In the 20th century, composers Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, and John Cage each created a pause in music—a caesura—by exploring life’s contrasts: the noise of the outside world and the quiet of inner reflection.

Satie balanced cabaret flair with meditative stillness. Poulenc exposed the cabaret’s charm and underlying despair before turning to sacred music. Cage broke with tradition, using experimental simplicity to draw listeners inward and awaken deeper listening.

A journey inward—a Room for Listening.

Booklet: EN, NL, FR

Composed between 2006 and 2010, Frederic Rzewski’s Nanosonatas are a cycle of 56 brief piano pieces, structured into eight books. Conceived after his vast work The Road, these sonatas focus instead on concision, restraint, and the poetics of incompletion. Each nanosonata offers a fleeting glimpse—suggesting larger ideas, then stopping abruptly, like a character in Tolstoy evoked in just a few lines.

Despite their brevity, the Nanosonatas contain striking variety: echoes of Scarlatti, Schumann, Shostakovich, folk tunes, protest songs, and even boxing gestures all contribute to a vivid and unpredictable sound world. Deeply personal and philosophical, the cycle embraces imperfection as an aesthetic, resisting closure while reflecting on time, memory, and fragility.

Rzewski saw these works as part of a living keyboard tradition—from Frescobaldi to the present—and a continuation of the composer-performer lineage. Pianist Daan Vandewalle’s performance, shaped by years of artistic dialogue with Rzewski, captures both the intimate nuance and radical spirit of this masterful late work.

Booklet: EN

A landmark in contemporary piano literature, The Road is Frederic Rzewski’s epic cycle—nearly nine hours of music composed between 1995 and 2003. Conceived as a “novel for piano,” it fuses storytelling, improvisation, political reflection, and virtuosity across 65 pieces. With references ranging from jazz and folk to Tolstoy and Gogol, Rzewski maps a musical journey as unpredictable and rich as life itself.

Pianist Daan Vandewalle, Rzewski’s close collaborator and dedicatee of many works, offers a deeply informed interpretation shaped by years of dialogue with the composer. His performance brings out the full spectrum of Rzewski’s vision—intimate, radical, and defiantly human.

Booklet: EN

On the occasion of Maurice Ravel’s 150th anniversary in 2025, Un Tombeau pour Ravel presents a musical journey interweaving the styles of Ravel and the French Baroque, especially the works of François Couperin. The program of this CD revolves around Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, composed during World War I as both a tribute to Baroque composers and a memorial for his comrades lost in the war. This recording includes original works and carefully crafted arrangements for harpsichord, tracing influences from 18th-century French music, illustrating Ravel’s inspirations at the time of the piano cycle’s creation, and exploring the tombeau as an homage genre.

Booklet: EN, FR, ES

Every country has a unique tradition of organ music, shaped alongside the instrument’s development through the centuries. Yet, much of this organ literature remains less familiar to wider audiences. To celebrate the restoration of the Klais organ at the Cathedral of Our Saviour in Bruges, Titular Organist Ignace Michiels presents a rich selection of Flemish organ works spanning approximately a century, from 1884 to 1961. Beginning with the warm Romantic tones of Joseph Callaerts, Michiels invites listeners to explore the works of composers such as André De Vaere, Edgar Tinel, Flor Peeters, Camiel Van Hulse, and Herman Roelstraete, while also demonstrating the splendors of this remarkable Klais organ.

Booklet: EN, FR, NL

‘Oxalys and the New World’: in its latest CD recording, Oxalys delves into American masterpieces for chamber music ensemble. From Pulitzer Prize laureate Aaron Copland with his nature fresco Appalachian Spring to Minimal Music icon John Adams’ mythical Shaker Loops and jazz idol Wynton Marsalis’ funky and groovin’ Meeelaan. Three unknown facets of a flourishing and inspiring musical culture, as always virtuosically captured by Oxalys, the jewel of our Belgian chamber music ensembles.

Booklet: EN, FR, NL, DE

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote 61 works for solo piano, of which only nine were published before the middle of the 1930s. The last of these publications was the Opus Clavicembalisticum, a work of unprecedented complexity and it is considered one of the longest and most complicated pieces ever written for solo piano. It shows the composers desire to push the boundaries of what is possible in piano music and remains a fascinating and challenging work within the realm of 20th-century classical music.

The pianist Daan Vandewalle is an internationally acclaimed performer of 20th and 21st century piano works who has been teaching piano at the Ghent Conservatory since 2001. He is one of the few pianists in the world to have mastered the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum by Sorabji, which he performs in this recording in over 5 hours on 5 CDs

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

In the years 1575-77, Venice was struck by a plague of unusual violence, killing a third of the population in just two years. To stave off the plague which the Venetians felt was caused by the wrath of God, they began already in 1575 with the construction of the beautiful Chiesa del Redentore. At the consecration of this church and at later ceremonies, music by the best composers linked to St Mark’s, such as Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, was performed. Some of these works can be heard on the present recording. Furthermore, the American composer Robert Kyr was commissioned to contribute a new work intended to create a musical and emotional link between the plague in the 16th as well as the pandemic in the 21st centuries: Vigil: Darkness into light, is a bridge from our days to the music of the Renaissance.

This evocative music is presented by the outstanding singers and instrumentalists of the ensemble Concerto Palatino, including Hana Blažíková, Alex Potter and Veronika Skuplik, under the direction of Bruce Dickey.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Lyrics: LAT/EN/IT, EN

It is no secret that twentieth century composers revered Bach for his contrapuntal genius. Anton Webern said himself: “You find everything in Bach: the development of cyclic forms, the conquest of the realm of tonality—the attempt at a summation of the highest order.”

By presenting Bach and Webern side by side, the Richter Ensemble strives to highlight hidden connections between the two composers. The program begins with Bach’s final work, The Art of Fugue, where Bach is at the apogee of his career. Bach displays his mastery of counterpoint in each fugue while expressing starkly different human emotions from ecstasy to absolute desperation, with succinctness and purpose.

In the works for string quartet that span his career, Anton Webern utilizes the same traditional contrapuntal techniques that with the utmost concision grasp toward the ideal. Although inarguably modern in a style that stretches from free atonality to dodecaphonic, the expression is just as varied and powerful.

By interpreting these works on gut strings, the Richter Ensemble enables a new perspective, innovative experiences and a unique soundscape.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

Published in 1820, Paganini’s 24 Capricci met with immediate success and a reputation for being “unplayable”. Indeed, with the Capricci, Paganini elaborates and dares. The technical boundary is crossed, and the violin becomes an expressive vehicle to explore new musical perspectives. In this recording, the use of specific gut strings, of historical bows and the reconstruction of Paganini’s posture, bring to life an aesthetic that does not stop at pure instrumental virtuosity and explores musical language in its theatricality. No devilries, the violin plays, dances, sighs, laughs, amuses, enchants…

Booklet: EN, FR, DE, IT