Tessa Babette Hijner

SOMM Recordings is happy to present the fourth release in the planned First Recordings of the complete Beethoven Symphonies in the legendary edition for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka, continuing a direct connection to Beethoven via his teacher Franz Kullak who studied with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny, played by the ‘wholly exceptional’ duo of Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman. This new CD couples Beethoven’s Symphonies 1 & 6 ‘Pastoral’ together with Busoni’s brilliant Concertino BV88 on a theme of Mozart K459, for Two Pianos.

'The Stradgrass Sessions' is the long-awaited album from American violinist Tessa Lark. A recording in which Lark invited multi-Grammy award winners to join her on a recording of violin exploration through classical, folk and jazz. The album also includes the premiere recording of John Corigliano's STOMP.

SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major six-volume series of Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies featuring the label debut of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo. Formed in 2010, the Duo began their in-concert exploration of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions in 2015 and now bring that experience to disc for the first time. Volume 1 includes the premiere recording of Scharwenka’s piano duet transcription of Symphony No.3, the ever-popular Eroica, and Debussy’s two-piano arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form.

SOMM Recordings proudly announces this fifth and penultimate release in the complete cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies arranged for piano four-hands by the great Polish-German composer and pianist Xaver Scharwenka. This is a series that has consistently had listeners “waiting impatiently for the next volume” (MusicWeb International).

From crusty baguettes to bubbly focaccias and robust sourdoughs, Babette's Bread is a comprehensive and unpretentious guide to bread-making, with useful advice on how to make fresh homemade bread fit into even the busiest of schedules.