As Alice Sara Ott said in her in-depth interview about her new recording of John Field's nocturnes, ‘For the first two or three lines of the Field you think this is actually really simple music, but then he starts to surprise you with a harmonical or rhythmical twist’. Field's music was a fresh discovery for Ott during the pandemic, and her new album presents his complete nocturnes, a genre of music that Field pioneered. 

John Field (1782-1837) was born in Dublin and was a contemporary of Beethoven. Ott is interspersing the nocturnes among Beethoven's sonatas in live performances this year, and in her Gramophone interview she compared the different approaches of the two composers: 'Field has this moment of pain – but you never stop at this pain, you just pass by. You see something under the surface for a second, then it’s gone and vanishes into nothing. With Beethoven it’s the opposite. Beethoven actually pulls you in and tears you apart from the inside. He uses the whole space, the whole architecture. Field writes the left hand pianissimo so you almost don’t hear it under the surface [she plays it], and then he writes this painful melody in the right hand. This gives the listener the feeling that they are actually watching a scene instead of being inside it. Being inside it is Beethoven.’ 

A thrilling recording of Elgar's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius by Gabrieli and conductor Paul McCreesh won Gramophone's Choral Award just last year, and today sees the release of a new recording featuring massed choirs with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, soloists John Findon (Gerontius), Christine Rice (Angel) and Roderick Williams (Priest/Angel of the Agony), and conductor Nicholas Collon on the Ondine label. The Finnish RSO and Collon have been on exceptionally fine form in the past couple of years, with a recording of orchestral music by Bacewicz shortlisted for last year's Gramophone Concerto Award, and they won Gramophone's Contemporary Award in 2023 for their album of music by Lotta Wennäkoski. 

Following two musically diverse albums – 'El Nour' and 'Kaleidoscope' – Gramophone's 2021 Young Artist of the Year, Fatma Said, returns with an album of Lieder from the 19th century by Schumann, Schubert, Brahms and Mendelssohn. The new album, 'Lieder', features pianists Malcolm Martineau and Joseph Middleton, as well as contributions from Huw Montague Rendall (baritone), Sabine Meyer (clarinet), Anneleen Lenaerts (harp) and Quatuor Arod.

The first volume in Trio Gaspard's complete survey of Haydn's piano trios for Chandos was warmly welcomed by Richard Wigmore in the September 2022 issue: 'With their evident love of the music and minute care in its preparation, the Gaspard are at least a match for the best of their rivals.' Today sees the release of the fourth volume, and the trio are not recording the trios chronologically, so this one includes No 26, No 31, No 34 and No 36, with the added bonus of Sally Beamish's Trance. 

The Jerusalem Quartet recorded six of Shostakovich's string quartets for Harmonia Mundi some years ago, and their new album – their first for BIS – fills some of the gaps, with Quartets Nos 2, 7 and 10. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Jerusalem Quartet, and they will be performing nine complete cycles of Shostakovich's quartets around the world in 2025 and 2026.