Celebrating the work of Benjamin Britten, this album combines three of the composer’s enduringly popular, yet vastly distinctive works. Sir Simon Rattle leads us on an unexpected journey through this diverse collection of masterpieces.
Written shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Sinfonia da Requiem meditates in part on the political populism which had, for the second time in just a few decades, plunged the world in to an existential crisis. In this piece, Britten’s rich, yearning harmonies reveal a sombre and dramatic warning of the cost of conflict.From the darkness of war, we move towards the light with Britten’s choral Spring Symphony. With its mysterious reimagining of traditional English folk song and verse, the work depicts the gradual reawakening of the natural world when winter ebbs away, and spring begins to triumph.Britten let his imagination catch fire in The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. This brilliantly original showpiece is one of the composer’s best-known pieces, and draws the album to a close.

… She [Lise Davidsen] is radiant in Act II’s sublime O Gott, Welch ein Augenblick and completely secure at the top, heading a fine cast including Georg Zeppenfeld (Rocco), Günther Groissböck (Fernando) and Kränzle (Pizarro), a character baritone who oozes malevolence.

Digitally remastered! "No Stranger to Love" is a studio album by American musician Roy Ayers.

The violin concertos by Benjamin Britten and Paul Hindemith are among the most famous and, above all, the best violin concertos of the 20th century. From the very first day they were among the standards in the programs of the great violin virtuosos.

Joanne Shaw Taylor (born 1985, England) is a British blues rock singer and guitarist who was discovered by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics at the age of 16. The British music publication Blues Matters! called Taylor "the new face of the blues"

Beethoven’s Sixth evolves as an exploration of an unemphatic harmonic progression that embodies a feeling of calm. Beethoven employs this exploration in charting the broad structure of the symphony’s movements individually, and of the work as a whole.

There are a number of reasons for the delay which we will try to explain in this statement. In order for us to keep to the original scheduled date of June 25 th , we needed to deliver the finished album and artwork by mid May at the latest.

In the music of Bach, the Italian violist Simone Libralon has found a lifelong companion, who ‘unfailingly touches that emotional chord we need in the varied and contrasting moments of human experience - a safe haven reserved for intimate spirituality.’

The discovery of the inventory of an extraordinary collection of music from the late seventeenth century has made it possible to track down a previously unknown work by Stradella: Amare e fingere (Loving and feigning), composed in Rome, but performed in Siena in 1676.

In 2018, Paul Lewis embarked on an exploration of one of the richest bodies of work of the Classical era: the keyboard sonatas of Haydn.

Felix’s impassioned F minor quartet was the fiercely personal response to his sister’s death in 1847, only a few months before his own. The Takács Quartet frame it with equally committed accounts of a much earlier work, and Fanny’s own important contribution to the genre.

Martha Argerich has been an outstanding Chopin interpreter for decades. In celebration of her 80th birthday on June 5th, 2021 Deutsche Grammophon presents the exceptional pianist’s Complete Chopin Recordings, continuing with this collection of rendition where she is joined by the National Symphony Orchestra Washington and Mstislav Rostropovich!

In the middle of the 16th century, the Geneva Psalter infected the whole of Reformed Europe – Switzerland included – with a true psalm fever. The first complete collection of all 150 psalms, promoted by the Genevan reformer Jean Calvin, was published in 1562. The psalm verses were translated into French and provided with melodies by various Genevan cantors.

The musical multi-talent Mozart mastered several instruments at the highest level. Although he was said to have a special preference for bowed strings, the piano was hardly less to his liking; he learned to play it as a small child, and it was probably his most important working instrument: his freelance existence as a musician in Vienna would hardly have been possible without perfect mastery of it, whether as an instrumental teacher, répétiteur or accompanist of soloists. Thus the piano also played a central role in Mozart’s compositional work.

The mandolin reached prominence as a solo instrument in the 17th century when it began to appear in operas and oratorios, and in chamber and solo repertoire. Amongst the most prominent composers for the instrument were Niccolò Ceccherini and Pietro Cappellini, masters of polyphony. But it was Filippo Sauli’s Sei partite, composed for the four-course mandolin, that constitute a body of work unique in early 18th-century mandolin repertoire – a kaleidoscopic digest of different styles and influences that combine French and Italian traditions in music of exquisite taste and expressive beauty. Born in L’Aquila in 1992, Davide Ferella has appeared as soloist at several Italian festivals, performing with groups such as I Virtuosi Italiani. He has collaborated with the Teatro alla Scala di Milano and Teatro Comunale di Bologna.