RU 2024

For the 25th anniversary of ALIA VOX, this book/CD offers two complete versions of the work in English and German, including the overture, 8 musical pieces, and 5 melodramas, performed by actors in both languages.

Jordi Savall Born on the 1st August 1941 in Igualada (Barcelona province, Spain), Jordi Savall i Bernadet is a cellist, violist, choir director, orchestra leader, and composer. His repertoire spans music dating from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and from the Baroque period until the nineteenth century. Savall was married to the Spanish soprano Montserrat Figueras from 1968 until her death in November 2011, and is the father of Arianna and Ferran Savall; both singers and musicians.

Ge Gan-ru, ‘China’s first avant-garde composer’, is regarded as one of the most original voices of his generation. Composed in close collaboration with pianist Yiming Zhang, 12 Études for Extended Piano explores techniques using the hands on the strings and keys of the piano, as well as employing a variety of objects to create effects that range from menacing darkness to the kaleidoscopic magic of harmonics, and from skilful drumming to atmospheres as calm as flowing water. Yiming Zhang continues his survey of Ge Gan-ru’s piano music in this second volume of the composer’s works.

A pioneer of new concert formats, using music to communicate and bring people together, Hanni Liang was long sceptical about the traditional role of recording in progressing an artist’s career.

This is the repeated call and the rallying chorus of the nearly 40-minute centerpiece to composer and percussionist Asher Gamedze’s new album Constitution. The expansive double album, a minoritarian fellowship in breath, is Gamedze’s follow-up to 2023’s Turbulence and Pulse (IARC0057/M3H013), and his first with The Black Lungs, a ten-piece ensemble. The album – recorded in one day at Cape Town’s Sound and Motion Studios – is an elaboration of the possibilities of autonomous constitution in and through polyrhythmic, modal, large ensemble music.

Murders, drinking songs, Cinderella stories, virtuosic cantatas, European tours, serene polyphony and candlelit rituals all feature in the evocative and story driven programmes of Apollo’s Cabinet. Winners of the Göttingen Händel Competition and the Maurizio Pratola competition in 2022, the group bring a signature mix of acting, dancing, poetry and silliness to bring historical performance to modern audiences. They have furthermore won the Brian Nisbet Prize for their fusion of Music and Poetry and most recently the F. J. Aumann Prize of the International Biber Competition for innovation and new discoveries in Baroque music.

"I don't think Mendelssohn gets the attention he deserves," said Paavo Järvi at the start of the 2020-2021 season. Faced with this observation, he undertook to record a complete cycle of Mendelssohn's orchestral works with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra for his second season as Music Director. On the programme are the composer's five symphonies, including the second, known as 'Lobgesang', half-symphony, half-cantata, with the participation of the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, tenor Patrick Grahl and sopranos Chen Reiss and Marie Henriette Reinhold. Finally, A Midsummer Night's Dream , based on Shakespeare's play, the overture to which Mendelssohn composed when he was just 17, concludes this very fine cycle.

Murders, drinking songs, Cinderella stories, virtuosic cantatas, European tours, serene polyphony and candlelit rituals all feature in the evocative and story driven programmes of Apollo's Cabinet. Winners of the Gottingen Handel Competition and the Maurizio Pratola competition in 2022, the group bring a signature mix of acting, dancing, poetry and silliness to bring historical performance to modern audiences. They have furthermore won the Brian Nisbet Prize for their fusion of Music and Poetry and most recently the F. J. Aumann Prize of the International Biber Competition for innovation and new discoveries in Baroque music.