New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 7th September 2018
Today’s new releases include an all-Bach recital from German baritone Benjamin Appl and Concerto Köln, a tremendous live recording of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town from Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, Chopin Ballades from Leif Ove Andsnes, and the complete Brahms symphonies from Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin.
The British cellist and conductor Paul Watkins has a special affinity with English music, and here records the Finzi concerto for the first time. Also includes the baroque-influenced Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra (with Louis Lortie as soloist), the early Nocturne (inspired by New Year’s Eve, which Finzi described as ‘the saddest time of the year’), and the popular Eclogue for piano and strings.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bernstein: Wonderful Town
Danielle de Niese, Alysha Umphress, Nathan Gunn; London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Sir Simon Rattle
Rattle first recorded Bernstein’s boisterous paean to the city that never sleeps back in 1998 with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, but this live recording (made at the Barbican a few days before Christmas 2017) wins hands-down for sheer sass and Broadway chutzpah: the LSO trumpets and saxophones give the John Wilson Orchestra a run for their money, and the riotous conga almost sparked a Friday afternoon dance-off in the Presto office…
Available Format: SACD
Like his mentor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Appl is proving to be a fine interpreter of Bach as well as a thoughtful lieder-singer; this collection of sacred arias includes ‘Mache dich’ and ‘Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder’ from the St Matthew Passion and excerpts from the cantatas Tönet, ihr Pauken, Schwingt freudig euch empor and Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet!, plus ‘Bist du bei mir’ and ‘Jesu bleibet meine Freude‘.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following his ‘unique, distinct and extraordinary’ (Gramophone) album of Philip Glass last year, the Icelandic pianist turns to music which he describes as having ‘the potential to feel more or less as new today as it did 300 years ago’ with this collection of chorale preludes, excerpts from The Well-Tempered Clavier, and two- and three-part inventions.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded in the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin last October, this is only the second complete Brahms cycle on disc from both conductor and orchestra: Barenboim recorded the symphonies with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1993, and the Staatskapelle Berlin with Otmar Suitner in the mid-1980s.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Though she was hugely prolific, the English composer (1921-1999) remains woefully under-represented on disc: this collection includes her Second and Fourth Symphonies (written in 1945 and 1972 respectively), Knight in Armour (a tone-poem which was premiered at the Proms in 1942), and the Song for Orchestra from 1948.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Gounod: Le tribut de Zamora
Judith van Wanroij, Jennifer Holloway, Edgaras Montvidas, Tassis Christoyannis; Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Hervé Niquet
First performed in Paris in 1881, Gounod’s final work for the stage sets a libretto which was originally offered to Verdi, with the action taking place in ninth-century Spain; though the soprano aria ‘Ce Sarasin disait’ was a favourite of Joan Sutherland and the Danse Grecque was recorded by her husband Richard Bonynge, this is the first complete commercial recording of a work which quickly fell into obscurity despite being well-received at its premiere.
Available Formats: CD + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As well as Stenhammar’s mighty Second Symphony (informed by a self-taught crash-course in counterpoint which the composer undertook in the early 1910s), this recording also includes the incidental music for Strindberg’s Ett drömspel ('A Dream Play') in the 1970 concert-version by fellow Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg. Lindberg’s 2014 recording of Stenhammar’s Serenade was described by Gramophone as ‘a marvellous disc’.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This first instalment of Saint-Saëns’s complete concertos includes the Second Concerto (composed at top speed for Anton Rubinstein in 1868) and the relatively under-recorded First, which the 23-year-old composer wrote for Marie Jaëll in 1858. Lortie's 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.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Andsnes pairs the complete Ballades with Nocturnes Nos. 4, 13 and 17 in his first all-Chopin album since his 1992 set of the complete sonatas on Erato, recorded when he was just 21; reviewing a recent recital including two of the Ballades, the Financial Times observed that ‘Andsnes brings to Chopin a classical sensibility allied to the most ethereal of touches’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
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 Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
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