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Lang Lang to release Piano Book 2 – Modern Encores available digitally on 9 October

Lang Lang expands&nbsp;Piano Book 2&nbsp;with five tracks spanning anime, film, contemporary classical and musical theatre
Featuring Yoshiki Mizuno&rsquo;s &ldquo;Blue Bird&rdquo; from&nbsp;Naruto, Hans Zimmer&rsquo;s &ldquo;Cornfield Chase&rdquo; from&nbsp;Interstellar, and works by Tony Ann, Joep Beving and Richard Rodgers
&ldquo;Blue Bird&rdquo; &ndash; listen&nbsp;<a href="https://de-grammophon.cimediacloud.com/r/eH2ciCPaXFFD">here</a>
Lang Lang&rsquo;s new EP&nbsp;Piano Book 2 &ndash; Modern Encores&nbsp;will be released digitally on&nbsp;9 October 2026. Following the&nbsp;Classical Encores&nbsp;EP, it expands&nbsp;Piano Book 2&nbsp;with five works spanning anime, film, contemporary classical music and musical theatre.
The EP opens with Yoshiki Mizuno's&nbsp;"Blue Bird"&nbsp;from&nbsp;Naruto, arranged for piano by Telleria. It is followed by Hans Zimmer's "Cornfield Chase" from&nbsp;Interstellar, a new solo version of Tony Ann's&nbsp;"ICARUS"&nbsp;&ndash; which links back to the successful&nbsp;Piano Book 2&nbsp;duet with the composer himself, Joep Beving's "Sleeping Lotus" and Richard Rodgers'&nbsp;"My Favorite Things", arranged for piano by Hamilton.
The first single&nbsp;"Blue Bird"&nbsp;is released today&nbsp;18 September 2026. The EP&rsquo;s next single&nbsp;"Cornfield Chase"&nbsp;will be released on&nbsp;9 October&nbsp;alongside the new collection of works.

Max Richter Announces New Album ‘While The Flood Rages’

Oscar-nominated composer&nbsp;Max Richter&nbsp;today announces his new album &lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo;.
&lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo; is a sweeping body of work drawn from Richter&rsquo;s latest collaboration with&nbsp;Wayne McGregor&nbsp;&lsquo;MaddAddam&rsquo;: a co-commission between the&nbsp;National Ballet Of Canada&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Royal Opera House&nbsp;inspired by&nbsp;Margaret Atwood&rsquo;s MaddAddam trilogy.
You can listen to the first single &lsquo;Now We Can Sing&rsquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://maxrichter.lnk.to/NowWeCanSing">HERE</a>.
&lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo; is released on&nbsp;Friday&nbsp;16th October&nbsp;via&nbsp;Decca Records. You can pre-order &lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://maxrichter.lnk.to/WTFR">HERE</a>.
Years in the making, the project marks Richter and McGregor&rsquo;s third major collaboration, following Infra and Woolf Works. Originally developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and delayed by its onset, the album now arrives with renewed urgency, engaging directly with themes of ecological crisis, technological acceleration, and human connection.
Rather than a direct soundtrack, &lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo; functions as a standalone companion work.&nbsp;&ldquo;I took the material apart and created a trajectory that makes sense just through listening,&rdquo;&nbsp;Richter explains.&nbsp;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a different way to reach the same destination.&rdquo;
Structured across 15 tracks and three acts, the album unfolds as a continuous, evolving sonic landscape. Recorded at&nbsp;Studio Richter Mahr, it opens with &lsquo;Wave After Wave&rsquo;, where a processed recording of the ocean is transformed into a rhythmic, heartbeat-like pulse, setting the tone both physically and emotionally. From there, &lsquo;Eerie Music&rsquo; introduces a fractured electronic language, built using electromagnetic recordings of internal technological systems found around the studio, hinting at a world shaped as much by machinery as by nature.
At its core is the title track, &lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo;, a quiet, intimate counterpoint to the surrounding chaos that keeps the focus on moments of human connection even as larger systems begin to break down. That tension builds through &lsquo;The City Was A Chaos&rsquo;,&nbsp; where dense, overlapping structures create a sense of overload, before easing into &lsquo;Quiet&rsquo;, which introduces a simple falling piano motif. That motif runs throughout the record, returning in different forms and offering brief moments of clarity within the noise.
The second act widens the emotional and sonic palette. &lsquo;Tell the Bees&rsquo; leans into something more pastoral, drawing on a softer, almost folk-like warmth, while &lsquo;Data Ballistics&rsquo; cuts through with percussive intensity, its rhythms constructed from manipulated gunfire. Across these tracks, traditional musical forms sit alongside fractured digital textures, reflecting the push and pull between older systems of belief and a more unstable, technologically driven present.
By the final act, pieces like &lsquo;Dawn&rsquo; and &lsquo;Background Radiation&rsquo; weave all the sonic elements together with choir, orchestra, and electronics folding into each other. The recurring piano motif returns again, more altered each time, suggesting not resolution so much as transformation.
The album&rsquo;s first single, &lsquo;Now We Can Sing&rsquo;, also closes the record, unfolding as a luminous final moment inspired directly by Atwood&rsquo;s text. Built from that same recurring piano motif that appears throughout the album, it opens out into a choral-led reflection on voice and connection, leaving the album not with a sense of resolution, but with something closer to quiet, collective endurance.
To celebrate the release of &lsquo;While The Flood Rages&rsquo;, Richter will be hosting the&nbsp;WTFR Global Listening Events - a worldwide network of intimate listening experiences. Inspired by the growing culture of listening bars in cities such as Tokyo, London, Seoul, Copenhagen, New York and Melbourne, the events will transform caf&eacute;s, wine bars and hi-fi venues into temporary listening rooms where guests disconnect from their devices and immerse themselves in the music. More information will be announced in the coming weeks.
One the most influential and acclaimed musicians of his generation, Max Richter is known for his ability to seamlessly blend traditional orchestrations with modern electronic elements. With his catalogue amassing over four billion streams and a dedicated global following, he is widely regarded as one of the defining voices in contemporary composition. Richter was recognised with a&nbsp;CBE&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Berlinale Camera for his contributions to both music and film earlier this year.
Beyond his solo endeavors, Richter is a prolific collaborator who has worked with esteemed creatives across multiple disciplines. Between Maison Margiela campaigns and scoring Dior shows to composing for ballets choreographed by Wayne McGregor and his contributions to the world of cinema &amp; TV, including his Oscar nominated score for Chlo&eacute; Zhao&rsquo;s critically acclaimed &lsquo;Hamnet&rsquo;, Richter&rsquo;s versatility knows no bounds.
Richter is co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr alongside his partner, visual artist Yulia Mahr. Located within 31 acres of woodland in Oxfordshire, the duo have a huge passion for using the land to farm and provide a sustainable working environment, serving as a space where both emerging and established creatives can come to develop their work.
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Pre-order the CD and vinyl editions in the&nbsp;<a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/collections/max-richter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DG Store</a>

RIAS Kammerchor Berlin and Justin Doyle Present Winter Tales - The Britten Christmas Album

