For his Hyperion debut, pianist Luís Duarte has chosen a selection of works by one of the major figures in twentieth-century Portuguese music—Fernando Lopes-Graça—exploring a wide range of styles, moods and influences.

Composed on vacation in 1924, Bloch's 'From Jewish Life' for cello and piano explores the entire range of the solo instrument. This performance of outstanding composure and poise from Natalie Klein and Yeol Eum Son at Wigmore Hall is utterly spellbinding 🪄

Published in 1915, the rousing 'O thou, the central orb' sets words by the Oxford clergyman and hymnologist Henry Ramsden Bramley, who wrote his Petrarchian sonnet so it could be used as a new text for Orlando Gibbons's 1619 anthem 'O all true faithful hearts'.

'In two words, it's bad.' The grumbling note which accompanied 'Rêverie' made clear the composer's feelings, but the piece was published anyway. Debussy needn't have worried though: the work's opening notes set the scene for a dreamlike musical world 💭

"We have been blessed to have in our midst for many decades the fascinatingly lyrical voice of Yehudi Wyner, now in his mid-nineties."

Over a hushed chorale for full choir, rich in added notes, curlicues of melody from two solo sopranos drift across the soundscape. The effect is quietly ecstatic, as the inimitable Trinity College Choir perform 'O salutaris hostia', by composer Ēriks Ešenvalds back in 2015 ✨

"A very simple string of expanding intervals, as well as eleven other series derived from it, is all Stefan Wolpe needed to build the monolithic edifice that is his 'Passacaglia'."

"'The perilous night' is Cage's first important work for prepared piano. It was written in a time of great personal turmoil, and it expresses the despair he felt before separating from his wife Xenia, whom he had married in 1935."

Someone get that man a drink! 🥃 A fantastical passage of sheer sonority brings Scriabin's vibrating Piano Sonata No 5 to its unorthodox close, performed unmistakably, of course, by Marc-André Hamelin.

"'Stuck on Stella' dates from 1979 and, in the composer's own words, it was written mostly to please. Martirano recalls being influenced by Carl Maria von Weber's 'Konzertstück' for piano and orchestra as well as by a passage from Dante's 'Divine Comedy'."

'Expectans expectavi' is the high-water mark of Wood's Romantic church music. Its intense, yearning diatonic language, epitomized by the opening wistful lyricism of the organ, the rich dominant-thirteenth harmony and the plaintive opening for the choir, is deeply memorable.

Dvořák conjures theme after theme of ravishing beauty in the finale of his beloved Cello Concerto in B minor, here performed with an expressive panache characteristic of Steven Isserlis, alongside the Berliner Philharmoniker and Alan Gilbert 🎻

"My own piece is called 'Hexensabbat', which roughly translates as 'witches sabbath'. It ended up being probably the most violent piece I've ever written, especially the ending. We just finished recording it a couple of hours ago, and, it was FUN!"—Marc-André Hamelin

"The less said about my own 'Hexensabbat' the better. (While practising it, I sometimes wished I could avail myself of some potion from a bubbling cauldron to help me play it better!) And for the very ending, the horror of it, I make no apologies."—Marc-André Hamelin