Tempo is a delectable album by Brazilian pianist, singer and composer Tania Maria and Puerto Rican bassist Eddie Gomez. Tempo mixes lively Brazilian choro and samba rhythms with intimate jazz and blues. Tania Maria is a masterful pianist and also has a recognizable sultry voice. On Tempo she performs a combination of captivating original instrumentals and songs as well as pieces by well-known Brazilian composers such as Jobim and Roberto Carlos. On the instrumental pieces, Maria and Gomez have the opportunity to demonstrate their technical ability with ingenious improvisations.

London and Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries shared an artistic vitality that set them apart from the rest of the world. With Parisian society regularly gripped by periods of Anglomania, a constant process of cultural exchange resulted in operetta hits, wartime classics and popular songs both bawdy and elegant. Capturing the spirit of a period ranging from the fashionable d’Oyly carte to 1920s American jazz, the Frivol’Ensemble takes us back in time to rediscover the delights of this golden age of musical theatricality.

Exaltation is the third recording in a trilogy by singer Yaniv d’Or with Ensemble NAYA. It follows Liquefacta est released in 2013, which contained settings of the Song of Solomon, and Latino Ladino in 2015 (8.573566), which focused on music of the Sephardic diaspora after the 1492 expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain. Exaltation is an essentially joyful album celebrating the spirit that binds the wandering communities, the gods they worship and the hopes they share for loving co-existence.

Ferdinand Ries grew up in the same musical environment that nurtured Beethoven, both counting Ferdinand’s father Franz as one of their teachers and the two of them becoming the closest of friends. Ries was a gifted and prolific composer in every instrumental genre. His Violin Sonatas are based on the Viennese Classical style established by Mozart but with a freshness and originality that includes movements such as the Adagio of the Sonata, Op. 38, No. 3, one of Ries’s loveliest creations. The Sonatas Op. 38, Nos. 1 & 2 can be heard on the 2nd volume of this edition, which was “unreservedly recommended” by Fanfare magazine. Violinist Eric Grossman is a versatile performer hailed for his flawless technique, superb musicianship, and commitment to a wide range of repertoire. Grossman has performed across the US, Europe, Korea, Japan, and Cuba in recital and as soloist under such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Michael Gielen.

J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was written for the Christmas season of 1734, and although it incorporates music from earlier works it belongs firmly among his timeless large-scale compositions. The development of the oratorio, which was to become a new musical form in Protestant church services at that time, was stimulated by Bach’s compositions, particularly by the unusual form of his six-part Christmas Oratorio.

Andreas Hakenberger spent his entire professional career within the territory of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, remaining for 20 years as chapel-master at the Lutheran Church of St. Mary’s in Gdansk. Here he wrote his most outstanding works, a sequence of important motets written in cori spezzati, or polychoral technique. The rich tonal coloring obtained through the combinations of vocal parts is enhanced by the variety of the accompanying instrumentation. With astute use of imitation and rhetorical pauses, Hakenberger’s music emerges as richly colorful, graceful and vibrant. There have been very few recordings of the music of Andreas Hakenberger. This release offers by far the most of his music yet to be issued, and contains all of the 55 motets preserved in the Pelplin Tablature.

Having fought their way through cancer and rare, crippling muscular diseases, ORKAN are now ready with the follow up to 2015's LIVLAUS. The new album, titled ELEMENT, deals with the power and ferocity of the four elements, and is a homage to the unforgiving strength of the earth, and the landscape of their native land, the Island of Stord. Fronting ORKAN is TAAKE guitarist Gjermund Fredheim, notorious for creating the only banjo solo in Black Metal. The band sets itself apart from its peers, being highly technically skilled, whilst, at the same time, being capable of conjuring up an uncompromising all-enveloping darkness. Conceived and recorded during a particularly demanding period in the band's history, ELEMENT, was a difficult album to make, both technically, and on a psychological level. Taxing to both mind and body, the result is as rewarding as it was difficult to achieve. Offering more layered and complex production and songs, ELEMENT is not made to pass you by, but to draw you in and totally envelop you.

Volume 3 of the Naxos reissues of the Marco Polo recordings of the 12 Moyzes Symphonies presents the eloquent and sprightly Fifth Symphony, a celebration of 'the heritage of my dear father’, and the Sixth Symphony which is notable for its clarity and symmetry, from the simple theme of its opening to the brilliant contrapuntal fugato in its closing movement. This edition of Moyzes’ symphonies remains the only recording in the catalogue. The First and Second symphonies can be heard on Naxos 8573650 and the Third and Fourth on 8573651.

George Oakley is a Georgian-born American composer and a prize-winning concert pianist. The solo piano pieces on this recording, Toccata and Sonata-Fantasia, are technically demanding works which exhibit a range of styles from jazz to classical and Georgian folk music. Oakley’s Sonata for Cello and Piano takes us from an initial state of struggle and doubt to a cheerful and victorious conclusion. For his Four Songs on Shakespeare Sonnets, Oakley “drew inspiration… from the musical language of Shakespeare’s era, so that each song would somehow become a bridge connecting the Renaissance with modernity.” His mentor and friend Richard Danielpour has written that “George Oakley’s music is always highly expressive, inevitable without ever being predictable, and speaks to the heart as well as the mind.”

With its unique combination of instruments, the Vienna Reed Quintet creates a new and refreshing sound that differs significantly from that of the conventional wind quintet. This programme opens up three very special keyboard works to these exhilarating sonorities, starting with the virtuoso dances of Rameau’s descriptively titled suite La Triomphante. Mozart’s Fantasia has all the stately grandeur of a Bach fantasia, while Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is a tribute both to his great musical ancestor and to friends who fell during the First World War.

This programme has been nurtured from a selection of pieces inspired by English gardens, including Vaughan Williams’ lovely ‘Fantasia on Greensleeves,’ spreading out towards French and Italian repertoire that evokes pastoral settings of birdsong, fountains and springs, and topped with a light-hearted musical picnic dessert. Along the way we are treated to the exquisite melody of Elgar’s Chanson de matin and the nostalgic atmosphere of William Alwyn’s ‘Naiades.’ Nino Rota’s film music credits include The Godfather, and his sublime and festive Sonata adds a celebratory touch to the personal joy of these performers’ many years of musical friendship. The combination of flute and harp always creates an atmosphere of beauty, with contrasting but complementary sonorities that have been exploited by a multitude of composers over the years. The pastoral theme of this program has been carefully chosen to include music from the Baroque and Romantic eras right up to the contemporary.

The new intimate studio film from the highly praised Russian duo recorded on a remote Norwegian island. Following the success of two highly-praised albums on Kscope, Belighted and Lighthouse, Russian duo Gleb Kolyadin and Marjana Semkina are releasing a new studio film shot at and named after a remote recording studio on Giske, a Norwegian island. The footage offers a behind-the-scenes insight into the recording techniques of two of modern progressive music’s most talented composers. The content captures Iamthemorning’s live set-up from the last three years, with the setlist consisting of songs from their first three studio albums and an unplugged recording of “Blue Sea”, the first track to be written for their upcoming fourth album and exclusive to this Blu-ray disc.