To mark the 50th anniversary of Benjamin Britten's death on 4 December, the album combines much-loved Christmas music with rarely heard choral works
With the exception of&nbsp;The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard&nbsp;the entire programme is new to the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue
The album will be released on CD and digitally in stereo and Dolby Atmos on 16 October 2026
&ldquo;A Ceremony of Carols&nbsp;is well known and loved, but the rest of the repertoire will probably be less familiar. The album is conceived as a kind of &lsquo;Christmas stocking&rsquo; of discoveries.&rdquo; Justin Doyle
The&nbsp;RIAS Kammerchor Berlin&nbsp;and its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director&nbsp;Justin Doyle&nbsp;turn to Benjamin Britten's choral music for their new album.&nbsp;Winter Tales - The Britten Christmas Album&nbsp;will be released digitally and on CD on 16 October 2026, the year marking the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. At its heart are&nbsp;A Ceremony of Carols,&nbsp;A Boy was Born&nbsp;and&nbsp;Missa brevis in D, complemented by&nbsp;A Hymn of St. Columba&nbsp;and&nbsp;The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. With the exception of&nbsp;The Ballad, the entire programme is new to the&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;catalogue. The recording also features the boys of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin, harpist Anna Viechtl, organist Marcel Andreas Ober and pianist Philip Mayers.
The album is conceived as a Christmas release but follows no conventional festive arc. Britten's familiar Christmas music is set alongside works heard far less often, opening up different facets of his choral writing. For Doyle, this repertoire is closely bound up with his own biography. A former chorister at Westminster Cathedral, he encountered several of these works as a boy. For the new recording, he also worked from scores containing Britten's handwritten annotations, gaining insights into the composer's sound world and performance practice.
Britten began&nbsp;A Ceremony of Carols&nbsp;in 1942 while returning to Britain from the United States. Before leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia, he acquired Gerald Bullett's anthology&nbsp;The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems; during the voyage, he set five of its texts, which became the core of the&nbsp;Ceremony. Medieval poetry and plainchant meet Britten's distinctive harmonies and melodic lines. Although the work is now often associated with children's voices, it was originally written for adult women's voices.
Set alongside the&nbsp;Ceremony&nbsp;is&nbsp;A Boy was Born, a work Britten composed at the age of 19: a 30-minute sequence of a cappella variations for adult and boys' voices.&nbsp;Missa brevis in D&nbsp;was written in 1959 for the choir of Westminster Cathedral and its director George Malcolm. Its rhythmically lively&nbsp;Gloria, twelve-tone&nbsp;Sanctus&nbsp;and unsettlingly fading&nbsp;Dona nobis pacem&nbsp;in the&nbsp;Agnus Dei&nbsp;show Britten's ability to turn rigorous compositional techniques into immediate dramatic expression.
The other works lead into different historical and spiritual worlds.&nbsp;A Hymn of St. Columba&nbsp;was written in 1962 to mark the 1,400th anniversary of Columba's voyage from Ireland to Iona, combining a text about the Last Judgment with deep organ rumblings and concentrated choral writing.&nbsp;The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard&nbsp;was composed during the Second World War for Britten's friend Richard Wood and fellow musicians at the Oflag VIIB prisoner-of-war camp near Eichst&auml;tt. Britten sent the manuscript to the camp one page at a time on microfilm. Set against a wintry backdrop, the story tells of forbidden love, jealousy and murder; Britten's setting follows it with striking immediacy.
Winter Tales&nbsp;was recorded in Berlin's Auenkirche in January 2026. Its clear yet resonant acoustic and newly restored organ provided ideal conditions for the precision of Britten's choral writing. The exclusively digital&nbsp;Dolby Atmos version&nbsp;brings out the church's acoustic space and the choir's procession in and out of&nbsp;A Ceremony of Carols&nbsp;to beautiful effect.
The changing forces - from women's voices and harp, to a full choir with boys' voices, to men's voices and piano - are central to the album's dramatic design. They make audible the variety of Britten's music for the concert stage. For Doyle, they also reflect a fundamental idea in Britten's music: &ldquo;It doesn't really matter who sings his music. What matters is that it is performed well, with the appropriate spiritual or dramatic intention.&rdquo;
Winter Tales - The Britten Christmas Album will be released on CD and digitally in SD, HD and Dolby Atmos on 16 October 2026.&nbsp;There Is No Rose&nbsp;from&nbsp;A Ceremony of Carols&nbsp;will be available to stream and download from&nbsp;2 October 2026. Around the 50th anniversary of Britten's death, the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin will also bring music from the album to the concert stage: on&nbsp;5 December 2026&nbsp;at Berlin Cathedral and on&nbsp;6 December 2026 at the Marktkirche in Hanover, both under Justin Doyle's direction.

Víkingur Ólafsson’s CONTINUUM II available to pre-order now

&ldquo;Bach was writing for all of us, for the future&rdquo; V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson
Album release: 6 November 2026
V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson&nbsp;releases the Largo from Bach&rsquo;s Keyboard Concerto in F&nbsp;minor&nbsp;today,&nbsp;11 September, as&nbsp;pre-orders open&nbsp;for his new album&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;II, out on&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;in all formats on&nbsp;6&nbsp;November 2026. Part of &Oacute;lafsson&rsquo;s&nbsp;ongoing J.S. Bach project, it is the first album he has recorded entirely in&nbsp;The Nutshell, his new home studio in Iceland. The Largo is one of two works the artist has arranged for piano and strings and for which he is joined by the&nbsp;Siggi String Quartet&nbsp;and bassist&nbsp;Xun Yang.
&Oacute;lafsson calls&nbsp;CONTINUUM II&nbsp;his first &ldquo;album domesticum&rdquo; &ndash; a record of music for the home, intimate and reflective, showing&nbsp;Bach at his most personal. At its heart are six chorales, among them&nbsp;Wie sch&ouml;n leuchtet der Morgenstern&nbsp;and&nbsp;Es ist genug, and six of the short preludes Bach wrote as practice pieces for his pupils. Alongside them are his own arrangements of the organ chorale prelude&nbsp;Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, the Adagio from the Violin Sonata No. 5 in F minor (also for piano and strings), and the Air on the G String, heard in both grand and upright piano versions.
Two further tracks will be released ahead of the album: the Prelude in D major on&nbsp;2 October&nbsp;and&nbsp;Nun ruhen alle W&auml;lder&nbsp;on&nbsp;23 October.
Pre-order the CD and vinyl editions in the <a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/collections/vikingur-olafsson">DG Store</a>

From Bach to Hollywood: David Garrett Spans Three Centuries of Music History on Immortal

There are those moments when a single note says more than an entire book. It is exactly these moments that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.universal-music.de/davidgarrett">David Garrett</a> gathers on his new album Immortal, which arrives on Deutsche Grammophon on October 9, 2026 and is available for pre-order right now. The violinist, who on his artist profile has long moved effortlessly between the concert hall and the stadium stage, poses a question with this work that is as old as music itself: what remains when everything else fades away? His answer carries a name that says it all.
<h2>Immortal: David Garrett Takes On the Great Masters of Music</h2>
Behind the title lies no blunt marketing idea, but a question that has accompanied Garrett for a long time: what of the things we create truly endures? He phrases his answer himself with disarming clarity. When we talk about things that come close to immortality, it is art, and music in particular, that outlasts time and comes closest to the idea of immortality. From this conviction an album has grown that is dedicated to the lasting legacy of classical music and proceeds from the firm assumption that music can outlast time. Instead of preserving the old works like museum pieces, Garrett takes the bolder path he always has:
He reinterprets the pieces from a contemporary and, at the same time, deeply human perspective. The goal is explicitly not a nostalgia trip, but an album meant to connect generations, to stand for authenticity and, true to its title, to strive for timeless validity.
<h2>Which Tracks Can You Expect on the New David Garrett Album?</h2>
The list of compositions reads like a journey through more than three centuries of music history. At its center stand Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Claude Debussy, and John Williams, flanked by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Francesco Maria Veracini, and Johannes Brahms, as well as Jean Sibelius. With this, Garrett draws an arc from the Baroque through the Classical and Romantic eras all the way to the great film music of the present, treating a Hollywood score with the same seriousness as a concerto from the 18th century.
All of it becomes concrete on October 9, 2026. The album arrives digitally, on CD and on vinyl, and is additionally available in Dolby Atmos, which gives the arrangements an impressive sense of space, especially in a home cinema setup or with good headphones. Two scopes are on offer: the standard version comprises 20 tracks, the Deluxe Edition 25.
For Garrett, Immortal also marks a deliberate return. After most recently devoting himself on Millennium Symphony to symphonic reinterpretations of well-known pop and rock songs, he now presents a pure classical album once again. It is thus the logical continuation of the path he set out on in 2022 with the gold-certified album Iconic, only a shade more personal and uncompromising.
<h2>Nessun Dorma and the Signature Behind Immortal</h2>
Anyone who wants to know where the journey is headed has long had the first taste in their ears. Released as the advance single on June 26, 2026 was Garrett's reinterpretation of Puccini's Turandot aria Nessun Dorma, which he arranged himself together with John Haywood. That special quality runs through the entire album, because no one took a shortcut on the drawing board here. Garrett created all the arrangements himself, supported by co-arrangers Franck van der Heijden and John Haywood.
The album was recorded together with the orchestra The Prezent and pianist Julien Quentin, whose energy and expressiveness shape the sound significantly. No wonder Garrett is especially proud of one point: he describes the project as 100 percent handmade and hopes that listeners will not only enjoy the sound but also feel the human presence in the music.
<h2>Vinyl, Onyx CD and Fan Box: The Immortal Editions at a Glance</h2>
Alongside the standard CD and the CD Deluxe there is the dark<a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/david-garrett/products/david-garrett-immortal-119905">&nbsp;Onyx CD</a>, which already makes an impression visually. The showpiece for the shelf is the<a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/david-garrett/products/david-garrett-immortal-118702">&nbsp;2LP Picture Disc Vinyl with a signed art card</a>, while the plain Picture Disc is also available without an autograph. Anyone who wants it all reaches for the<a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/david-garrett/products/david-garrett-immortal-118714">&nbsp;limited fan box</a>, which likewise contains a signed art card.
A small note for the quick decision-makers: a particularly exclusive Onyx variant with a personal message is already sold out ahead of release. You can find all editions bundled together in the<a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/david-garrett">&nbsp;David Garrett Collection at Deutsche Grammophon</a>.
<h2>David Garrett Live: Immortal Goes on Tour!</h2>
An album like this wants not only to be heard, but to be experienced. From February 2027, David Garrett takes Immortal on a worldwide tour. With this, the violinist, who has sold more than five million albums worldwide, consistently continues his dual role as classical virtuoso and crowd magnet. Just how nimbly he moves between worlds was shown most recently by his crossover project, which you can listen back to on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.universal-music.de/davidgarrett/musik/millennium-symphony-1044744">release page for Millennium Symphony</a>.
With Immortal, a circle now closes for him, back to pure classical. Anyone who wants to be there at the starting gun on October 9, 2026 should secure their preferred edition now in the pre-sale!

