Rubicon Classics is pleased to announce the third solo album for the label from pianist Alexander Ullman, presenting here a programme of Edvard Grieg’s Moods, Songs and Lyric Pieces. The prize of the album, Alexander’s own transcriptions of music from the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, draw out the colour of the orchestra from the piano, perhaps more than the composer’s own.

What’s a flutist to do when they love Ravel? Though Ravel gave the flute some of its finest orchestral moments, he wrote little for it as a solo instrument… Alas! Julien Beaudiment and Célia Oneto Bensaid answer this question by borrowing from the repertoire ten of the composer’s greatest works.

As Penderecki himself admitted, it was no easy task for a Polish composer to write a piano concerto in the shadow of Chopin. Yet in 2006 he completed his Resurrection Concerto. Bound to Penderecki by a long-standing friendship, Mūza Rubackytė presents a live recording with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Keri-Lynn Wilson. For nearly a decade, the pianist has championed this monumental, powerful, and tormented score, whose melodic richness, bell-like sonorities, and dramatic intensity reflect the unique imagination of a composer marked by war, inspired by faith, and guided by humanism.

Feminine Voices celebrates the female voice and the Christmas season, with a kaleidoscopic selection made up of the Magnificat, Ave Maria and carols, each of which is more wonderful than the last. Eight female composers feature in the programme that Christopher Lowrey and the singers of the Altera ensemble have devised, with works by Hildegard von Bingen, Imogen Holst, Germaine Tailleferre, Cecilia McDowall, Joanna Marsh, Barbara Strozzi, Elizabeth Poston, and a world premiere by Kerensa Briggs. Male composers are also included, with works by John Rutter, who has written many Christmas carols, and Benjamin Britten's famous Ceremony of Carols, a work now generally performed by boys' choirs but which was originally written for the women of the Fleet Street Choir. The version recorded here is Britten's original: "seven Christmas carols for women's voices and harp! Very sweet and full of charm". Altera and the harpist Li Shan Tan perform this magical and spellbinding music with delight.

Dudok Quartet Amsterdam’s catalogue continues to grow with the addition of another brilliant recording, delving into the music of Shostakovich and Saariaho. Shostakovich regarded his 3rd String Quartet as one of his best works and initially gave each of the movements titles such as ‘blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm’ and ‘Forces of war unleashed’, but then withdrew the titles shortly after completing the work. Why he did this we do not know, maybe he was wary of the Soviet authorities reading unpatriotic meanings into them. Whatever the reasons, the 3rd is a powerful statement containing the composer’s dry humour, with a good dash of sarcasm, the sinister and the passionate.