Anna Gourani

This remarkable vocal album, which won the prestigious Amadeus Music Award in 2003, features soprano Anna Netrbko in stunning renditions of works by Puccini, Berlioz, Mozart, Bellini, and Dvorák among others. A multiple Grammy-nominee and the first opera singer ever to be named to the TIME 100 list (Time magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world), Netrebko takes on these masterworks with startling vivacity and vocal virtuosity.

On this stunning album, Anna Netrebko delivers spine-tingling renditions of arias by four of the greatest composers of Italian opera: Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. Conducted by the great Claudio Abbado, this is a true masterpiece - a must have for any fan of opera or orchestral music.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Naples’ fame as a musical centre attracted travellers, composers, instrumentalists and virtuoso singers alike. Among the aspiring musicians, the most highly-trained and sought-after were the castrati, promising boys aged between 8 and 12 who were subjected to an operation intended to preserve the exceptionally pure timbre of their treble voice. Forever virginal beings whose superhuman voices mesmerized their listeners they were nicknamed angiolilli, ‘little angels’, and sang in the most important churches and theatres of ‘Castrapolis’, a term coined to describe the southern capital and its high concentration of castrato sopranos.

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’.

Anna Depenbusch is a German singer and musician. Prior to her solo career, she was a background singer for a group called Orange Blue. In 2005, she released her first album that united elements of Pop, Jazz and Chanson. Fans of German pop-chansons should have been familiar with the Hamburg singer-songwriter Anna Depenbusch for some time. With her soulful and lyrically extremely high-quality songs, the 40-year-old has long since made a name and earned a large following. On her newest album she presents the songs of her previous release "The Alphabet of Anna Depenbusch" again in a reduced and puristic form, as a solo on the piano.

Compositions from both East and West here bring together the powerful voices of six women composers from contrasting cultures. Their music ranges from the Romantic period via Impressionism and Neoclassicism to the present. Vivid impressions alternate with absolute music, strict sonata forms with free forms full of delicate musical poetry.

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Anna Margaret Michelle Calvi, better known as Anna Calvi, is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her eponymous debut album was released on January 2011, and using vintage analogue equipment, created "a velvet Wall of Sound that justified the hype in the buildup to its 2011 release". The album peaked at No. 40 in the UK Album Charts reached No. 17 in France, and entered several European charts. The album has been nominated for the 2011 Barclaycard Mercury Prize.

Orchid Classics presents one of two releases showcasing winners of the Carl Nielsen Competition 2019. Hailed as ‘One to Watch’ by Gramophone magazine, Slovenian clarinettist Blaž Šparovec was praised by jury member Michael Collins as “the deserving winner … he showed immense qualities from the start and is able to communicate with the audience his joy of music-making.

Polish-American pianist Anna Kijanowska is a multi-faceted musician, smoothly transitioning between her roles as a performing and recording artist, pedagogue, and advocate of contemporary classical music.