María Dueñas releases her new album Homage to Heifetz

Mar&iacute;a Due&ntilde;as follows in the footsteps of a violin legend:
Just as Jascha Heifetz once did, the Spanish violinist pairs Korngold&rsquo;s Violin Concerto with Lalo&rsquo;s&nbsp;Symphonie espagnole
Recorded with Gustavo Dudamel and the Sim&oacute;n Bol&iacute;var Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Homage to Heifetz is released on 28 August 2026 in all formats &ndash; listen to the album&nbsp;<a href="https://dgt.link/HomagetoHeifetz">HERE</a>.
TV and streaming updates: &Eacute;vian concert on STAGE+ (watch&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stage-plus.com/de/video/live_concert_9HKNCPA3DTN66PBIEHFJ2CPJ6K">HERE</a>)
Mar&iacute;a Due&ntilde;as&nbsp;releases her new album&nbsp;Homage to Heifetz&nbsp;on&nbsp;28 August 2026. It pays tribute to Jascha Heifetz, whose recordings have shaped the Spanish violinist since childhood, and pairs &ndash; as Heifetz once did &ndash; Korngold&rsquo;s Violin Concerto with Lalo&rsquo;s&nbsp;Symphonie espagnole. The programme was recorded at London&rsquo;s Abbey Road Studios with&nbsp;Gustavo Dudamel&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Sim&oacute;n Bol&iacute;var Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela&nbsp;(the orchestra of Venezuela&rsquo;s internationally renowned El Sistema music education programme, of which Dudamel is Music &amp; Artistic Director).
On the album, Due&ntilde;as also revisits a tradition from the Golden Age of the violin: contrasting major violin concertos with arrangements of short, popular pieces. Alongside Debussy&rsquo;s&nbsp;La fille aux cheveux de lin&nbsp;in an orchestral version, she recorded miniatures by Debussy and Ponce with pianist Itamar Golan. For&nbsp;Estrellita,&nbsp;La chevelure&nbsp;and&nbsp;La plus que lente, Due&ntilde;as played the 1731&nbsp;&ldquo;Heifetz, Piel&rdquo; Stradivarius, once owned by Jascha Heifetz.
The&nbsp;Allegro non troppo&nbsp;from Lalo&rsquo;s&nbsp;Symphonie espagnole&nbsp;is already available to watch&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/8aD_ynXxeGU">HERE.</a>
The following videos are also available:
<ul>
<li>Debussy: La plus que lente (Arr. Roques for Violin &amp; Piano)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiebDvKnkhQ">HERE</a></li>
<li>Ponce: Estrellita (Arr. Heifetz for Violin &amp; Piano)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfaRiKhJTao">HERE</a></li>
<li>EPK&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/73Fipqy6tsg">HERE</a></li>
<li>Mar&iacute;a Due&ntilde;as on the opportunity to record on the 1731 &ldquo;Heifetz, Piel&rdquo; Stradivarius&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efjwk0Yw4dI&amp;list=RDEfjwk0Yw4dI&amp;start_radio=1">HERE</a></li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Having a role model is so important,&rdquo; says Due&ntilde;as, &ldquo;someone who is a constant source of inspiration.&rdquo; For her, that role model is the Lithuanian-born Jascha Heifetz (1901&ndash;87), especially through his interpretations of Lalo and Korngold from the early 1950s. Heifetz was renowned for his virtuosity, his sound and the clarity of his interpretation. He is considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
Gustavo Dudamel &ndash; himself an excellent violinist &ndash; is also a source of inspiration for Mar&iacute;a: &ldquo;Beyond being a fantastic musician, he&rsquo;s a wonderful human being, someone whose feet are on the ground. This is what gives his music-making such soul.&rdquo;&nbsp;They have appeared together live, among other projects, in the world premiere and further performances of Gabriela Ortiz&rsquo;s&nbsp;Altar de cuerda&nbsp;(&ldquo;Due&ntilde;as was wholly captivating&rdquo; &ndash; The New York Times)
Due&ntilde;as live performance from &Eacute;vian with Denis Kozhukhin, Yo-Yo Ma and Renaud Capu&ccedil;on is now available to watch on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stage-plus.com/de/video/live_concert_9HKNCPA3DTN66PBIEHFJ2CPJ6K">STAGE+</a>.
Her concert dates include Schloss Johannisberg (23 August), Wiesbaden (30 August), Bremen (1 September), Seoul (11 September), Yongin (12 September), Tongyeong (13 September), Taichung (15 September), Taipei (16 and 17 September).

Agnes Obel marks her long-awaited return with 'The Meaning of Flowers'

