Dutch-Japanese pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama is a maverick, an artist whose work and personality run against the grain of the expected in terms of repertoire, performance style, and even fashion. The front cover of BVHaast's Tomoko Mukaiyama: Women Composers features a photograph of Mukaiyama's penetrating gaze peering out from underneath a mass of unkempt hair. … Mukaiyama dispenses with all such formalities, and likewise this disc is a roller coaster ride of extreme contemporary music in which compromise is unknown - nothing could be further from the familiar, nineteenth century based compilation of feminine composers than this. If there were a category of "punk" in classical music, this would be part of it.

Diamanda Galás is a Greek-American avant-garde composer, vocalist, pianist, performance artist and painter. Known for her expert piano as well as her distinctive, operatic voice, which has a three and a half octave range, Galás has been described as "capable of the most unnerving vocal terror". Galás often shrieks, howls, and seems to imitate glossolalia in her performances. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of suffering, despair, condemnation, injustice and loss of dignity. She has worked with many avant-garde composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Vinko Globokar and John Zorn.

Young composer Martin Schüttler (b. 1974) lives in Berlin. His music is full of electronic sounds, computer sounds, noise, clicking, buzzing and chirping, often in conjunction with "analogue" instruments. So please do not give the CD at Christmas to your Grandma.

The seven works on the disc (two each by Harry Partch, John Cage, and Lou Harrison and one by LaMonte Young) are among of the most enjoyable introductory albums to just intonation. Guitarist John Schneider, who arranged several of the pieces on the disc for harp and guitar, is joined by harpist Amy Schulman and, in one work, by percussionist Gene Sterling.

Highly original and influencing work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker "Fase, four movementes to the music of Steve Reich", which had become a cornerstone of contemporary dance, presented in the Thierry De Mey film.

Alla Zagaykevych is from the Ukraine and studied at the conservatorium in Kiev, composition and orchestration and later on at the IRCAM in Paris. In 1998 she set up the Musical Electronic Studio. Her works is both for chamber ensembles, solo instruments aswell as electronica. This nicely packed CD contains five of her works, of which the title piece is a strict electronic composition in the best IRCAM composers tradition. On the other end of the spectrum is 'Gravitation' for two violin-cellos and 'Sans L'Eloignement De La Terre' violin, guitar and accordion and for both no electronics. The two other pieces combines instruments and electronic. The nicest piece there is 'Pagode' for block-flutes (which I thought were called 'recorders' in english) and live electronics. Here both elements blend together and acoustic instrument becomes one with the electric charges - or perhaps vice versa. I guess [the CD is] a good introduction to Zagaykevych's work and surely I'd be interested in hearing, especially the electronic work.

"Spain Again" reunites Spanish flamenco guitarist Tomatito with American jazz pianist Michel Camilo. Camilo is a classically trained prodigy whose influences range from Art Tatum to Keith Jarrett, while Tomatito reigns as one of his country's brightest stars, citing Paco De Lucía as one of his key inspirations. The success of this collaboration does not lie in the differences between their musical heritages, but rather in the common ground these two masters forge within the parameters of this recording. Although virtuosity is certainly not something both musicians are lacking, one never senses that the two are competing with one another. Instead the listener hears a deep and profound camaraderie between the two which amicably encompasses the music on this disc. The delicate interplay and intuitive sensitivity the artists share recalls the seminal sixties collaborations between Jim Hall and Bill Evans. Throughout their adventurous melodic excursions and thrilling improvisations, Tomatito and Camilo never lose focus of the inherent beauty of each composition.

The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet: This Companion offers a concise and authoritative survey of the string quartet by eleven chamber music specialists. Its fifteen carefully structured chapters provide coverage of a stimulating range of perspectives previously unavailable in one volume. Various musical and pictorial illustrations and informative appendixes, including a chronology of the most significant works, complete this indispensable guide. Written for all string quartet enthusiasts, this Companion will enrich readers’ understanding of the history of the genre, the context and significance of quartets as cultural phenomena, and the musical, technical and interpretative problems of chamber music performance. It will also enhance their experience of listening to quartets in performance and on recordings.

At the time, Poland failed to deliver its rock'n'roll jewel, Maanam, to the world. Maanam is a Polish rock band, formed by Marek Jackowski, Kora (Olga Jackowska) and Milo Kurtis in 1976. Originally an acoustic outfit, the band went electric in 1980, and since then has recorded some of the best-selling singles and albums in Poland over the past 25 years. During the first half of the 1980s, Maanam featured an energetic, guitar-centred post-punk sound. Kora's vocal gymnastics were an example of iconoclastic international female pop vocalists of the time, and showcased the consonant-laden Polish language as one perfectly suited to rock sounds.

One of the greatest composers of Czech history, Dvorak was a proponent of nationalism in music, incorporating folk influences into his work in Classical music of all forms. This documentary is a poetic exploration of his life and work, interspersing historical segments with fantastical dance and music tableaux set in the Czech countryside. Like Dvorak's own work, it communicates the composer's deep love of his Bohemian country home, as well as his interest in trains and boats. The melodies and rhythms of the music, both spontaneous-sounding and formally precise, evoke the traditional myths and Slavic landscapes that inspired Dvorak's compositions. Featuring the Quatuor Morency, directed by Bernar Hébert, the musical selection includes the String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 51.

As Romanticism was replaced with Impressionism in the early 20th century, Claude Debussy became its most influential composer, breaking with traditional form and harmony. This documentary explores Debussy's life and work, evoking the tumultuous times that gave rise to his progressive and innovative music. Structured around his String Quartet, this release evokes the Paris literary salons and café life within which Debussy moved, with directors Benoit Pilon and Bernar Hébert delivering a poetic interpretation that perfectly suits the poetry of the music.

Capriccio label presents all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich. This ambitious project was realised between 2002 and 2004 with the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln under Dmitri Kitajenko. No other conductor is as capable as Dmitri Kitajenko of perpetuating the authentic performance tradition of Shostakovich's music in the present. With the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Kitajenko had an ensemble which combines brilliance and virtuosity with enthusiasm and passion. The result is a complete benchmark recording in which the use of multi-channel technology brings Shostakovich's tonal visions to life for the first time ever.

This is to complete Alfred Brendel early recordings with the four Liszt CDs and two CDs, devoted to Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Balakirev: and Stravinsky.

Brendel became very much a different kind of pianist to me when he switched from Vox to Philips. In addition, I always felt Brendel's Schubert on Vox was stunning in every respect. Old mono Vox box of his Schubert sonatas that is so wonderful is his conception, so beautifully "Viennese" (for all that word implies) are his interpretations.