In 1907 Florent Schmitt composed music to accompany a ‘mimodrame’ danced by Loïe Fuller, La Tragédie de Salomé . His score is bursting with colour, energy and voluptuousness – and also with oriental influences stemming from his travels to Morocco and Constantinople, where he discovered the howling dervishes. The final scene features the heart-rending ‘Chant d’Aïça’, an oriental melody sung by a soprano.

A narrative unfolds in seven stages which reflects Walter Benjamin's flight in suggestive images in which dream sequences and reality interweave. Benjamin's encounters with Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht, Gershom Scholem and Asya Lacis - the woman who tried to persuade him for many years to embrace historical materialism - became the cornerstones of this rhetorical arc. "These stages", says Ruzicka, "may represent a unique life story in the 20th century, whereby in view of the devastation of that century, it is inevitable that the wounds that are thought to have healed are made to bleed again".

Carolin Widmann’s widely acclaimed ECM recordings have traversed a broad arc of music – from Schubert to Xenakis. Here she turns her attention to one of the pivotal compositions of Morton Feldman. "Violin And Orchestra", composed in 1979, marked a new direction, with an almost painterly attention to detail in slowly unfolding music. It is not a concerto in the strict sense of the term, not soloist with orchestral support. The violinist must move inside the glowing colour-field of sound. In this landmark Feldman recording, Widmann does so with great delicacy and feeling, exploring the subtle orchestral texture, crafted together with conductor Emilio Pomarico and the players of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra boasts long tradition of Bruckner performances. Recorded live in Alte Oper in Frankfurt and edited from multiple performances, this new recording presents new insight into this neglected masterpiece by Bruckner. This is a magnificently recorded performance of a remarkable piece of music. The SACD surround has a sense of space in the mix that allows the beauty of the composition to unfold before your ears. This is music making of the highest quality.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra boasts long tradition of Bruckner performances. Recorded live in Alte Oper in Frankfurt and edited from multiple performances, this new recording presents new insight into this neglected masterpiece by Bruckner. This is a magnificently recorded performance of a remarkable piece of music. The SACD surround has a sense of space in the mix that allows the beauty of the composition to unfold before your ears. This is music making of the highest quality.

A thrilling album from Steven Isserlis couples the ground-breaking Prokofiev Cello Concerto from the 1930s with Shostakovich's eruptive response to it written for Rostropovich in 1959. These seminal works mark the cello's coming of age, enveloping its trademark rhapsodic lyricism in a newly visceral passion. Om this recording, Paavo Järvi makes his Hyperion debut, conducting an ebullient Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and providing the ideal foil to Isserlis's impassioned virtuosity.

This recording marks the beginning of the collaboration between the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new music director, the French conductor Alain Altinoglu, who conducts the leading European and American orchestras and has made a reputation for himself in every repertory – not forgetting opera at Salzburg, Bayreuth, and La Monnaie in Brussels, where he is music director.