Finnish conductor Eva Ollikainen leads the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, where she has held the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since 2020, in the four symphonies of Arvo Pärt. Composed over a span of forty-five years and bearing little or no relationship to one another, the symphonies represent the composer’s output at separate parts of his creative journey. The …

The first album in The King’s Singers’ Head Space series, aims to connect choral music with calmness and reflection. Inspired by compline, the Catholic night service, it features plainchant, including “In manus tuas Domine” and “Salva nos Domine vigilantes,” emphasizing breath-led pacing. The album also includes four of Orlando Gibbons’s wordless song settings (two of which include an additional voice …

The Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of violinist Candida Thompson and the Netherlands Chamber Choir led by Martina Batič present an innovative program of Baltic and English works recorded live in concert. The program is bookended by two performances of Arvo Pärt’s meditative work Spiegel im Spiegel, the first with cellist Tim Posner, and the original version for violin (Candida …

Georgijs Osokins, a proud advocate of the rarely celebrated musical heritage of the Baltic states, presents an album of works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who turns 90 this year. For Arvo features Pärt’s complete solo piano works as well as Osokins’s own transcriptions of several other famous pieces, including Fratres. This album marks Latvian-born pianist’s first solo recording on …

On this EP of six tracks, brothers and pianists Lucas and Arthur Jussen explore repertoire that was originally based on a sacred aria or chorale melody. CANTUS includes Anderson and Roe’s two-piano arrangement of “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and Reinhard Febel’s four-hand arrangement of Bach’s setting of the chorale “Erbarm dich mein, o …

Recent guests on Live from WFMT, violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang (no relation) present their second album as a duo. Following the critical praise for Kaleidoscope, the duo’s 2023 release featuring sumptuous Romantic Era works by Respighi and Saint-Saëns, Mirrors centers two violin sonatas composed during the Second World War. Paul Huang explains that both the Prokofiev Violin …