This compilation of 12 Lieder and Six Moments Musicaux performed by soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and pianist Edwin Fischer is old-fashioned in every sense of the word. Recorded in 1950 and 1952, the sound is old-fashioned: clear but distant, heard across all the intervening decades as if through a dark glass. But, more significantly, the performances are old-fashioned. The slight but sweet quiver in Schwarzkopf's voice was typical of its time but unlike anything any contemporary soprano would attempt. In the An die Musik, she flirts with preciousness. In Im Frühling, she comes close to coyness. In Ganymed, she touches on parody. In Gretchen am Spinnrade, she almost but not quite distorts the music with her breathless delivery. And in every performance, Schwarzkopf seems fond of Schubert but not unreservedly fond, as if Schubert's songs needed special pleading to make them succeed, a truly old-fashioned approach compared to the unreservedly affectionate performances of contemporary singers. Similarly, Edwin Fischer's playing is equally old-fashioned, albeit in an entirely different way. Fischer obviously loves Schubert's music and his playing is warm-hearted and true. Unfortunately, Fischer's playing is technically old-fashioned. He drops notes, slurs lines, fudges arpeggios, and smudges rhythms in a manner that no contemporary pianist would dare let stand in a recording. Whether this approach works depends on the listener. Older listeners full of nostalgia for a time long since past will no doubt love it. Younger listeners with no tolerance for sentimentality may have trouble accepting it.© TiVo

Casual buyers and browsers should note that the vocal works on this album, accompanied by orchestra, are not the original works of Debussy. They were made in 2012 by composer Robin Holloway at the request of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. They were performed at that time by Renée Fleming but have not been recorded until now. The settings are unorthodox and never boring, and they will probably strike different listeners in different ways. Holloway reorders the songs, believing that they were not intended as a sequenced set (probably debatable), inserts some of the composer's Verlaine settings in the new ordering, adds transitions between most of them, and tacks on a high-powered epilogue of his own. The end result, perhaps, is Debussy for the 21st century, amped up and intense, with hidden psychological themes and ideas wrung out and brought to the fore by the orchestration. There will be little disagreement, however, about two of the main attractions: soprano Vannina Santoni is a talented newcomer from whom one wants to hear more, and Mikko Franck, heard at the end in La Mer, is an excellent Debussy conductor; his rendition of this well-trodden work is full of detail and entirely absorbing. Santoni has a big voice that stands up to these orchestrations, and Alpha's sound from the Radio France auditorium keeps everything in balance. Nothing if not an intriguing Debussy release. © James Manheim /TiVo

The titular "Iconic" nature of the program here is twofold. First, stardom-groomed violinist David Garrett pays tribute to violin icons of the past. Primary among them is Fritz Kreisler, who is represented several times on the program, including by the familiar Schön Rosmarin (which is not among the bonus tracks for those who purchase the deluxe physical edition but is an additional bonus track available to streaming listeners). One of the icons, Itzhak Perlman, even makes a personal appearance in a Shostakovich duet, and other guests include tenor Andrea Bocelli and the single-named flutist Cocomi. What Garrett calls the second thread of his program deals not with performers but with music; what he has put together here is an example of the classic program of encores. He has done his job well, arranging a lot of the music for himself and changing up the sentimental tunes that can sink a project like this if too relentless with more unusual fare (Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair) and upbeat numbers like Dinicu's Hora Staccato and a reminder of his earlier virtuoso ways with Paganini's Moto Perpetuo, Op. 11. The end result is an entertaining example of the venerable all-encore genre, marred only by oddly too-close studio sound from Deutsche Grammophon.© James Manheim /TiVo

