Jonathan Lamptey

With Wilson's longtime friend Pat Sansone of Wilco producing, Wilson and the band recorded in Studio A at the Sound Emporium, the late country maverick Cowboy Jack Clement's studio. The musicians included Nashville’s premier session players including bass player Dennis Crouch, Russ Pahl on pedal steel, multi-instrumentalist Jim Hoke, and world renowned Fiddle master Mark O’Connor. Working with this Nashville band gave Wilson the same kind of feeling he had as a kid, strumming along with those bluegrass bands.

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande.

This release by Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard (the principal cellist of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and British pianist Martin Roscoe purports to be a complete recording of Brahms' music for cello and piano. In fact it's padded with quite a few other things that have little or nothing to do with Brahms other than the fact that he composed the original music.

The pianist Jonathan Fournel, recent prizewinner of the prestigious 2021 Queen Elisabeth Competition (where he won not only the Queen Elisabeth Grand Prix, but also the Queen Mathilde Prize, the Musiq3 Audience Prize and the Canvas-Klara Award) has joined the Alpha label for several recordings, starting with a Brahms programme recorded in the superb acoustic of the music room at La Chaux-de-Fonds just before the Competition: ‘Over the years, for me Brahms has become a figure I admire so tremendously, a composer I can never tire of. It was fairly obvious to me that I had to make my first recording with these two works that I love so much (…) The rich quality of this music conjures up the profundity and grandeur of a symphony for the piano – and in such an astonishing way.’ The 28-year-old French pianist has been gathering many plaudits for his concerts – in particular for a sensational recital at La Roque d’Anthéron – and shows all the signs of developing a great career and a highly individual artistic path.

Corruption? Betrayal? Persecution? Tyranny? These subjects resonate with the current events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They also provide the subject matter of many seventeenth-century musical works. Kate Lindsey has chosen to devote this second Baroque recital with the English ensemble Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen (following Arianna in 2020, ALPHA576) to the figure of Nero. Scarlatti, Handel and Monteverdi wrote works focusing on this tragic protagonist and his entourage, including his mother Agrippina and his wives (Poppaea and Octavia). Interpreted with incredible intensity by the American mezzo-soprano, the programme features world premiere recordings of two cantatas: Alessandro Scarlatti’s La morte di Nerone (c.1690) and Bartolomeo Monari’s La Poppea (1685). Tenor Andrew Staples and soprano Nardus Williams join Kate Lindsey for duets from L’incoronazione di Poppea, including the sensual ‘Pur ti miro’.

French pianist Jonathan Fournelm, 27, has won this year’s Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition. Second Prize was awarded to Rusian pianist Sergei Redkin and third Prize to Keigo Mukawa (Japan).

Artists are liminal figures — they cross thresholds and collapse boundaries between past, present, and future. In THE NEW EPOCH, three musicians from the Boston Artists Ensemble interpret works by French composers Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, and Lili Boulanger, infusing these pieces with unprecedented freshness and clarity. Each celebrated in their own right, cellist Jonathan Miller, violinist Lucia Lin, and pianist Diane Walsh join forces in every duo setting possible from this assortment of instruments. Exploring works written at the threshold of the First World War — with the world crossing into the violent twentieth century and composers reacting with music that looked both nostalgically back and innovatively forward — they underline the commonalities between each composer’s unique voice and reinterpret this music for our turbulent present. Each celebrated in their own right, cellist Jonathan Miller, violinist Lucia Lin, and pianist Diane Walsh join forces in every duo setting possible from this assortment of instruments. Exploring works written at the threshold of the First World War –– with the world crossing into the violent twentieth century and composers reacting with music that looked both nostalgically back and innovatively forward –– they underline the commonalities between each composer’s unique voice and reinterpret this music for our turbulent present.

This release by Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard (the principal cellist of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and British pianist Martin Roscoe purports to be a complete recording of Brahms' music for cello and piano. In fact it's padded with quite a few other things that have little or nothing to do with Brahms other than the fact that he composed the original music.