Coming Soon,
Igor Levit's 'Life Album' and other forthcoming instrumental and concerto highlights
Stand-out releases on the instrumental and concerto front for the autumn include an autobiographical album from Igor Levit, Bartók and Enescu from Vilde Frang, Schubert and Chopin sonatas from Steven Isserlis and Dénes Várjon, and an intriguing mixture of the old and the new from guitarist Sean Shibe.
Like his astonishing triptych of variations in 2015, Levit’s musical autobiography (his first album in three years) features music by Bach (Busoni’s transcription of the Chaconne from the second violin partita) and his friend and collaborator Frederic Rzewski (‘A Mensch’, from the 2014 suite Dreams). The programme also includes two of Liszt’s Wagner transcriptions, and music by Schumann and jazz legend Bill Evans. Released 5th October.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The British cellist tackles two nineteenth-century sonatas for the first time on record, with Dénes Várjon performing on an Érard piano dating from around the time of the Chopin sonata’s composition. The programme also includes a nocturne by Auguste Franchomme (who edited Chopin’s Sonata), Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise brillante, and Isserlis’s own transcriptions of his Nie Ma Czego Trzeba and Schubert’s Nacht und Träume. Released 28th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
For his second solo album on Delphian, the young Scottish guitarist (who won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award earlier this year) juxtaposes lute music from the Wemyss, Rowallan and Straloch manuscripts with works by James MacMillan, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, and Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, all in his own arrangements. Released 21st September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Liszt and Bach also make appearances on the Chinese pianist’s programme of popular classics, which includes the Rákóczy March, La Campanella, the Grand galop chromatique, and the Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3. There’s also a handful of Chopin favourites, Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca, a transcription of ‘Jupiter’ from Holst’s The Planets, and Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. Released 28th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Volume One of Ilić’s ‘rediscovery’ of the Czech composer’s piano music was warmly received, with The Arts Desk praising his ‘technical brilliance and warmth’ and International Piano describing him as ‘wonderfully attuned to the style and content of the music’. This second instalment explores Bach’s impact on Reicha, and centres on the thirteen Études dans le genre fugué, Op. 97, which were inspired by The Well-Tempered Clavier. Released 7th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This postscript to Howard’s monumental Liszt project (which was issued in 2011 and ran to 99 discs) rounds up the various alternative versions and newly discovered or recently published works which have come to light over the intervening seven years, including early drafts of Den Zypressen der Villa d’Este, an incomplete fantasy on Rossini’s Maometto II, and the elusive Kavallerie-Geschwindmarsch, unearthed after a three-decade search! Released 28th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5
Nicholas Angelich (piano), Insula Orchestra, Laurence Equilbey
Reviewing a live performance of the Fourth Concerto from these artists in Paris a couple of years ago, BachTrack praised Angelich’s ‘warm playing’ and the ‘meringue lightness’ of his first-movement cadenza; as on this recording, the American pianist played on a Pleyel concert grand dating from half a century after Beethoven’s death. Released 21st September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5
Bertrand Chamayou (piano), Orchestre National de France, Emmanuel Krivine
As well as two of the concertos, Chamayou explores the composer’s little-known works for solo piano, including selections from the Etudes Opp. 52 and 111, and the Valse nonchalante, written just two years after the ‘Egyptian’ concerto. Look out for Katherine’s interview with him about the connections between Saint-Saëns and Ravel (whose complete piano music he recorded to great acclaim in 2016) in the coming weeks. Released 7th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lortie also includes the Second Concerto (written at top speed for Anton Rubinstein in 1868) in this first of two projected volumes of Saint-Saëns’s complete concertos. His recording of the Poulenc Piano Concerto with the same forces in 2015 impressed Gramophone with the ‘clearly defined and zestfully articulated’ playing on display from soloist and orchestra alike. Released 7th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 1 & Enescu: Octet for strings
Vilde Frang (violin), Orchestre de Radio France, Mikko Franck
Frang couples two youthful works by composers born in 1881 in present-day Romania: Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (reviewing her recording of his solo sonata in 2011, Gramophone observed that ‘her playing has the necessary physicality for Bartók, without ever appearing forced’) and Enescu’s String Octet – composed in 1900 but not premiered until 1909 due to its technical demands. Released 7th September.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
American Concertos
Baiba Skride (violin), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Skride performs two pieces by composers associated with Hollywood, both of which were premiered by Jascha Heifetz – Korngold’s evergreen 1947 concerto and Miklós Rózsa’s less well-known but equally captivating work from 1953. Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story complete the programme. Released 31st August.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
