience are complementary characteristics that run through his instrumental, vocal and theatrical catalog like a red thread, the composer inspired by disparate spirits from Wagner and Satie to Cage and Silvestrov. The ECM New Series released multiple recordings of Bryars music in the 1980s and early 90s, including the classic albums After the Requiem and Vita Nova. The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades is The Fifth Century, which includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving yet immediately involving setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne, performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM. The album also features Two Love Songs, luminous a cappella settings of Petrarch for the women of The Crossing. The music within words, the humanity in breath, the sense of eternity within a moment or of a moment in eternity all are at play in Bryars latest music on ECM.

Piano music has always been important to Bechara El-Khoury: it brings his compositional voice closer to the listener, allowing him to share his feelings more directly than in some of his orchestral works. These works represent different periods of El-Khoury's life, but share a conception aimed at creating atmosphere with expressive states that continually switch between violence, anger, suffering and rebellion, and inquiring explorations of peaceful or dreamlike meditation. Italian concert pianist and recording artist Giacomo Scinardo has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras including the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kiev Symphony Orchestra. He is a professor at the State Conservatory of Music Trapani, Italy.

Into the second decade of the 21st century, British violinist continues his commitment to both the classical and jazz worlds, and to frequently mixing them. His 2011 album The Four Elements is an example of his blending of a variety of music styles, including Celtic and Gypsy fiddling, but the jazz and rock elements are the strongest, by far. The piece is scored for violin and electric violin accompanied by members of the Orchestra of Life, a group that includes vocalists, keyboards, guitars, percussion, trumpet, and strings.

The first volume in this groundbreaking series explores the 20th and 21st centuries’ most celebrated works for trumpet and piano; pieces which have allowed the modern performer to discover a kaleidoscopic palette of emotions and characters. From George Enescu’s Légende to Christopher Williams’s XX Mountains of Abstract Thought, the result is an exhilarating journey that surprises and enthralls the listener with tender lyricism, powerful sonorities and stunning virtuosity.

Conceived and realized in partnership with Q2 Music’s Peabody award-winning podcast Meet the Composer, Splitting Adams is Alarm Will Sound’s tribute to American composer John Adams, and in particular to his works Chamber Symphony (1992) and Son of Chamber Symphony (2007). Presented with commentary tracks from MTC’s host Nadia Sirota, Alarm Will Sound’s artistic director Alan Pierson, and the composer himself, the podcast-plus-performance conveys a rare sense of interaction for the listener; not only does the music, rendered in all its lush detail by the 17 musicians in AWS, capture and connect the long trajectory between the two works, but the commentary also shines a revealing light on the story behind the music.

Not only is Anthony Hopkins a highly respected Hollywood actor, he is also a fine classical composer! From the age of six, Anthony Hopkins has dreamt of being a musician, his love for classical music and the arrangement of music have been a large part of his life since childhood. Anthony spent much of his childhood learning, memorising and identifying the names of musical instruments, he later began to imagine the sounds they made whilst writing notes and directions for such sounds.

Now considered one of the most significant and influential Danish composers after Carl Nielsen, Per Nørgård has for a long time been one of the most respected names amongst his peers, as well as establishing a strong reputation in Europe and further afield. Extending a line which includes teachers such as Vagn Holmboe and Herman D. Koppel, Nørgård’s work is a mixture of the challenging and the deliciously gorgeous, aspects which are superbly poised in the works on this BIS recording.

The Kreuzleich by Heinrich “Frauenlob” von Meissen is over 700 years old, making it one of the oldest surviving oratorios of the German cultural sphere. Known up to now only as a silent fragment of Meistersinger history, composer Karsten Gundermann, together with the multi-award-winning a cappella ensemble Octavians, brings it to life for our present time: Gundermann has revamped Frauenlob’s notated melodies and fragmentary manuscripts into a fascinating work for soloists, chamber choir, and orchestra, and the result is sensational! With their three countertenors and supported by the Akademische Orchestervereinigung Jena, the Octavians create a lively blend of age-old and new, of archaic sounds and orchestral colors sung and played at the highest level.

Hayate means a wind which blows gently, but fresh. The Hayate Quartet is always looking for the best way to blend traditional, French-style and original Japanese-style arrangements for saxophone. With the idea to create a brighter and future-oriented saxophone musicality.

It’s almost hard to believe that Andrew Anderson hails from Australia, given how deeply rooted he seems to be in the European High-Romantic tradition. The first quartet in particular is profoundly reminiscent of the virtuoso chamber works of Dussek and Hummel, with a dash of Dvořák for good measure. And yet, its sound is decidedly modern. Not only is the work stunningly well-proportioned, it effortlessly adheres to the classical sonata form – not in a rigid, miniaturized way of imitation, but completely naturally, as if it could only exist in this way and no other.

The music of the Bulgarian composer-conductor Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) explores the darker side of the human spirit in epic scores as austere as they are powerful. His mighty Fifth Symphony, a work almost an hour in length, is obsessive and violent, with the two outer movements, wild kaleidoscopes of whirling colours and driving energy, framing a tragic slow movement and a sardonic march. The much earlier Double-Bass Concerto, which sits downstream from Shostakovich, shows the same grim sense of humour in the teeth of the dancing indifference of fate.

Piano music forms a large part of the output of the Romanian composer Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea (b. 1959), as you would expect of someone who has been playing the instrument since she was four. This first album of her music reveals a latter-day Impressionist, sensitive to half-light and petal-delicate tonal colour – but she can also generate powerful surges of energy, and her musical portrait of Charlie Chaplin testifies to an impish sense of humour.