Klassinen.com

China's first avant-garde composer and one of the most original composers of his generation.

The composer Yannis Markopoulos was born in 1939 in Heraklion, Crete. In his music you can hear influences from Byzantine liturgy, Cretan traditional music and more.

Award-winning Avner Dorman is emerging as one of the leading composers of his generation combining  the excitement and spontaneity associated with jazz, rock or ethnic music within an engaging neo-baroque idiom.

ClassicsToday.com:  10/10."..This is really good stuff, a genuine discovery, beautifully played and excellently engineered. It will make you feel good about the future of contemporary Classical music."

A rich musical heritage and vibrant contemporary culture intersect in Catalunya in north-eastern Spain. Granados's long-lost masterpiece Song of the Stars is comparable to a virtuoso piano concerto with chorus and organ rather than orchestra, gloriously combining Romantic-Modernista poetry with post-Wagnerian harmonies.

The Chinese composer and violinist Ma Sicong was born in Haifeng in Guangdong (Canton) province in 1912, and was among the relatively few Chinese musicians of his generation to study abroad. He settled in America in 1967. The music on this disc embraces contrasting moods, each imbued with Ma Sicong’s abiding love for his homeland and combining Chinese inspiration with Western musical techniques