If the global pandemic allows it, the young baritone Andrès Schuen is expected in Papageno (The Magic Flute) at the Vienna Opera in spring 2021. He will be Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in the summer of the same year, and then Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte) at the Salzburg festival.Hailing from the Italian Tyrol, close by Austria, Andrès Schuen has a solid CV. He studied song under Wolfgang Holzmair and Brigitte Fassbaender, and lieder under Daniel Heide. It is the latter that he has chosen again as a partner for this new album dedicated to the Schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller) by Franz Schubert after the great success of their album Wanderer released in 2018.His fine, youthful and manly timbre works wonders throughout this cycle. It is a voyage through the joy and hope of youth, a joy soon tarnished by the cruel disillusionments of life. In the manner of an actor, and above all, a storyteller, Schuen gradually goes from laughter to tears and resignation. His style is unaffected, with a probity and simplicity that pleases. Accustomed to the Schubertiades of his neighbouring Schwarzenberg which he often visits, Andrès Schuen is supported by the attentive but somewhat matte piano playing of Daniel Heide, specialist in lieder and accompanist to the greatest voices of the day. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The first volume of Cécile Chaminade’s piano music on Piano Classics won the same kind of universal accolades as the rest of Mark Viner’s fast-growing catalogue of albums for the label. His masterful advocacy is helping her to regain the reputation she enjoyed during her lifetime, when she could count Queen Victoria among her legion of ardent fans, in a long and fruitful career capped by becoming the first female composer to be awarded the "Legion d’honneur", in 1913 – when she still had more than 30 years of productive music-making ahead of her. The reason for Chaminade’s popularity is the charm, tunefulness and general accessibility of her music. It touches a ready chord with every music lover, and the fancy titles and not overly virtuosic piano writing made that her works became drawing room favorites of the epoch. Chaminade is principally remembered today as a composer of salon music, but she began her career writing on a much grander scale and with loftier expressive ambitions, both for the piano and in other genres. Such ambitions leave a mark on the set of six Etudes de concert which Mark Viner has compiled from different opus numbers (distinct from the Op. 35 set recorded on Volume 1), beginning in dazzling style with the flashing runs of the Etude romantique, Op. 132 and ending with the no-nonsense counterpoint of the Etude scolastique, Op. 139. Au pays dévasté, Op. 155 is one of Chaminade’s most profound conceptions, among the most serious of her late works, published in 1919 in the wake of the First World War, which she had spent as a nurse to wounded soldiers away from the front line. However, there is also plenty of Chaminade the charmer here, at the peak of her powers in the Six Pièces humoristiques – the first and last of which receive their world premiere recordings here. The album opens with Ondine, among her most supple and delicately textured tone-poems, and closes with the irrepressibly cheeky Lolita, a "caprice espagnol" worthy of Carmen herself. Further highlights in between include a swaying and sensuous Danse créole, Op. 94 and the offbeat, coquettish Guitare, Op. 34. Under Mark Viner’s fingers, Chaminade casts the same spell here as she did over audiences across Europe 150 years ago. © Piano Classics

“Jardin féérique”, the Métaboles’ second album with NoMadMusic, is a true ode to nature. Infinite source of inspiration, it becomes an enchanted forest with Ravel, is the symbolical reflection of the soul’s tremors with Saint-Saëns, while Britten, in his Hymn to Saint Cecilia – patron of musicians – pays homage to the muse walking through a shady garden. Britten’s Flower Songs create a unique cycle like a musical herbarium… The figurative music of Murray Schafer (Miniwanka) – engaged composer and ecology-lover – develops the concept of a musical landscape: a fascinating conjunction of vocal gestures, percussion, onomatopeia, evocation of rituals which reveal the metaphysical dimension of the link between Nature and Mankind. © Nomadmusic

Ever since its creation more than twenty-five years ago, the Accentus chamber choir has ardently championed the a cappella repertory: under its conductor and founder Laurence Equilbey, it has produced an impressive discography that sets the benchmark in this music. For this new recording, the first for Alpha, she hands over direction of the ensemble to Christophe Grapperon, its associate conductor since 2013: ‘It can never be said often enough: the a cappella repertory is a Holy Grail of vocal music! It is a sensory experience directly accessible to everyone, but demanding and often atypical for the listener.’ Hahn and Saint-Saëns are on the programme of this album in superb choral works combining simplicity and expressive power, some of which have never been recorded before. © Alpha Classics

The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious "Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs" in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha Classics for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of Lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to ‘tell a story’ for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because ‘they are genuine operas in just a few minutes... mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom’. Among the great poets present here are Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine. As to the composers, alongside the indispensable Schubert and Schumann, this programme presents a great master of the genre, Carl Loewe, who wrote several hundred ballads: the works recorded here, inspired by Scots poems or Danish legends, are especially eloquent. There is also a chance to discover the much more rarely recorded Adolf Jensen, a great admirer of Wagner, whom he met in 1861: ‘To translate Wagner’s ideas of Beauty and Truth to smaller forms has been my aim in all my later compositions’. © Alpha Classics