Future releases

Niels Rosing-Schow has a musical language that is completely his own, and in the three concerts and two ensemble works on this release he shows new material with a calligraphic, aerated clarity and sense of functionalism in which no note, timbre or colour is wasted.

Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee (2008) is a gorgeous marvel which encapsulates winter. The instrumental cycle, already a classic of the twenty-first century, comprises a set of ten canons making up an hour of ghostly, feathery music. There is no hurrying, but great depth. As Abrahamsen himself says: 'In Schnee, a single moment is stretched as far as possible. At some point, the music disappears. There is just a breath of air left'.

As pianist, conductor and composer, Ole Schmidt was one of the great polymaths of the Nordic musical world. His music was influenced by Bartók, Stravinsky and the French school and is underpinned by a certain Nordic clarity. It combines rhythmic energy, high concentration, elemental expressivity and deadpan humour. Schmidt's experience on the podium gave him an inside track on the working of the orchestra, and his pragmatism and refinement are evident in his larger scores, including the three momentous concertos on this album.

For her second volume of Kuhlau's piano music, Marie-Luise Bodendorff takes the three previously unrecorded rondos, Op. 1-3, as her starting point, some of his most charming and distinctive music. She continues with the composer's six sonatinas, Op. 55, which remain popular with pianists today. In the Fantasy on Swedish songs, Op. 93, Bodendorff displays all the craftsmanship, elegance and kindness of Kuhlau's piano music.

Aladdin's story, taken from the Arabian One Thousand and One Nights, has been told many times and in many different ways. This operatic version by the Danish composer, C.F.E. Horneman, dates from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and has the lush harmonies and flowing melodies you might expect from a piece of its time. Horneman adds new lustre to the old fairy tale about Aladdin and Princess Gulnare as they escape the forces of nocturnal magic and pursue happiness.