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;The world created by Agnes Obel has that same magical realism that writer Angela Carter tapped into: beautifully unsettling. Feet in the forest, head in the stars.&rdquo;
Joyzine, on&nbsp;Myopia
The Danish-born, Berlin-based artist continues to defy genres across 12 atmospheric and eclectic tracks
The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;considers how new life remakes everything &ndash; the body, the mind, the self and one&rsquo;s sense of connection to the wider world
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer&nbsp;Agnes Obel&nbsp;announces her new studio album &ndash; a follow-up to the widely acclaimed&nbsp;Myopia&nbsp;(2020).&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;is woven together from different strands of thought and inspiration by one of the most curious minds in contemporary music today. Through its 12 tracks, Obel explores the heightened sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy and, among other themes, the significance of birth, growth and metamorphosis in the natural world. Her new music draws on a broad range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world&rsquo;s first named author) and the ideas of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the 80s and 90s.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by Obel in her own studio in Berlin,&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;features Agnes herself on vocals (some pitch-shifted), piano, keys, synths and samples. Guest musicians join her on violin, viola, cello, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals. The album comes out on&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;&ndash; digitally, on CD and on vinyl &ndash; on&nbsp;18&nbsp;September 2026. As a taster,&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;is available to stream and download from&nbsp;21&nbsp;August.
Since recording&nbsp;Myopia, Obel has given birth to her first child.&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;reflects the emotional impact of motherhood, Obel&rsquo;s intellectual interest in the subject &ndash; notably Arendt&rsquo;s concept of natality, &ldquo;understood as the human capacity for new beginnings&rdquo; &ndash; and the fact that the temporarily altered neuroplasticity of her brain took her thought and compositional processes in fresh directions.
&ldquo;I wanted to see if I could get close to the feeling of a new beginning,&rdquo; says Obel of the title track. &nbsp;&ldquo;It shows itself in the experience of interconnectedness and a new expansive feeling of love that will never end. The point when the inner monologue becomes something interactive and expansive &ndash; beyond your own life &ndash; and opens your mind to a new and richer notion of life.&rdquo;
Blood so Red&nbsp;and&nbsp;Gemini&nbsp;emerged as Obel was &ldquo;playing around&rdquo; with rhythms, piano and voice.&nbsp;Blood so Red&nbsp;came from her reading of Enheduanna&rsquo;s hymns to Inanna &ndash; goddess of childbirth, love, sex, song and war &ndash; whose presence &ldquo;made its way into the song, lifting up my own epiphanies on childbirth and the laws of the body and these experiences outside of language that link us across time and space&rdquo;.&nbsp;Gemini&nbsp;and&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;too were inspired by Enheduanna, but also by Obel&rsquo;s awareness of a complex universe &ldquo;held together by the beauty and power of life and metamorphosis&rdquo;. She drew on Coccia&rsquo;s&nbsp;Life of Plants&nbsp;and&nbsp;Metamorphoses&nbsp;for the imagery of seeds and the life cycle of a butterfly.
There are other influences here too, including 70s movie scores in&nbsp;Don&rsquo;t Look Down&nbsp;and Danish pop in&nbsp;Never Been: &ldquo;In the 80s pop song world, to love was to be free and who you are unapologetically.&rdquo; And Obel employs a joyful combination of timbres in&nbsp;Tangerine, the only instrumental track, as sax arpeggios join celesta and piano, in a &ldquo;bubbly new wondrous friendship&rdquo;.
The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;is dedicated to Obel&rsquo;s daughter: &ldquo;she who has changed me and raised me and taught me so much &ndash; and I can feel so much more awaits to be learned&rdquo;.
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash; forthcoming tour dates:
22 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; KUNST!RASEN, Bonn &middot;&nbsp;23 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Golden Leaves Festival, Darmstadt
26 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Openluchttheater Caprera, Bloemendaal &middot;&nbsp;27/28 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Amsterdamse Bostheater, Amstelveen
24 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane &middot;&nbsp;26 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Hamer Hall, Melbourne
27 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Sydney Opera House &middot;&nbsp;29 Sep &ndash; New Zealand International Convention Centre, Auckland
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash;&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers
Books and poetry read while making the album
&nbsp;
Fiction and non-fiction:
Arendt, Hannah,&nbsp;The Human Condition, 1958
Banks, Jennifer,&nbsp;Natality:&nbsp;Toward a Philosophy of Birth, 2023
Bowen-Moore, Patricia,&nbsp;Hannah Arendt&rsquo;s Philosophy of Natality, 1989
Butler, Octavia,&nbsp;Dawn, 1987
Cage, John,&nbsp;Silence: Lectures and Writings, 1961
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;The Life of Plants:&nbsp;A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2019
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;Metamorphoses, 2021
Jones, Lucy,&nbsp;Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, 2023
Morton, Timothy,&nbsp;All Art Is Ecological, 2018
N&oslash;rg&aring;rd, Per,&nbsp;Artikler 1962&ndash;1982, Ivan Hansen (ed.), 1982
Rasmussen, Karl Aage,&nbsp;Musik i det tyvende &aring;rhundrede: en fort&aelig;lling, 2011
&nbsp;
Poetry:
Akbar, Kaveh (ed.),&nbsp;The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine, 2022
Christensen, Inger,&nbsp;Samlede Digte, 2009
Enheduanna,&nbsp;Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World&rsquo;s First Author, trans. Sophus Helle, 2023 (orig. c.2300 BCE)
Graham, Jorie,&nbsp;The Dream of the Unified Field, 2002
Kurtz, Ella; King, Simone; Delahunty, Claire (eds.),&nbsp;What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing, 2021
&nbsp;
The album will be released on 18&nbsp;September 2026 &ndash;&nbsp;listen to&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;and pre-order the album&nbsp;<a href="http://dg.lnk.to/themeaningofflowers">here</a>

Daniil Trifonov explores Latin American treasures on 'Mi Historia Americana – Sur'

&ldquo;Daniil Trifonov&rsquo;s latest album bristles with virtuosity&rdquo;&nbsp;★★★★★ Financial Times, on&nbsp;My American Story &ndash; North
On the second leg of his autobiographical musical journey through the Americas, the pianist delves into the South American and Caribbean repertoires
&ldquo;Latin American music has distinctive qualities: inspirations from nature, traditional dances and songs, and evocations of faith&rdquo; &ndash; Daniil Trifonov
Trifonov is joined by the S&atilde;o Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Gonzalo Grau for Barroso&rsquo;s&nbsp;Aquarela&nbsp;do Brasil&nbsp;and the world premiere recording of Golijov&rsquo;s&nbsp;Cuadros del Sur, both arranged especially for this project
He also performs solo works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Ginastera, Guarnieri, Lecuona, Villa-Lobos and others, as well as his own&nbsp;Tango
The album will be released on 2&nbsp;October 2026
Daniil Trifonov&rsquo;s&nbsp;My American Story &ndash; North&nbsp;came out in 2024 to widespread critical acclaim. In this second volume of his musical journey across the Americas,&nbsp;Mi Historia Americana &ndash; Sur&nbsp;(My American Story &ndash; South), the pianist shares a wide-ranging selection of his Latin American and Caribbean musical discoveries. Through both solo and orchestral works, Trifonov&rsquo;s travels &nbsp;take him from Cuba and the Dominican Republic to Brazil, Peru and Argentina. In many senses, this album is his most personal to date, given the close links he has forged with the region &ndash; largely through his marriage to fellow pianist Judith Ram&iacute;rez, who was born in the Dominican Republic. &ldquo;Like Latin America itself,&rdquo; says Trifonov, &ldquo;the repertoire is vast and full of variety. There are many pieces that are popular in the region yet unfamiliar in other parts of the world. I wanted to present a picture of the musical richness this literature has to offer.&rdquo;
The two orchestral works on the album (Aquarela do Brasil&nbsp;and&nbsp;Cuadros del Sur) were recorded in February 2026 in S&atilde;o Paulo, while Trifonov was in Brazil for concerts featuring this repertoire. He was joined by members of the&nbsp;S&atilde;o Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP)&nbsp;and Venezuelan multi-instrumentalist/arranger/musical director&nbsp;Gonzalo Grau. The concerts were filmed by&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon, with a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stage-plus.com/">STAGE+</a>&nbsp;premiere planned for a future date.
The album will be released digitally, on CD (2 discs) and on vinyl (3 LPs) on&nbsp;2&nbsp;October 2026, with a 5‑track vinyl disc entitled&nbsp;The&nbsp;Encores&nbsp;out the same day, to tie in with Trifonov&rsquo;s upcoming recital tour. The pianist&rsquo;s transcription of Gustavo Santaolalla&rsquo;s main theme from&nbsp;The Last of Us&nbsp;comes out as a standalone digital single on&nbsp;24&nbsp;July. A series of digital tracks from the album will be shared between then and 2&nbsp;October, each accompanied by a performance video.
Mi Historia Americana &ndash; Sur&nbsp;opens with Gonzalo Grau&rsquo;s arrangement of Ary Barroso&rsquo;s hugely popular song&nbsp;Aquarela do Brasil. Grau also created&nbsp;Cuadros&nbsp;del Sur&nbsp;(&ldquo;Pictures of the South&rdquo;) specifically for this Trifonov project, a co-commission by OSESP, Deutsche Grammophon, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Aspen Music Festival. The music is drawn from Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov&rsquo;s choral-orchestral work&nbsp;La Pasi&oacute;n seg&uacute;n San Marcos, with formal inspiration provided by Mussorgsky&rsquo;s&nbsp;Pictures at an Exhibition&nbsp;&ndash; Grau alternates some of the most varied sections of Golijov&rsquo;s&nbsp;Pasi&oacute;n&nbsp;with a recurring &ldquo;promenade&rdquo; theme. Trifonov and the orchestra gave the world premiere performance in&nbsp;February, and present the first recording here. OSESP also becomes the first Brazilian orchestra ever to appear on a DG recording.
Brazil is further represented by Villa-Lobos&rsquo;s&nbsp;Bachianas brasileiras No.&nbsp;4&nbsp;and gems by Mozart Camargo Guarnieri and Oscar Lorenzo Fern&aacute;ndez. Meanwhile, from Argentina we also hear music by Ginastera (Milonga&nbsp;and Second Piano Sonata) as well as a Tango, not from Buenos Aires but composed by Trifonov himself.
Much of the inspiration for this album came to the pianist during an extended stay in his wife&rsquo;s homeland. &ldquo;My family and I were isolated for months in the Dominican Republic during the Covid pandemic,&rdquo; he recalls. &ldquo;It was during that lockdown period that I finally found time to discover a wealth of outstanding Latin American piano music.&rdquo; From the Caribbean, he has chosen contrasting works by contemporary Dominican composer Michel Camilo and his compatriots Juan Francisco Garc&iacute;a and Rafael Bullumba Landestoy, and two pieces by Cuba&rsquo;s most famous composer, Ernesto Lecuona.
There is one more stop on Trifonov&rsquo;s journey &ndash; Peru &ndash; whose music is represented by Gabriela Lena Frank&rsquo;s&nbsp;Sonata andina. A US-born composer with Peruvian roots, Frank was recently awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her orchestral work&nbsp;Picaflor: A future myth. &ldquo;As with many composers featured on this album,&rdquo; Trifonov explains, &ldquo;Frank blends elements of western classical and folk music traditions in complex, captivating ways: the solo piano [in&nbsp;Sonata andina] evokes traditional Bolivian drums and Peruvian flutes, and imitates Latin guitars and instruments such as the marimba. It&rsquo;s a colourful musical tapestry.&rdquo;
Daniil Trifonov will perform this repertoire extensively in the 2026-27 season. Upcoming highlights include a Latin American tour with the Berliner Philharmoniker and performances of&nbsp;Cuadros del Sur&nbsp;in Europe. Full touring details&nbsp;<a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/daniil-trifonov/on-tour">here</a>.

