Fiona Alison Duncan Exquisite Mariposa

Alison Balsom’s fourth CD for EMI Classics features Franz Joseph Haydn and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s evergreen trumpet concertos, coupled with concertos by Johann Baptist Georg Neruda and Giuseppe Torelli. Balsom also directs Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Duncan Browne's self-titled second album plays like a direct sequel to his debut long-player, Give Me Take You; he uses the same acoustic guitar and writes in a similar idiom, especially on tracks like "Country Song" and "The Martlet." Indeed, apart from the fact that it's generally better recorded, most of Duncan Browne could easily have slotted into the earlier album; the only exceptions are the more elaborately produced songs, such as "Ragged Rain Life," with its electric guitar sound, the keyboard-embellished "Babe Rainbow," and the bluesier, Dylan-esque "Journey," which was a substantial hit in England. Browne's style elsewhere on the record is unique unto himself, built around hauntingly beautiful melodies, mostly in a folk idiom, with some choice results, including the exquisite "Over the Reef" and "My Old Friends"…

Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and poet. Classically trained on piano as a child, Apple began composing her own songs when she was 8 years old. Her debut album, Tidal, written when Apple was 17, was released in 1996 and received a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Criminal". She followed with When the Pawn… (1999), produced by Jon Brion, which was also critically and commercially successful and was certified platinum…

Clarinettist Barnaby Robson performs a rich programme of 20th-century and contemporary music for clarinet and piano, including world-premiere recordings. The release opens with Barnaby Robson’s collaboration with BAFTA-winning sound designer Martin Cantwell: a recording of Steve Reich’s intricate New York Counterpoint, which involves eleven pre-recorded clarinet lines. Herbert Howells is celebrated for his choral music but his instrumental works are less famous; with pianist Fiona Harris, Robson performs the 1946 version of Howells’s Clarinet Sonata, never recorded before.

Australia's Fiona Joy Hawkins is a pianist, singer, and composer who makes ambient, jazz, and classical-influenced new age recordings. Born in Cessnock, New South Wales, Hawkins took piano lessons from a young age and by her teens was already composing her own music…