The playing and leadership are exceptional in every quarter. Petter Sundkvist never misses a trick when it comes to coaxing the right color at the appropriate moment and unerringly shaping the melodic contours of Kraus's scores. The performances brim with energy and commitment that would undoubtedly elude others who might attempt to tread here. Commended by energy, elegance, and charm, and crowned by a clear and bright aural perspective, this recording and its precursors are "must haves" for any lover of the Classical era.

The first volume of the Naxos Kraus cycle was honored in 1999 with the prestigious Cannes Classical Award, edging out puissant competition from the major recording companies as well as other independent labels. Owning and having heard that release and this disc's other sibling. I can easily see why. In this release as in the others, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, guided by Petter Sundkvist's intuitive sense of line and pacing, is focused, accurate, and committed, resulting in emotionally charged readings, driven by burning passion. These sterling performances further unmask a composer whose musical thought and execution of it are clearly on a par with those of his better-known contemporaries.

German by birth and trained in Mannheim by Franz Xaver Richter, Joseph Martin Kraus is often referred to as the ‘Swedish Mozart’ both on the grounds of his undoubted musical genius and his employment at the brilliant court of Gustav III in Stockholm. Kraus’s career as a composer was relatively brief - probably little more than 15 years - but his mature works have a complexity expressive intensity which is quite unique. His death in 1792, like that of Mozart’s the previous year, must be accounted one of the great musical tragedies of the period.

‘The five pieces featured on this recording are the result of an extended fascination and confrontation with Shakespeare’s Hamlet’, writes Brett Dean in his introductory text, going on to explain that the intention of this programme is to be ‘a sonic exploration of the spaces, atmospheres and archetypes of emotion and character in which, and through which, the tragedy of Hamlet unfolds’. These works derive, each in its own way, from an opera, Dean’s take on the topic of Hamlet, premièred in 2017.

Musical maverick Martin Fröst’s most ambitious Sony Classical release yet sees him as both clarinetist and conductor, joining soloists Lucas Debargue (piano), Ann Hallenberg (Mezzo-Soprano) and Elin Rombo (Soprano) and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, of which he is chief conductor, in a double-album of masterpieces capturing the paradox of Mozart’s fragile existence and extraordinary creativity.

After three solo recordings, virtuoso pianist Paul Wee brings us two forgotten concertos from the Romantic period with the Swedish ChamberOrchestra conducted by Michael Collins. Premiered by Clara Schumann under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn, Adolph von Henselt's Concertoin F minor was eventually performed by the greatest virtuosos of the 19th and 20th centuries. It has, however, inexplicably disappeared from therepertoire despite it's obvious qualities: soaring melodies and tender lyricism, colourful orchestration, dramatic intensity across it's three movements and piano writing of astound inginventiveness and brilliance.

Although Kurt Weill's principal legacy lies in music theatre works of both popular appeal and intellectual weight, he was equally at home in purely orchestral works as evidenced by his two symphonies. Written just over a decade apart, they reveal his chameleon-like ability to work with any range of style and form. The Symphonie in einem Satz (Symphony in one movement), completed when he was barely 21, adopts an expressionist idiom that shows intricate writing, dense counterpoint and quick shifts reminiscent of Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony. Completed in France in 1934 after Weill had to flee Nazi Germany, the Fantaisie symphonique is filled with allusions to the 'sung ballet' The Seven Deadly Sins, composed at the same time.

BIS present a disc of works by the Japanese composer Mari Takano, composed between 2003 and 2009. The four duos and trios that share the title LigAlien are all results of the idea of what would it be like to implant ‘alien’ music into one of Ligeti’s works. Interspersing the four 'LigAliens' are two solo pieces, Jungibility for piano and Full Moon for violin and electronics, which also embrace a wealth of ideas both musical and otherwise from Duke Ellington, Omar Sosa and Stockhausen (Jungibility) and Björk, Pina Bausch and Miles Davis (Full Moon).

This is the second recording by BIS of Sally Beamish’s music, and the four pieces it contains confirm utterly her high standing. Her work is thoughtfully lyrical, intense, individual, instinctively dramatic, in ways that remind me somewhat of Nicholas Mawmusic. Like him she has a particular gift for expressive harmony and timbre. The earliest piece here is No, I’m not afraid (1989), six poignant poems written from prison by Irina Ratushinskaya spoken – by Beamish herself – against sparse but hugely effective instrumental backgrounds and interspersed with five purely instrumental interludes. The disc opens with The Caledonian Road of 1997. The name of this piece refers not just to the north London thoroughfare remembered by Beamish from childhood but to her own pilgrimage northward to Scotland, where she now lives. The music resonates with a sense of ritual, of something inevitable. By contrast, the work that follows, the unabashedly poetic The Day Dawn (written for a summer school organised by Contemporary Music-making for Amateurs in 1997, and revised in 2000) derives from a Shetland fiddle tune, and is all about new beginnings.

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’.

It was only after his death that Franz Schubert’s symphonic works made an impact in music history. In fact, the first public performance of any of Schubert’s symphonies took place at a memorial concert held a few weeks after the composer had passed away, on 19th November 1828. The work that was heard at that occasion was Symphony No.6, D589, the ‘Little C major’, while the two undisputed master works of the series – the ‘Great C major’ and the ‘Unfinished’ – had to wait until 1838 and 1865, respectively, before being performed.

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’.