Genre: Chamber

Virtuoso Linda Wiley performs four flute sonatas from 19th and 20th century composers on FOUR SONATAS FOR FLUTE AND PIANO. The album fulfills her aspiration to record pieces that are both challenging and also personally meaningful to her. These include Sonata For Flute And Piano by Francis Poulenc, Sonate Pour Flûte Et Piano by Jindřich Feld, Sonata In A Major by César Franck, and Recuerdos De Mexico, Sonata for Flute and Piano by Arthur Gottschalk. Many of the works share a connection to legendary French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal; Wiley’s flute mentor Jan Cole studied under Rampal for five years, and Wiley is proud to carry on her musical lineage in this Navona Records release.

The singing quality of string instruments ties together SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY, a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn. The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.

Fairy tales have deeply and consistently fascinated humanity throughout the centuries. Enter NEW ENCHANTMENTS, bassoonist Cornelia Sommer's exploration of magical archetypes that features music by living composers along with new arrangements by Sommer herself across six world premiere recordings. Sommer has also written a prize-winning dissertation on the subject of fairy tales in music, adding further depth to this performance that showcases her musical virtuosity, great feeling for nuance, lyrical storytelling, and profound expertise to illuminate every last detail. Enriching and engrossing, this album could not be more aptly titled.

Eric Schultz’s masterful clarinet playing speaks in new and known tongues on POLYGLOT, a concept album celebrating music as a language of cultural identity and the self. A strong advocate of living composers, Schultz opens with an engrossing performance of Iván Enrique Rodríguez’s Sonata Santera, exploring the development and evolution of three Caribbean Santeria rituals. Schultz captures the enchanting, mystical nature of the rituals between the rhythmic, driving movements, occasionally accompanied by percussive elements.  Schultz follows with Críptico no. 9: DAVЯTHAN, an interpretive piece that centralizes language and text-setting at the core of its composition. Shortly followed is Johnny Navarro’s romantic Danzón, a nostalgic work punctuated by fleeting moments of sensuality. The same intimacy is carried into Chiayu Hsu’s Summer Night in a Deep Valley, showcasing meditative episodes on the natural beauty expressed in Guo Xi’s Chinese landscape paintings. Likewise, Gabriel Bouche Caro’s Escenas explores a meditation on self-identity and its existence as a product of culture, the clarinet never languishing in melancholic passages, but always remaining reflective and curious. POLYGLOT culminates with the Brahms Trio, Op. 114, a composition inspired by the clarinet playing of friend Richard Mühlfeld, an inspiration so strong it served to pull the composer from retirement. To Schultz, a quarterfinalist for the 2025 GRAMMY® Music Educator of the Year, music is a hallmark of metamorphosis that drives cultural change across history, the performer and composer working in tandem to create something inspired and new — speaking each other’s language, you might say.

The cello-piano duo is justly hailed for its tremendous expressiveness. Cellist Juliana Soltis and pianist Ruoting Li remarkably demonstrate this setup's emotive power on AMERICAN WOMAN while championing a noble cause — highlighting underrepresented women composers. Featuring works by Mary Howe, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Helen Crane, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Florence Price, AMERICAN WOMAN sheds light on a treasure trove of rarely heard gems of cello-piano literature. The general tone is sweeping, romantic, expressive, at times fierce and energetic, then again tender and delicate. Soltis and Li show extraordinary ability not only in bringing out the unique style of each composer, but also in uniting them all in a great artistic effort.

Lauded cellist Emily Mantone is accompanied by Umi Garrett on BEETHOVEN: THE COMPLETE CELLO SONATAS, working in tandem to bring a new and distinctive tone to the five sonatas weaving through the lifetime of the great composer.