Friendship Survival Guide Sees Adam Wiltzie Complete a Decade-Old Collaboration with the Late Jóhann Jóhannsson 

Legendary ambient drone artist Adam Wiltzie salutes his longtime friend, the award-winning composer&nbsp;J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&nbsp;by finishing the album the pair started in 2013
Additional contributions to Friendship Survival Guide come from electronic musician Tim Hecker, the late producer Steve Albini and Grammy Award winning engineer, Francesco Donadello
The album will be released on 18 September 2026, listen&nbsp;to the first pre-release single&nbsp;White Gloves &amp; Turtlenecks&nbsp;<a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdg.lnk.to%2FFriendshipSurvivalGuide&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cconstanze.busch%40umusic.com%7Cd849013a52e640e657c108dee70814fe%7Cbbcb6b2f8c7c4e2486e46c36fed00b78%7C1%7C0%7C639202219064766946%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=7Ovznu5%2BMvsLs%2BdWGuqQYWyYRWY4Yxy5IFKVXuupYTk%3D&amp;reserved=0">here</a>.
&ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, (&hellip;) J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it's incredible. I could never have done it without him.&ldquo;&nbsp;&ndash; Adam Wiltzie
DG releases crystal-clear vinyl reissue of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s celebrated&nbsp;Orph&eacute;e&nbsp;for its 10th anniversary,
out 16 October
&nbsp;
On&nbsp;September 18th,&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;will release&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, an album of orchestral psychedelic drone compositions by&nbsp;Adam Wiltzie&nbsp;and the late&nbsp;J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson. Wiltzie, co-founder of the now-legendary drone duo Stars of the Lid, and J&oacute;hannsson, the award-winning composer and orchestrator, shared a decade-long friendship and creative partnership, writing, performing and recording together prior to the latter&rsquo;s tragic passing in 2018.&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;stems from the pair&rsquo;s numerous 2013-17 studio collaborations on sessions for J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s scores of the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic&nbsp;The Theory of Everything&nbsp;(for which J&oacute;hann won a Golden Globe) and director Dennis Villeneuve&rsquo;s 2017 sci-fi thriller&nbsp;Arrival&nbsp;(for which he garnered an Academy Award nomination). The album will be available digitally, on CD and on black vinyl. Ahead of its release, two digital singles will be issued for streaming and download:&nbsp;White Gloves &amp; Turtlenecks, out today, July 31, followed by&nbsp;Dazed And Reflective Glory - Pt.1 on September 4.
After years away from the recordings, Wiltzie returned to the tapes with blessings from J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s family, completing&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;to honor J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s legacy. Some of these tracks&mdash;and the analog tape loops that form their core&mdash;remain as they were first recorded a decade ago by the pair&rsquo;s longtime friend and engineer&nbsp;Francesco Donadello, using J&oacute;hann's Revox machines. Other&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;pieces required additional recording that took place between 2023-25, with Wiltzie assisted by electronic musician&nbsp;Tim Hecker&nbsp;and composer&nbsp;Bryan Senti. Many of the guitar tracks on&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;were, in Wiltzie&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;recorded, blasted and amped&rdquo; by engineer/producer&nbsp;Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, months before his own sudden passing. The musical ghosts that permeate these recordings are staggering to behold.&nbsp;
Yet so is the camaraderie and creative love that informs the album and its name. As he often does with all his projects, Wiltzie gave original titles to the pieces at the end of the recording process, supplying them with &ldquo;hidden meanings.&rdquo; The titles on&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide &ldquo;anchor the sound in our recognizable friendship&rdquo; and &ldquo;function as a private language between the collaborators.&rdquo; For insight into how close Wiltize and J&oacute;hannsson were, look no further than the layered, starts-in-the-middle orchestral beauty of the opener, &ldquo;September Nineteen Sixty Nine,&rdquo; named after the month both men were born in, two days and an ocean apart.&nbsp;
The pair first met in 2007 in Prague, where J&oacute;hannsson was recording parts of his soon-to-be-released,&nbsp;Fordlandia, making the leap from the Icelandic shoegaze punk underground to the expansive, string-laden sound that would make him a global sensation. He&rsquo;d come to see Wiltzie&rsquo;s storied band, Stars of the Lid, then in the midst of a European tour, and introduced himself at the merch table. The pair went out drinking with friends that night, instantly bonding around similar lives and interests, and around shared musical aesthetics, ambient synths, orchestral grandeur, lo-fi tape loops and how various drones intermingle effortlessly. Wiltzie remembers the evening as a &ldquo;first-night-on-Earth-type meeting, two guys who just met but seemed like we'd known each other our entire lives.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Over the next decade, Wiltzie and J&oacute;hannsson collaborated regularly. In 2009, Wiltzie helped book and tour manage J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s first (very DIY) tour of the U.S, and Adam would remain a regular part of J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s live band, and his live sound engineer, even as he also continued working on solo music, and launched the duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen with Dustin O&rsquo;Halloran. In 2013, J&oacute;hannsson invited Wiltzie to ghost-write and collaborate on the cues to the score for the James Marsh film,&nbsp;The&nbsp;Theory of Everything, the first time they&rsquo;d written and recorded together. Working in separate studios&mdash;J&oacute;hannsson in Berlin, Wiltzie from his home in Belgium&mdash;the collaboration was a &ldquo;back-and-forth, super-easy and quick. He loved it, and I loved what he was sending back.&rdquo; Wiltzie called the time &ldquo;very inspiring and creative&rdquo; for both men, and &ldquo;the catalyst for the idea of recording an album together.&rdquo; They began recording what J&oacute;hannsson called &ldquo;our own weird record&rdquo; right there and then; but before long, the&nbsp;Theory score won those Hollywood awards, and J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s career went, in Wiltzie&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;skyrocket to the moon,&rdquo; pushing their album idea onto the back-burner.
Yet the pair&rsquo;s friendship never receded. Wiltzie recalls the last of his regular check-in phone calls with J&oacute;hannsson, shortly before J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s passing in February 2018: &ldquo;He had just played a concert in Barcelona, and was sounding calm and lucid. I was so happy for him because he had a great show. He said, he wished he could do more shows like this, because it felt so good to be on stage.&rsquo; He was having a really good day, and seemed in a really good place. And then he was gone.&rdquo;
Speaking of&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, Wiltzie says: &ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, that one half of the duo is not around anymore, that he was a good friend of mine, and I'm still dealing with his loss. At the same time, it feels great to be finishing this music. Because you can feel J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s presence. It's this living, breathing thing, a beautiful reminder. The quintessentially most perfect and beautiful thing about collaboration is that it&rsquo;s something you could never do by yourself. It's as simple as that. J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it's incredible. I could never have done it without him.&rdquo;
(For more of Adam Wiltzie discussing his relationship with J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson and&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, read the full as-told-to text, culled from an interview with Piotr Orlov.)
Alongside the release of&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, September 18th will also see the release of an accompanying three-chapter short film by Belgian director Jonas Govaerts. Starring Wiltzie and the actor Jeroen Percevall (Bullhead), the film can be best described as a metaphysical nocturnal taxi ride, a visual (non-documentary) companion to the album, with scenes shot in a Gent studio and a bleak train station in Muizen.
The album&rsquo;s release date, September 18, also marks the pre-order start for the crystal-clear vinyl reissue of&nbsp;Orph&eacute;e, one of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s most successful albums celebrating its 10-year anniversary in 2026. The special edition will be released shortly afterwards, on October 16.
Upcoming live performances of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music will take place at the Vancouver International Film Festival (Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC,10/9/2026), featuring an orchestra playing to film clips of&nbsp;Prisoners,&nbsp;Arrival,&nbsp;Sicario, and&nbsp;The Theory of Everything; and at the Ambient Festival Cologne 2027 (location/date TBC), where Ensemble Musikfabrik will perform &ldquo;Drone Mass.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Upcoming North American live dates for A Winged Victory For the Sullen include Vic Theatre in Chicago (9/23/2026), The Concert Hall in Toronto (9/25/2026), Pop Montr&eacute;al (9/26/2026), and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn (9/28 &amp; 9/29/2026).&nbsp;

