New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 4th May 2018
The Trio Wanderer return to Haydn after nearly a decade’s hiatus, veteran lyric tenor Christoph Prégardien moves into baritone repertoire with an album of German baroque cantatas, Testament release a compilation of 1960s BBC broadcasts of Schubert lieder by Britten and Pears, and Decca and Deutsche Grammophon pay large-scale memorial tributes to two great musicians whose centenaries fall in 2018.
For his seventieth recording on Chandos, Yan Pascal Tortelier presents Roussel’s rarely-recorded 1910 depiction of his experiences in India whilst serving in the French Navy, as well as Pour une fête de printemps (originally intended for inclusion in his Second Symphony) and the Suite in F from 1926, which received its premiere under Serge Koussevitzky in Paris.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
John Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music & Absolute Jest
Doric String Quartet, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Peter Oundjian
This is only the second recording of Adams’s Beethoven-inspired scherzo Absolute Jest, scored for large orchestra and amplified string quartet and commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to mark their centenary in 2012; the RSNO celebrate their own 125th birthday with this album.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21
Yeol Eum Son (piano), Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
This young South Korean pianist took Second Prize at both the 2011 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition and the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, and this interpretation of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 was described in last week’s Times as ‘a model of clarity and fleetness’. Captured in 2016, the concerto is also notable for being the last recording made by Sir Neville Marriner, who died the following year.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Their first volume of Haydn Trios (released in 2009) was praised by Gramophone for its ‘flair and imagination’ and described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘marvellously exhilarating’; now the Trio Wanderer tackles trios nos. 27, 32, 35, 40 and 41.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Page explores some of the orchestral and operatic music which the young Mozart and his family are likely to have heard during their year-long stay in London in 1764-5 (including arias by long-forgotten English composers such as George Rush and William Bates, and London-based Italians such as Giovanni Battista Pescetti). You can read Katherine’s interview with him about the project here.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Dutch baritone explores a century of Russian song, including music by Glinka, Dargomïzhsky, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Borodin; his cellist brother contributes selections from Prokofiev’s ballet Chout (‘The Tale of the Buffoon’) in arrangements by Roman Sapozhnikov.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Previously unreleased on vinyl or CD, this all-Schubert programme is drawn from the BBC broadcasts which Britten and Pears made in 1959, 1961 and 1964, and includes ‘Mein!’ from Die schone Mullerin, Auf dem Wasser zu singen, Der Musensohn, Nacht und Träume and (in the original English, from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline) the serenade Horch, horch! Die Lerch!.
Available Format: CD
Bach & Telemann: Cantatas for Baritone
Christoph Prégardien (baritone), Vox Orchestra, Lorenzo Ghirlanda
Now in his early sixties, the German lyric tenor is taking a leaf out of Plácido Domingo’s book by venturing into baritone repertoire (he took on the role of Christus rather than the Evangelist in a recent Matthew Passion, though he’ll continue to sing some of his tenor signature-works over the coming seasons); this recording includes Bach’s Kreuzstabkantate and Telemann’s Was gibst du den, o meine Seele.
Available Format: CD
With the centenary of the great Swedish dramatic soprano’s birth just a fortnight away, Decca release this 79-CD box of 27 complete opera recordings, including Un ballo in maschera, Elektra and Salome under Sir Georg Solti, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Don Giovanni under Karl Böhm, and both conductors’ Ring Cycles, plus DVDs of Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera from 1980 and the acclaimed 1964 documentary The Golden Ring.
Available Format: 79 CDs + 2 DVD Videos
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
