Boulanger

WANDERINGS, the debut album from pianist Brian Woods, reflects the beauty that can emerge in dark times. Woods performs Chopin’s Ballades alongside pioneering compositions from Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, and Amy Beach. The album was born as an artistic response to the horror of the war in Ukraine; through these emotive and technically-demanding performances, Woods offers comfort and inspiration for people everywhere suffering displacement. Just as Chopin wrestled with what it meant to be Polish while living outside of Poland, Woods seeks identity and transformation through exile. In WANDERINGS, Woods leverages the power of music to bridge the gap between despair and hope.

The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.

"L'Écume des jours d'après Boris Vian" is a concept album, based on the 1947 philosophical novel "L'Ecume des jours" (Froth on the Daydream), by Boris Vian…

On his second album for Sony Classical violinist Luka Faulisi presents a highly individual interpretation of Vivaldi's pioneering masterpiece, 'The Four Seasons'. The violinist's cinematic approach to 'The Four Seasons' involved encouraging members of the orchestra to engage with the composer's onomatopoeic animal and nature sounds and adding percussion not found in the original scores. Faulisi has also opted to splice Vivaldi's concertos with three complementary works inspired by the seasons: a traditional Catalan melody made famous by Pablo Casals, 'El cant dels ocells'; the haunting 'Nocturne' by Lili Boulanger; and an excerpt from Tchaikovsky's 'The Seasons', 'October - Autumn Song', a piece of understated romanticism inspired by Tolstoy.