Floating Points Shares New Mere Mortals Track Pandora’s Creation

Mere Mortals&nbsp;will be released in all formats on 28 August 2026
Pandora&rsquo;s Creation will be shared online on 24 July&nbsp; 
Floating Points&nbsp;today unveils&nbsp;Pandora&rsquo;s Creation, the second track from his forthcoming Deutsche Grammophon album&nbsp;Mere Mortals. Following the release of&nbsp;Her Gift, the new single offers another compelling glimpse into Sam Shepherd&rsquo;s genre-defying score, where orchestral writing and electronic sound worlds merge into a rich and immersive musical experience.
Floating Points&rsquo;&nbsp;Mere Mortals&nbsp;will be released on&nbsp;28 August 2026. Recorded with the&nbsp;San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, the 14-track album captures Shepherd&rsquo;s first full-length ballet score, originally commissioned by San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo. Reimagining the myth of Pandora through a contemporary lens, the work explores themes of curiosity, transformation and humanity&rsquo;s relationship with technology and the natural world.
Reflecting on the project, Shepherd explains: &ldquo;Pandora&rsquo;s not about bringing hell to Earth. She really represents curiosity and change.&rdquo; This fresh interpretation shapes a score that moves seamlessly between lyrical orchestral passages, powerful brass writing and pulsating electronics, creating a musical narrative that is as compelling on record as it is on stage.
Floating Points will appear live in the European premiere of&nbsp;Mere Mortals&nbsp;with San Francisco Ballet at the 2026&nbsp;Edinburgh International Festival&nbsp;(28 August, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; further performances 29 &amp; 30 August), and when the work transfers to&nbsp;Sadler&rsquo;s Wells Theatre in London (9-12 September, with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia).

Daniil Trifonov releases his own transcription of The Last of Us theme as a digital single

Pianist&nbsp;Daniil Trifonov&nbsp;releases his&nbsp;own transcription&nbsp;of&nbsp;Gustavo Santaolalla&rsquo;s theme from&nbsp;The Last of Us&nbsp;as a digital single on&nbsp;24 July&nbsp;on&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon. In his version, he recasts the theme from the internationally successful video game franchise and its multi-award-winning TV adaptation for solo piano. Originally written for guitar, the piece takes on a distinctive new character in Trifonov&rsquo;s transcription for piano.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With this single, Trifonov also offers a first glimpse of his forthcoming&nbsp;American Story&nbsp;project, whose second chapter,&nbsp;Mi Historia Americana, is due for release on&nbsp;2 October.
The Argentinian composer and two-time Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla created a highly recognizable theme defined by its haunting and melancholic character. For Trifonov, the atmosphere of the original was central. To evoke the guitar&rsquo;s subtle tonalities, he also worked with the strings of the piano in shaping the transcription. The result is a piece that preserves the theme&rsquo;s character while reimagining its minimalist tension for the piano.

Víkingur Ólafsson launches CONTINUUM II, a new album of music  by J.S. Bach

First single &ndash; &Oacute;lafsson&rsquo;s arrangement of the Air on the G String &ndash; released 17 July: watch&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHmXD2jc3QU">here</a>&nbsp;/ stream&nbsp;<a href="https://dg.lnk.to/Continuum2">here</a>
Album released on Deutsche Grammophon: 6 November 2026
For more than thirty years,&nbsp;V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson&nbsp;has played a little Bach every day. &ldquo;Bach has become my diary,&rdquo; says the pianist. &ldquo;Playing his music is the one constant in my life.&rdquo; That lifelong conversation continues with&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;II, the second instalment of his acclaimed&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;project and the first album to be recorded entirely in his new Icelandic home studio,&nbsp;The Nutshell. Bringing together original keyboard works alongside new arrangements and transcriptions,&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;II&nbsp;will be released by&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;digitally, on CD and vinyl on 6&nbsp;November 2026. The first single &ndash; &Oacute;lafsson&rsquo;s own arrangement of Bach&rsquo;s Air on the G&nbsp;String (grand piano version) &ndash; is released on&nbsp;17&nbsp;July, followed by the Larghetto from the Keyboard Concerto No.&nbsp;1 in D&nbsp;major, BWV&nbsp;972 (after Vivaldi), on&nbsp;14 August.
&Oacute;lafsson comments: &ldquo;I have never had the stamina to keep a journal for longer than a few weeks. But for over thirty years, I have played a little Bach on the piano every day. It is the one constant factor in my life, no matter what else is going on. Playing his music is a way of putting your particular experience into context with the universal. Even your location in time and space becomes a little trivial. Bach wrote some of his greatest works for a very small audience in a time when he was considered behind the times, a man of the past. As we know now, it turns out he was writing for all of us, for the future. When I play Bach, I am reminded that historical eras in music are notions we superimpose on what is essentially a continuum: an unbroken thread linking us all, a running stream flowing through us &ndash; what the Germans, incidentally, call a&nbsp;Bach. This recording project is called&nbsp;Continuum. It is my personal Bach journal, an ongoing conversation with his music and a tribute to his art.&rdquo;
&Oacute;lafsson released the first volume of&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;in October 2024 and, since then, has won his first GRAMMY Award&reg; for his recording of Bach&rsquo;s&nbsp;Goldberg Variations, surpassed one billion streams worldwide &ndash; half of them from Bach repertoire &ndash; and built The Nutshell: a teak-walled, fully remote recording studio beneath his home in Iceland.
On turning forty, &Oacute;lafsson began thinking about what he wanted the next decade of his life to look like. One answer was the freedom to record with complete spontaneity. &ldquo;If the urge strikes,&rdquo; he explains, &ldquo;I can simply wander downstairs late at night in my pyjamas, press a couple of buttons, and start recording.&rdquo;
That spirit shapes&nbsp;CONTINUUM&nbsp;II. As his first true &ldquo;album domesticum&rdquo;, it centres on music associated with the home: intimate, reflective works that reveal Bach at his most personal. At its heart are six chorales that &Oacute;lafsson plays on the piano, including&nbsp;Wie sch&ouml;n leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 436;&nbsp;Welt, ade!, BWV 27/VI; and&nbsp;Es ist genug, BWV 60/V.
&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t come across them recorded on the piano,&rdquo; he notes. &ldquo;But to me they seem newly revealed in that medium. I particularly love how they sound in the fragile sonority of the upright piano.&rdquo;
It was producer Christopher Tarnow who suggested including an arrangement of the early organ chorale prelude&nbsp;Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott. &ldquo;I have to admit I had never heard this work before. Bach wrote it when he was around twenty years old, and the first time I played it I immediately realised it was the kind of music that stays with you for the rest of your life. Its desolate beauty, its impossibly unpredictable harmonic progression, its&nbsp;lamentoso&nbsp;spirit that almost feels like a nineteenth-century lied&hellip; We don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s around the next corner, but we want Bach to hold our hand and take us there. It is the sort of work I never want to end once I begin playing it.&rdquo;
For the album, &Oacute;lafsson recorded both grand and upright piano versions of his own arrangement of Bach&rsquo;s Air from the Orchestral Suite No.&nbsp;3, better known as the Air on the G&nbsp;String. He dedicated the score to Gy&ouml;rgy Kurt&aacute;g as a gift for the composer&rsquo;s 100th birthday earlier this year.
The programme also includes the Largo from the Keyboard Concerto No.&nbsp;5 in F&nbsp;minor; &Oacute;lafsson&rsquo;s arrangement of the Adagio from the Violin Sonata No.5 in F&nbsp;minor for piano, string quartet and double bass, performed with the Siggi String Quartet and bassist Xun Yang; and the Larghetto from the Keyboard Concerto No.&nbsp;1 in D&nbsp;major, arranged by Bach himself from a Vivaldi original.
Completing the programme &ndash; and encapsulating the intimate, domestic spirit of CONTINUUM II &ndash; are six of the short preludes Bach wrote as practice pieces for his pupils, including his own children. Their brevity, &Oacute;lafsson suggests, conceals remarkable depth.
&ldquo;Each is an inspired miniature, a complete musical world in itself. Recorded here on the grand piano, they remind me that some of Bach&rsquo;s most profound thoughts are also among his most compact.&rdquo;
The artist&rsquo;s acclaimed collaboration with Olafur Eliasson &ndash; his performance of Bach&rsquo;s&nbsp;Goldberg Variations&nbsp;at Lucerne Festival PULSE, accompanied by Eliasson&rsquo;s immersive real-time light installation &ndash; will&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stage-plus.com/video/live_concert_9HKNCPA3DTN66PBIEHFJ2CPH6C">stream worldwide on STAGE+</a>&nbsp;from 18 July.
Other forthcoming highlights include Bach, Beethoven and Schubert recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival (22 August) and three at London&rsquo;s Wigmore Hall (10-12 September); a European tour of Beethoven&rsquo;s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Santtu-Matias Rouvali taking in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival, Grafenegg Festival and Philharmonie de Paris (26 August-3 September); the world premiere of Mark Simpson&rsquo;s Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner at London&rsquo;s Royal Festival Hall (23 October); a recital tour of South Korea, China and Taiwan in October and November, as well as Brahms&rsquo;s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko in Baden-Baden (4 December).

