Coming Soon,
Barenboim plays Debussy and other forthcoming highlights
The first six weeks of 2018 are looking particularly enticing in terms of piano and operatic recitals, with two veteran pianists tackling repertoire that’s new to them on disc (Daniel Barenboim getting in early with a Debussy anniversary album, and Murray Perahia tackling a Beethoven masterpiece that he’s been working towards for decades), and Sonya Yoncheva and Franco Fagioli both devoting albums to composers who’ve played pivotal roles in their careers to date. There’s also Prokofiev from Lisa Batiashvili, and assured and eclectic debut discs from two artists who established themselves as major talents in 2017: lyric mezzo Anna Stéphany and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Though he’s conducted much of the orchestral music, Debussy hasn’t figured prominently in Barenboim’s discography as a pianist until now (one notable exception being his account En blanc et noir with Martha Argerich, generally regarded as the highlight of their Live in Buenos Aires album last year). Here he performs Book One of the Préludes, Estampes, Clair de Lune, La plus que lente, and the Élégie.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Another early commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Debussy’s death: Martineau’s series of the complete songs comes to a luminous close with this recital from one of the UK’s pre-eminent lyric sopranos, ranging from the 1881 Tragedie to the composer’s swan-song Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons from 1915.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The veteran pianist pairs Beethoven's popular Moonlight Sonata with the mighty Hammerklavier, a work which he describes as 'the closest approximation we have to the way [Beethoven] improvised'. Though Perahia first performed the sonata in his 20s, he only recently ended a four-decade sabbatical from playing it in public, and this is the first time he's tackled it on record - a fitting way to mark the 200th anniversary of the piece's completion.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sonya Yoncheva - The Verdi Album
Sonya Yoncheva (soprano), Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra, Massimo Zanetti
The Bulgarian soprano (who debuts as Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year’s Eve) has had a string of successes as Violetta over the past few years, and here she moves into heavier territory with arias from Otello, La forza del Destino, Simon Boccanegra, Don Carlo, Attila, Nabucco, Il Trovatore and Luisa Miller - she returns to the Met to sing the latter role in spring 2018.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following her outstanding accounts of the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky last December, the Georgian violinist takes on both of Prokofiev's concertos, supplemented by short pieces from Cinderella, Romeo & Juliet and The Love of Three Oranges in new orchestrations by her father Tamás.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The phenomenal Argentine countertenor performs a dozen arias spanning Handel’s entire career as an operatic composer, including favourites such as Ariodante’s Scherza, infida and Dopo notte (written for the great castrato Carestini, but now almost exclusively the province of mezzos), Serse’s Ombra mai fu and Crude furie, and Rinaldo’s Cara sposa and Venti, turbini.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Magnificats from three members of the Bach dynasty: Johann Sebastian’s hugely popular BWV243, Carl Philipp Emanuel’s setting from 1749 (performed here in its revision from thirty years later), and his half-brother Johann Christian’s far less familiar 1760 version.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Two titans of the keyboard join forces for Stravinsky’s own arrangement of the Rite for two pianos, plus the Concerto for two pianos from the mid-1930s, and transcriptions of Madrid (by the composer's son Soulima), Tango and Circus Polka (by Victor Babin).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Padmore's first recording of Schubert's bleakest song-cycle (with Paul Lewis, in 2009) won a Gramophone Award, and now he revisits the work with fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout - a partnership which has been praised by BBC Music Magazine for its 'almost perfect unity of approach' (review of Dichterliebe and Liederkreis Op. 24).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For his debut album on Decca, the eighteen-year-old cellist flanks Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto (the work which propelled him to victory in the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition, conducted here by the CBSO's dynamic new music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla) with pieces by musicians who've inspired him since childhood, including Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley and Pablo Casals.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
2017 has been a breakthrough year for this wonderful Anglo-French mezzo, with sensational debuts at Glyndebourne as Sesto (La clemenza di Tito - she returns in 2018 as the Giulio Cesare character of the same name!) and the Royal Opera House as Octavian, as well as singing Charlotte opposite Juan Diego Flórez in Zurich; for her first solo album she tackles Berio’s Folk-Songs, Falla’s Psyche and Ravel’s Histoires naturelles.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Riccardo Muti ushers in the Viennese New Year for the fifth time in his career – the concert will be broadcast live to over 90 countries, and the programme will feature a rarity by Austro-Hungarian composer and bandmaster Alphons Czibulka as well as the perennial favourites by the Strauss Family.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
