Coming Soon,
Prokofiev from Martha Argerich & Sergei Babayan and other forthcoming highlights
We’ve spent much of February marvelling at Marc-Andre Hamelin and Leif Ove Andsnes’s four-handed accounts of Stravinsky, and the trend for virtuoso pianistic collaborations on Russian twentieth-century repertoire looks set to continue with Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan’s Prokofiev for Two, due out on Deutsche Grammophon on 23rd March.
Spring will also bring superb new recordings of two of Vivaldi’s most popular works: The Four Seasons from Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque, and the Gloria from Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti (with Julia Lezhneva and Franco Fagioli as the soloists). Further down the line, advance-copies of two fascinating concept-albums have caught our eyes and ears over the past week or so: an original take on the Orpheus legend from Cleveland-based baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire and tenor Karim Sulayman, and an imaginative but scholarly reconstruction of the eight-year-old Mozart’s visit to London in the 1760s from Ian Page and The Mozartists.
Argerich joins forces with Armenian-American pianist Sergei Babayan for a programme of his own transcriptions of music by Prokofiev for two pianos including excerpts from War and Peace and Romeo and Juliet. We wondered at first whether Tchaikovsky also featured – but the Eugene Onegin and Queen of Spades here are indeed Prokofiev’s, written for an abortive play and film-score respectively.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
With his astonishing two-piano version of The Rite of Spring with Leif Ove Andsnes still ringing in our ears, Marc-André Hamelin turns his attention to the late works of Schubert, a composer who hasn’t featured much in his discography to date: The Philadelphia Inquirer praised a recent performance of the Sonata as ‘utterly distinctive to him and rendered in a manner that could only have been cultivated over multiple decades at the keyboard’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The British baroque violinist and Vivaldi specialist (who won BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Awards for her recording of L’estro armónico a couple of years ago) celebrates her fiftieth birthday by recording the composer’s best-known work with her one-per-part ensemble Brecon Baroque; also includes the concertos Il riposo, L’Amoroso, and Il Grosso Mogul.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Vivaldi: Gloria
Julia Lezhneva (soprano), Franco Fagioli (countertenor) I Barocchisti, Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera, Diego Fasolis
Another of the ‘Red Priest’’s most popular scores gets fresh, vibrant treatment from Fasolis and I Barocchisti next month. The two star singers also contribute one solo work each: Fagioli takes the psalm-setting Nisi Dominus, and Lezhneva the luminous motet Nulla in mundo (heavily embellished by her trademark pearly coloratura!).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bartók: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Renaud Capuçon (violin), London Symphony Orchestra, François-Xavier Roth
Following his splendid advocacy of three works written especially for him by Pascal Dusapin, Bruno Mantovani and Wolfgang Rihm, the French violinist looks back to the two of the great concertos of the early twentieth century; the LSO are directed by François-Xavier Roth, who was appointed Principal Guest Conductor last May.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Bergen orchestra have form in Berlioz (as evinced in their splendid collection of overtures under Andrew Davis in 2013); here they’re joined by Lawrence Power for the Byron-inspired ‘symphony with viola’ (rejected by its dedicatee Paganini as not starry enough!), plus Weber’s Andante & Rondo Ungarese and Invitation to the Dance.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lindberg and the Liverpool Philharmonic are among many of the orchestras paying homage to Bernstein in their current season, with a Chichester Psalms, Symphony No. 1 and dances from West Side Story coming up; their first recording together includes the latter work, the overture to Candide, and dances from Fancy Free and On The Town alongside the suite from Elia Kazan’s classic 1954 film.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Subtitled ‘I love you to hell and back’, this retelling of the Orpheus myth weaves together music by seventeenth-century Italian composers including Monteverdi, Caccini, Landi and Merula and presents the charismatic Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman in his recording debut.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ian Page and a crack team of young singers explore the music which Mozart is likely to have heard during his childhood stay in the English capital in 1764-5 (including arias by JC Bach, Giovanni Battista Pescetti, Thomas Arne, William Bates and George Rush) as well as his own first symphony and concert-aria, composed shortly after his return home.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
