Patricia Hollingshead

It was early 2017 when Louise Patricia Crane wrote the song that would become the title track of her debut solo album, ''Deep Blue''. Having written and recorded with The Eden House the previous year, Louise relocated to Cambridge to begin working with musician and producer Stephen Carey at his Stanton Manor studio. With a shared vision to create something beautiful and unique in music, the two set about working together.

Pierrot lunaire, premiered in Berlin in 1912, is a series of twenty-one short melodramas for voice and five instruments on German translations of poems by Albert Giraud. Here the composer first introduces Sprechgesang (speech-song), a technique that revolutionised declamation. Schoenberg wanted the piece to be ironic, at once tender and grotesque, in the manner of cabaret songs.

2009 collection from the acclaimed French vocalist. Patricia is the most successful French artist abroad, the proud musical descendant of Piaf, Chevalier, Montand and Co. She adopted a style perfectly suited to her warm and powerful voice. Popular at home, famous abroad, Patricia Kaas is a role model for French youth today…

Patricia Petibon is equally at home in the music of Rameau and Caldara as she is in the humorous works of Bernstein. One of the more exciting singers of the day, this recording gives us a new insight into her huge talent. The recitals of this witty and talented French soprano have received great acclaim around the world. This new compilation serves as a great introduction to her unique talent and also demonstrates her great versatility. For versatility alone this collection is worth adding to the library - and that saying nothing about the aplomb she uses to carry off these pieces.

Quasi Parlando is an important addition to ECM's documentation of the work of Tigran Mansurian, an often breathtaking account of highly original contemporary chamber orchestra music. Issued in the wake of his 75th birthday, the album presents four works for soloists and strings, and marks the ECM debut of the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, winner of the 2013 Gramophone Awards 'Record of the Year'. It opens with the Armenian composer's fiercely-concentrated Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and String Orchestra, and proceeds to new music performed by its dedicatees: the lyrical Romance, dedicated to Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the intensely expressive Quasi Parlando, dedicated to German cellist Anja Lechner. Both are world premiere recordings, as is the Violin Concerto No 2, subtitled Four Serious Songs, which concludes the programme. Throughout, the soloists deliver committed performances, as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson.

Giovanni Antonini and his ensemble Il Giardino Armonico celebrate the composer who made them famous: Antonio Vivaldi. Their recordings of The Four Seasons and Cecilia Bartoli's famous first Vivaldi recital left an indelible mark on the discography of the Red-haired Priest! Their musical fireworks display continues with a programme of concertos that is bound to provoke strong reactions, since it is the result of a meeting with a musician who is equally adept at shifting boundaries, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Together they have devised a programme entitled WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?, which interweaves ultra-virtuosic concertos by Vivaldi (Il Grosso Mogul RV 208, La Tempesta di Mare (for violin!) RV 253, and RV 157, 191, 550 among others) with, between each concerto, short pieces written by much more recent composers, Luca Francesconi, Simone Movio, Giacinto Scelsi, Aureliano Cattaneo and Giovanni Sollima, and mostly commissioned by Patricia Kopatchinskaja especially for this programme.