The radical discovery by Amir Abdullah of 5 two-track master tapes in the care of Hermine Brooks ­– widow of innovative Detroit drummer Roy Brooks – of the Charles Mingus Quintet recorded live in Detroit at Strata Concert Gallery is cause for some serious celebration.

The transcendental heroics of Paganini’s Caprices have presented the ultimate test for generations of violinists; Alina Ibragimova’s accounts of this most exclusive repertoire join a select few of the most celebrated.

For once, a recitative is the focus of a cantata. In BWV 47, the opening chorus, two arias, and the final chorale are grouped around the central statement "Mankind is dirt, stench, earth and ashes," which can hardly be surpassed in clarity. It takes a soloist with a powerful voice and experience of life to get the message across credibly!

"Salzedo has done for the harp what Bach did for the organ, Paganini for the violin, Chopin, Liszt and Debussy for the piano, which is to enlarge the technical and expressive potentialities of their chosen instruments". These are the words of the great conductor Leopold Stokowski when writing about the figure of Carlos Salzedo, who was born in Arcachon, France, in 1885 and died in Waterville, U.S.A., in 1961.

One of the most brilliant works in the quartet literature, an exciting new composition based on it, and a virtuoso award-winning ensemble: the Aris Quartet's GENUIN album Attacca bursts with energy from the very first moment.

"In June 2021, the Klenke Quartet celebrate their 30th anniversary and have been inspiring international concert life with an unchanged line-up since their foundation in 1991.

Joachim Kaczkowski, a Polish violinist, teacher and composer, was born in 1789 in the city of Tábor in southern Bohemia. He came from a family with strong musical traditionss

Up until around 1900 the clarinet repertoire was dominated by music from the German-speaking lands, largely due to the influence of three outstanding clarinetists. Inspired by Anton Stadler, Heinrich Bärmann and Richard Mühlfeld respectively, Mozart, Weber and Brahms composed some of the finest clarinet works ever written.

Throughout his life, Felix Mendelssohn harboured a strong love-hate relationship with the Berlin Sing-Akademie, where, as a singer and student of the director Carl Friedrich Zelter, he got to know important works of Italian vocal polyphony of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The virtuoso pianist Lionel Monnet has recorded Stenheim’s second Acoustic Session at the Espace Consonance in Switzerland where he is the artist in residence. Once again Stenheim was able to call on the talents of Jean-Claude Gaberel to engineer the session. Lionel Monnet has won numerous prizes for his playing and has been invited to perform at venues throughout Europe and beyond. This session showcases his talents brilliantly, as well as the exceptional acoustics of the venue.

Julian Bliss and James Baillieu present a recording Johannes Brahms’ Clarinet sonatas, Op. 120 and an arrangement of his 4 Ernste Gesänge, Op.121 arranged by Bliss. These late works were inspired by the great clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, without whom we would not have had this clarinet repertoire.

Dutch soprano Channa Malkin releases her new album This is not a lullaby with immersive record label TRPTK on 7 May 2021. Joined by cellist Maya Fridman and pianist Artem Belogurov, this will be Malkin’s second solo album, featuring song cycles which present her intimately personal perspective on motherhood with music by 20th and 21st century composers Mieczysław Weinberg, Sir John Tavener and her father Josef Malkin.

Nowadays, the oeuvre of Polish composers active in the 19th century can be considered one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of our national music. In recent years, works of many of them have experienced a well deserved renaissance, which is reflected in their increasingly marked presence in concert halls and among CD releases, which, in turn, is a direct result of intense research activity of musicologists as well as of the considerable interest of performers, who are more and more keen to include those pieces in their repertoires.

After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61.

Composer Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is one of the leading names in today's contemporary music. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with it's chief conductor Hannu Lintu includes three works by the composer, including Aura, one of the most prominent monumental orchestral works of our era, together with two other works completed in the 1990s, including Marea and the first recording of Related Rocks.