Multi-Award-Winning Composer Yu-Peng Chen presents his first classical album for Deutsche Grammophon

Recognized by a wide community of gaming fans as &ldquo;Archon&rdquo; (&ldquo;master&rdquo;), Yu-Peng Chen, whose music has reached over 2 billion streams, unveils a symphonic suite for piano and orchestra in 12 movements.
The Poem of Life&nbsp;will be released on September 25, 2026
Listen to&nbsp;Waltz of the Fireflies&nbsp;and&nbsp;Overture: The Flavors of Life&nbsp;<a href="http://dg.lnk.to/thepoemoflife">here</a>
Berlin,&nbsp;3 July&nbsp;2026 &mdash; Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;presents&nbsp;The Poem of Life, the new album by composer, pianist and producer&nbsp;Yu-Peng Chen. Known to a wide international audience for his work on the globally popular game&nbsp;Genshin Impact, his music has reached listeners around the world and accumulated over 2 billion streams.&nbsp;The Poem of Life&nbsp;will be released digitally, on CD and LP on&nbsp;25 September.
With this release, Chen turns to a more personal project: a symphonic suite for piano and orchestra in 12 movements, exploring different stages of life with a focus on reflection, expression and storytelling. The Poem of Life marks a new direction in his work, bringing together his experience in game music with a more intimate, concert-focused approach.
Recorded with the&nbsp;Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra&nbsp;under the baton of&nbsp;Zhang Liang, the album also stands as a powerful cultural statement, blending Western orchestral tradition with the expressive depth of Chinese musical heritage. Yu-Peng Chen himself appears as piano soloist on the recording and collaborates with pianist&nbsp;Yixuan Wei&nbsp;in selected works for two pianos. &nbsp;Traditional instruments such as guzheng, erhu, pipa, and sheng, alongside the voices of renowned Chinese opera singers&nbsp;Yi Li&nbsp;and&nbsp;Zhengzhong Zhou, reveal&nbsp;Chen&rsquo;s artistic heritage, bringing centuries of cultural memory into dialogue with a contemporary symphonic language. The project is further enriched by the presence of renowned violinist&nbsp;Daniel Hope, virtuoso mandolinist&nbsp;Avi Avital&nbsp;and cellist&nbsp;Philipp Schupelius&nbsp;as guest artists.
Conceived as a deeply reflective exploration of universal human experience,&nbsp;The Poem of Life&nbsp;traces an emotional and spiritual arc from birth to farewell. Through lyrical melodies and rich symphonic arrangements, Chen evokes the wonder of childhood, the trials of adulthood, and the serenity of later years&mdash;culminating in the final moments of life. As Chen explains, the album is intended as &ldquo;a vessel&rdquo; for the emotions that define the human experience, inviting listeners to reflect, remember, and reconnect with their own life stories.
With&nbsp;The Poem of Life, Yu-Peng Chen delivers an intimate work, showing his talent for musical storytelling. Bridging cultures, genres, and audiences, the album invites listeners on a shared human journey&mdash;one defined by beauty, reflection, and the enduring power of music.
&nbsp;
ABOUT Yu-Peng Chen
Yu-Peng Chen is an internationally celebrated composer, pianist, and producer whose work stands out for its rich melodic style and seamless fusion of Western orchestral traditions with diverse Asian musical influences. Best known for his widely acclaimed scores for the global hit game&nbsp;Genshin Impact, his music has reached vast audiences, generating billions of streams and earning him a devoted worldwide fanbase. A graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Chen has built a distinguished career across film, television, and gaming, receiving numerous awards and collaborating with leading orchestras such as the London Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. His compositions are noted for their emotional depth and cultural versatility, blending instruments and styles from regions including China, Japan, India, and the Middle East. In 2025, he made history as the first Chinese composer to sign with Deutsche Grammophon, marking a major milestone in his career and signalling a growing focus on large-scale orchestral works, including his album&nbsp;FANTASYLAND and upcoming projects.

Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhäuser  release a new album, Zwielicht

