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.

Heldon were one of the quintessential European progressive groups of the 70s. Led by Richard Pinhas they released 7 albums from 1974 to 1979. Some of this is the most mellow and spacey Heldon material, while other parts burn with a nasty intensity. "Allez Teia" (1975) was the second Heldon album - it features Pinhas' trademark instrumental sound: waves of distorted post-Frippian guitars, ARP synthesizers, VCS3, tapes and mellotron into a monstrous, swelling mania. Searing instrumental space music, bridging electronics & psychedelic guitar excess in unique & legendary fashion.

Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich present the second volume of their complete Mahler Symphonies, with his First Symphony, known as the "Titan" in reference to the eponymous novel by the poet Jean-Paul that Mahler greatly admired. Although he abandoned this title three years after the symphony's premiere in 1893, the symphony has, like many of Mahler’s works, "a clearly programmatic character" according to Paavo Järvi: "Mahler was a composer who was truly able to explore the inner world of human beings and to question what goes on inside us.”

Notable as one of the U.K.'s first interracial bands, the Equals stormed through the mid-'60s and beyond with songwriting chops, potent live shows, and a sound that fused pop, blues, maximum R&B, and elements of ska and bluebeat. Original vocalist Eddy Grant would go on to a healthy solo career after the Equals splintered in the early '70s, but various versions of the band led by co-founding member Pat Lloyd soldiered on as their early material was discovered by new generations of fans. While 1995's Roots was the last album of new Equals material, cover versions of their '60s singles by the Clash, the Specials, the Detroit Cobras, and others kept interest in the band alive, and multiple collections of their early tunes showed up intermittently, including 2021's revisitation of early songs All the Hits Re-Recorded.

Like his flute-playing uncle Frederick the Great, King Frederick William II (r. 1786–1797) was a keen musical amateur. An avid cellist, he studied with the virtuosi Ludwig Christian Hesse, Carlo Graziani, and Jean-Pierre Duport, the latter of whom he appointed his principal cellist in 1773. He commissioned chamber music from notable composers across Europe, received the dedications of string quartets by Haydn and Mozart, and sometimes performed as a member of his own court orchestra. Months before acceding to the throne, he hired perhaps the finest cellist of his age, Luigi Boccherini, as his court composer. Boccherini served the court in absentia from Madrid, dispatching twelve new works per year to the Prussian monarch. Given the king’s insatiable appetite for cello music, it is no accident that Beethoven composed his first two sonatas for cello and piano during his brief but rewarding stay in Berlin.

Romanticism had many faces. Mozart’s spirit still floated through musical life and Beethoven’s mighty music set the benchmark for every Romantic composer. Mozart’s legacy was carried forward by two great pianists: Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, and Ries, a pupil of Beethoven. They each steered Romanticism in a different direction. Newspapers across Europe wrote of the ‘wild Romanticism’ of the bohemian Ries, now seen as a forerunner of Schumann. Meanwhile, the virtuoso Hummel enchanted and astonished his audiences. Around 1815, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, he was the most famous pianist in the world and Liszt was crazy about his music. Schubert, by contrast, was the creator and embodiment of personal expressiveness in the Romantic era. He performed only in private circles and had no interest in empty virtuosity, even though he was a superb pianist whose instrument, according to contemporaries, would sing under his hands.

Someone once asked me: is there not an end to Christmas songs? The answer is simple: no, there is not.