Just under a month before the revival opens at this year’s Festival, Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed 2017 Bayreuth production of Die Meistersinger (starring Michael Volle as Hans Sachs and Klaus-Florian Vogt as Walther von Stolzing) will be released on DVD and blu-ray – the second instalment in Deutsche Grammophon’s ongoing partnership with the Festspielhaus, following Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s controversial Parsifal last year. Another promising recording made last summer is Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s La clemenza di Tito from Baden-Baden, which will be released two days before the Canadian conductor records Die Zauberflöte in the same location with Rolando Villazón as Papageno (yes, you read that correctly!), Vogt taking a pre-Bayreuth breather as Tamino, and Christiane Karg as Pamina.
Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 ‘The Year 1905‘
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
The third instalment of Nelsons’s superb Shostakovich cycle was recorded live at Symphony Hall Boston in autumn 2017 (No. 11, which the orchestra were performing for the first time in their history) and spring 2018 (No. 4); The Boston Globe described the performance of the latter symphony as ‘overwhelming in its intensity’.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito
Rolando Villazón, Marina Rebeka, Joyce DiDonato, Tara Erraught, Regula Mühlemann, Adam Plachetka; Chamber Orchestra of Europe, RIAS Kammerchor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The fifth volume of the Canadian conductor’s Mozart opera project was recorded live in concert in Baden-Baden last summer; Marina Rebeka (a late replacement for Sonya Yoncheva) makes a formidable series debut as the scheming Vitellia, whilst Joyce DiDonato (who made a stunning Donna Elvira on the 2012 Don Giovanni) sings her first Sesto on disc.
Available format: Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Broadway
Renée Fleming (soprano)
Fresh from playing a ‘delightful, refreshingly hedonistic’ Nettie Fowler in Carousel on Broadway, Fleming sings hits from shows including The King and I, A Little Night Music, The Music Man, The Sound of Music, plus ‘Loneliness of Evening’ – a song which was cut from South Pacific before its Broadway opening and is omitted from the 1958 film.
Available format: Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Come to Me in My Dreams
Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo), Joseph Middleton (piano)
Britten’s complete Charm of Lullabies and Tippett’s Songs for Ariel are flanked by songs by composers including Ivor Gurney, Rebecca Clarke, Herbert Howells, Frank Bridge (who supplies the title-track!) and Mark-Anthony Turnage in this nocturnal programme of English song, which Connolly and Middleton will perform at the BBC Proms on 6th August.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
The Princess & the Bear
Laurence Perkins (bassoon), Sarah Watts (clarinet)
This quirky recital takes its title from Richard Strauss’s late ‘Duet-Concertino’ (written at around the same time as the Oboe Concerto and the Four Last Songs, and based on the fairy-tale Beauty and the Beast with a dash of Homer’s Odyssey!), and also includes Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio Op. 38 and Glinka’s Trio pathétique.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