&ldquo;Hinterh&auml;user and Goerne utterly immerse themselves in the world of Schumann&rsquo;s&nbsp;Liederkreis, Op.&nbsp;39&rdquo;
S&uuml;ddeutsche Zeitung
From 1840, Schumann&rsquo;s &ldquo;Year of Song&rdquo;, to 1852 and his final song cycle
Zwielicht&nbsp;comes out on 24&nbsp;July 2026
Matthias Goerne, one of the world&rsquo;s leading Lieder singers, has recorded a new Schumann album for&nbsp;Deutsche&nbsp;Grammophon&nbsp;with pianist&nbsp;Markus Hinterh&auml;user. On&nbsp;Zwielicht&nbsp;(&ldquo;Twilight&rdquo;), they perform&nbsp; &nbsp;the&nbsp;Liederkreis, Op. 39, a cycle setting poems by Joseph von Eichendorff; three of the four&nbsp;Ges&auml;nge des Harfners&nbsp;from Op.&nbsp;98a (Lieder und Ges&auml;nge aus &ldquo;Wilhelm Meister&rdquo;) and the&nbsp;Gedichte der K&ouml;nigin Maria Stuart, Op. 135.&nbsp;Zwielicht&nbsp;will be released digitally and on CD on 24 July 2026.
Goerne and Hinterh&auml;user have been performing as a Lieder duo since 2014, notably in the acclaimed production of Schubert&rsquo;s&nbsp;Winterreise&nbsp;featuring video projections by artist William Kentridge which they toured all over the world. Between 2018 and 2022 their interpretations of the repertoire on&nbsp;Zwielicht&nbsp;graced the stages of the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Konzerthaus and Munich&rsquo;s Prinzregententheater, among many others. &ldquo;Goerne&rsquo;s voice offers solace to despairing souls,&rdquo; wrote&nbsp;Der Standard. The long-standing piano partner of Brigitte Fassbaender, Markus Hinterh&auml;user is also a sought-after interpreter of 20th-century music &ndash; from the Second Viennese School to Feldman and Nono. This summer, he and Goerne will present an all-Schubert programme at the 2026 Salzburg Festival.
The works on&nbsp;Zwielicht&nbsp;span twelve years of Schumann&rsquo;s song-writing career &ndash; from his miraculous&nbsp;Liederjahr, or &ldquo;Year of Song&rdquo;, to the health crisis he suffered in 1852. The composer wrote the Eichendorff&nbsp;Liederkreis&nbsp;within three weeks in May 1840. These 12 songs were among the total of around 140 he wrote over the course of that particular year, which also saw him finally able to marry Clara Wieck. While Heine&rsquo;s words encouraged a kind of febrile introspection from Schumann, Eichendorff&rsquo;s poetry inspired musical portrayals of Romantic landscapes in songs such as &ldquo;Mondnacht&rdquo; (&ldquo;Moonlit Night&rdquo;), &ldquo;Auf einer Burg&rdquo; (&ldquo;In a Castle&rdquo;) and the title track of this album, &ldquo;Zwielicht&rdquo;.
Schumann set to music the Harper&rsquo;s songs from Goethe&rsquo;s&nbsp;Wilhelm Meister&nbsp;in 1849, during the same period in which he was working on the&nbsp;Scenen aus Goethes Faust. The musical language is different here: lyricism gives way to a more questioning, analytical gaze; the songs of the wandering musician become painfully inward-looking soliloquies.
Composed in December 1852, Schumann&rsquo;s final song cycle, the&nbsp;Gedichte der K&ouml;nigin Maria Stuart, is even more austere. The five songs follow Mary Queen of Scots from her &ldquo;Farewell to France&rdquo; (&ldquo;Abschied von Frankreich&rdquo;) to a pre-execution prayer (&ldquo;Gebet&rdquo;). Schumann employs a recitative-like style in spare, direct music that faces death head on.
The latest addition to Matthias Goerne&rsquo;s acclaimed DG discography&nbsp;Zwielicht&nbsp;joins&nbsp;Beethoven Lieder&nbsp;(with Jan Lisiecki, 2020),&nbsp;Im Abendrot&nbsp;(with Seong-Jin Cho, 2021),&nbsp;Lieder&nbsp;(with Daniil Trifonov, 2022) and&nbsp;Schubert Revisited (with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, 2023) in what has become one of the most remarkable Lieder projects of our time.

Agnes Obel’s New Album,  The Meaning of Flowers, Arrives Today

&ldquo;My daughter&rsquo;s presence and energy colour everything on this album&rdquo; Agnes Obel
Listen to&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;<a href="https://dg.lnk.to/themeaningofflowers">here</a>
Berlin, 18&nbsp;September 2026.&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;is delighted to announce that&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers,&nbsp;Agnes Obel&rsquo;s first studio album since&nbsp;Myopia&nbsp;(2020), is&nbsp;out now in all formats. On&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;Obel explores the vivid sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy, finding inspiration in ideas about birth, growth and metamorphosis in the world around us, among other themes. Her 12 atmospheric tracks draw on a range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world&rsquo;s first named author) and the philosophical writings of Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the 80s and 90s. The album is dedicated to Obel&rsquo;s daughter: &ldquo;she who has changed me and raised me and taught me so much&rdquo;.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by the artist in her Berlin studio,&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;features Obel herself on vocals (some pitch-shifted), piano, keys, synths and samples, with guest musicians adding violin, viola, cello, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals to the mix.
&ldquo;The Meaning of Flowers&rdquo; was the first track written for the album. Its title came from Obel&rsquo;s reading of Coccia&rsquo;s&nbsp;The Life of Plants&nbsp;and&nbsp;Metamorphoses. As she said in a recent interview, &ldquo;Flowers are these tiny things that exist within an insanely huge and complex planet of mountains and oceans, but they also have their own hyper-complex biology &hellip; So, for me, the song had to be something small and beautiful, but enormous at the same time, in the title at least.&rdquo;
Blood so Red, about the primal experience of giving birth, was influenced by Enheduanna&rsquo;s hymns to Inanna &ndash; goddess of childbirth, love, sex, song and war.&nbsp;Gemini&nbsp;and&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;too were inspired by Enheduanna, but also by Obel&rsquo;s awareness of a complex universe &ldquo;held together by the beauty and power of life and metamorphosis&rdquo;, again based on ideas discussed by Coccia.
The other influences on the album include 70s movie scores (Don&rsquo;t Look Down) and Danish pop (Never Been), while its only instrumental track (Tangerine) features sax arpeggios, celesta and piano, their upbeat combination of sounds forming a &ldquo;bubbly new wondrous friendship&rdquo;.
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash; forthcoming tour dates:
24 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane &middot;&nbsp;26 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Hamer Hall, Melbourne
27 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Sydney Opera House &middot;&nbsp;29 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; New Zealand International Convention Centre, Auckland
2027:
21 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Tonhalle, D&uuml;sseldorf &middot;&nbsp;23 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Olympia, Paris
27 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Royal Theatre Carr&eacute;, Amsterdam &middot;&nbsp;28 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Muziekgebouw, Eindhoven
29 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht &middot;&nbsp;1 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Sentrum Scene, Oslo
2 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Konserthuset, Stockholm &middot;&nbsp;3 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Operaen, Copenhagen
13 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Teatro Duse, Bologna &middot;&nbsp;14 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
16 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; B&acirc;timent des Forces Motrices, Geneva &middot;&nbsp;17 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Halle aux Grains, Toulouse
19 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Paral&middot;lel 62, Barcelona &middot;&nbsp;20 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; The Music Station, Madrid
23 Oct&nbsp;&ndash; Theatro Circo, Braga &middot;&nbsp;2 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Bozar, Brussels
3 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Stadsschouwburg, Antwerp &middot;&nbsp;4 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Eventim Apollo, London
6 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Amphith&eacute;&acirc;tre 3000, Lyon &middot;&nbsp;9 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Liederhalle (Beethoven-Saal), Stuttgart
10 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Meistersingerhalle, Nuremberg &middot;&nbsp;12 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Laeiszhalle, Hamburg
13 Nov&nbsp;&ndash; Uber Eats Music Hall, Berlin
2027 European tour tickets are on sale now.
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash;&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers
Books and poetry read while making the album
Fiction and non-fiction:
Arendt, Hannah,&nbsp;The Human Condition, 1958
Banks, Jennifer,&nbsp;Natality:&nbsp;Toward a Philosophy of Birth, 2023
Bowen-Moore, Patricia,&nbsp;Hannah Arendt&rsquo;s Philosophy of Natality, 1989
Butler, Octavia,&nbsp;Dawn, 1987
Cage, John,&nbsp;Silence: Lectures and Writings, 1961
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;The Life of Plants:&nbsp;A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2019
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;Metamorphoses, 2021
Jones, Lucy,&nbsp;Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, 2023
Morton, Timothy,&nbsp;All Art Is Ecological, 2018
N&oslash;rg&aring;rd, Per,&nbsp;Artikler 1962&ndash;1982, Ivan Hansen (ed.), 1982
Rasmussen, Karl Aage,&nbsp;Musik i det tyvende &aring;rhundrede: en fort&aelig;lling, 2011
Poetry:
Akbar, Kaveh (ed.),&nbsp;The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine, 2022
Christensen, Inger,&nbsp;Samlede Digte, 2009
Enheduanna,&nbsp;Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World&rsquo;s First Author, trans. Sophus Helle, 2023 (orig. c.2300 BCE)
Graham, Jorie,&nbsp;The Dream of the Unified Field, 2002
Kurtz, Ella; King, Simone; Delahunty, Claire (eds.),&nbsp;What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing, 2021

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