AVIE Records’ schedule of releases for 2015-16 builds on the label’s signature qualities: musicians ranging from established stars to developing young artists, a range of repertoire from early music to the present day; and genres encompassing chamber, choral, instrumental, orchestral and vocal works. Maintaining its unique business model – under which artists maintain ownership of their recordings – AVIE’s forthcoming releases feature artists from over a half dozen countries, including a number who have been leading lights on the roster throughout the label’s 13 year history.

September
Adrian Chandler, who founded the period-instrument ensemble La Serenissima 21 years ago, has produced a dozen enlightened and award-winning albums for AVIE, many of which feature world-premiere recordings of rediscovered works by Vivaldi and his 17th-century Italian contemporaries. After years of anticipation, Ade turns his attention to the touchstone of Vivaldi’s concerto output, The Four Seasons. As one has come to expect, he brings something unique to an interpretation brimming with vitality and originality: he has created his own, new edition based on the only surviving manuscript of these works. Putting The Four Seasons into context, Ade rounds out the recording with Vivaldi concertos for bassoon, including the well-known La Notte, and world-premiere recordings of two concertos for the violin in tromba marina, a hitherto obsolete instrument that was used during Vivaldi’s lifetime, and that Ade has had built specially for this recording.

The Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford is one of the world’s most renowned choral institutions. Carols from Queen’s celebrates the Choir’s illustrious history, and several of the composers and arrangers of the carols featured on this album had associations with The Queen’s College. The Boar’s Head Carol is the work most strongly associated with the heritage of the College. It originated in the 14th century at Queen’s and has been sung every year since at the Christmas-time Boar’s Head Feast. Kenneth Leighton (Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child) and Herbert Howells (A spotless Rose), two prominent 20th-century British composers of sacred choral music, both studied at The Queen’s College. Harold Darke (In the bleak midwinter) and Ivor Atkins (The Three Kings) were both members of Queen’s. Atkins’ popular arrangement of The Three Kings appeared in the anthology Carols for Choirs I, compiled in part by Reginald Jacques, a student at Queen’s who become Organist of the College from 1926 – 1936. Several other carols from this volume are featured on this album. Rounding out Carols from Queen’s are popular favourites such as O Holy Night, Coventry carol, and O Come all Ye Faithful.

American composer Jake Heggie has penned some of the most enduring vocal music of our day, and his operas and songs have been championed by some of today’s foremost artists, including Joyce di Donato, Susan Graham and Frederica von Stade on the acclaimed AVIE release Passing By (AV 2198). On The moon’s a gong, hung in the wild…, Grammy-nominated Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager is joined by the great Dutch lieder pianist Maurice Lammerts van Bueren, a devotee of Heggie’s music who has given numerous premieres of the composer’s work. This collection from the song cycles Statuesque, Songs to the Moon, The Breaking Waves and Folk Songs is by turns rhapsodic, humorous and nostalgic.

October
Love, angst and revenge – the timeless themes of Handel's operas – are brought to vivid life in The Power of Love, the solo debut recording by Grammy Award-winning soprano Amanda Forsythe, who appears as Amour in Gluck's Orphee at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in September and October. Joined by the acclaimed baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire and conductor/harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell, she explores the gamut of emotions, from fiery coloratura arias to tragic laments, drawn from eight of the composer’s operas both familiar and lesser-known, including “Ah crudel” and “Tornami a vagheggiar” from Alcina, and “Amarti si vorrei” from Teseo.

November
Another vocal showcase from Jeanette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire is Christmas Vespers: Music of Michael Praetorius. Praetorius was an extraordinarily versatile composer and, along with J. S. Bach, was one of the greatest composers of Protestant church music in Germany. With his music, he strived to bring together people of all walks of life – professional singers, congregations, villagers and children alike. Like the Vespers settings of the 17th century – most notably the Vespers of 1610 by Monteverdi, who inspired Praetorius – this Christmas Vespers is an assemblage of works by Praetorius that Sorrell has compiled. It highlights his virtuosic vocal and instrumental writing and includes as interludes his popular carol settings, O Morning Star and Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony continue their exploration of Beethoven’s oeurve with two of the composer’s seminal works, Piano Concerto No. 3 with acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax, and the infrequently performed Mass in C, with soloists soprano Joélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano
 Kelley O’Connor, tenor William Burden, and bass-baritone Shenyang, and the Grammy Award-winning
 San Francisco Symphony Chorus directed by Ragnar Bohlin. The recording is released on the orchestra’s SFS Media label, marketed and distributed in the UK by AVIE Records.

Following the success of Capriccioso, a solo spectacular of works written by cellists for cellists, Antonio Meneses’ dazzling virtuosity is on display again with the rarely recorded Suite for Solo Cello by Gaspar Cassadó alongside two works by Zoltán Kodály – the Duo for Violin and Cello, with violinist Claudio Cruz who was the conductor on Antonio’s Grammy-nominated recording of the Concertos by Elgar and Gál; and the Sonata for Solo Cello which was written in 1915 and is released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the work.

AVIE introduces Australian-born pianist Olivia Sham, now a resident of London where she recently completed a doctorate degree at the Royal Academy of Music. Her debut album, Liszt: The Art of Remembering, explores links between Franz Liszt’s evolving compositional technique and the development of the nineteenth-century piano. She performs early works including Etudes d’exécution transcendante and the arrangement of Marche au supplice from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique on two different Parisian Érard pianos from the 1840s, and later works such as Valse oubliée on a 1920s Hamburg Steinway.

2016 AVIE’s releases in the spring of 2016 include:
• World-premiere recordings of works by Mason Bates, including The B Sides, Liquid Interface and Alternative Energy, by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony
• Two from Apollo’s Fire – Sephardic Journey which interweaves folk songs of the Spanish Jews with Salamone Rossi’s Hebrew choral work The Songs of Solomon, and Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite alongside other suites and concertos by the composer
• TENET’s second recording for AVIE, The Secret Lover, featuring music by, for, and about women from 17th century Italy, inspired by the Concerto delle donne, an ensemble of extraordinarily gifted professional female singers who were renowned for their performances in the courts of the late Italian Renaissance
• The world-premiere recording of Hans Gál’s Piano Concerto coupled with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, with British pianist Sarah Beth Briggs making her label debut, supported by Kenneth Woods and the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

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These and other great recordings which will be released throughout the 2015-16 season continue to bolster AVIE’s catalog which has earned the label its well-deserved reputation as “adventurous” (The New York Times), “enterprising” (Gramophone), and “admirable” (The Sunday Times).

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For further information, image or interview requests, contact Melanne Mueller, melanne@avierecords.com, 020 8698 6933