New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 21st September 2018
Today’s new releases include a recital of Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Wolf and Alma Mahler from Barbara Hannigan and Reinbert De Leeuw, Australian tenor Stuart Skelton’s debut solo album of Wagner, Griffes and Barber, an all-French programme from pianist Hélène Grimaud, and a collection of superb live recordings from Martha Argerich and friends, made at the Lugano Festival over a fourteen-year period.
Following the runaway success of her Grammy-winning Crazy Girl Crazy on Alpha last year (which centred on Berg’s Lulu), the Canadian soprano tackles Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder alongside Webern’s Fünf Lieder nach Gedichten von R. Dehmel, Wolf’s Mignon-Lieder, and songs by Zemlinsky, Schoenberg and Alma Mahler
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Grimaud conceived this album as a means of ‘exploring memory as a state of consciousness common to us all, and discovering paths and features of that meditation, suggested by music’; the programme includes music by Debussy, Satie, Chopin, Silvestrov, and her friend and collaborator Nitin Sawhney.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, 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.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Herreweghe and his Belgian choir perform two works written for the Feast of the Reformation (Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott and Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild) and the early ‘Easter cantata’ Christ lag in Todesbanden; previous releases in the series have been described as ‘lean and alert’ (BBC Music Magazine on Ach süßer Trost!) and ‘deftly poised and dancing’ (The Observer on Ich elender Mensch).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Shining Knight: Wagner, Barber and Griffes
Stuart Skelton (tenor) West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Asher Fisch
Somewhat surprisingly, this is the debut solo recording from the Australian heldentenor, recognised as one of the world’s leading Parsifals and Siegmunds: excerpts from both roles feature here, as well as arias from Rienzi and Lohengrin, Wagner’s Wesendonk-Lieder, Charles Griffes’s Three Poems of Fiona Macleod, and (possibly in the interests of word-play!) Samuel Barber’s Sure on this shining night.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Danish String Quartet (who were shortlisted for a Gramophone Award last year for their recording of Adès, Nørgård & Abrahamsen) embark on a new project which will see them presenting Beethoven’s late quartets alongside a related Bach fugue and a later work which draws inspiration Beethoven; this first volume couples Beethoven's Op. 127 with Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 15.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Peruvian tenor performs a selection of popular songs from his home country, Brazil, Spain and Colombia, including Carlos Gardel’s Volver, Tomás Méndez’s Cucurrucucú paloma, Ary Barroso’s Aquarela do Brasil, Joseíto Fernández’s Guantanamera, and Consuelo Velázquez’s Bésame Mucho.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande celebrate their centenary with a twentieth-century triptych: Debussy’s ‘poème dansé’ Jeux, Ligeti’s Melodien für orchester, and Richard Strauss’s Nutcracker-esque Schlagobers Suite, taken from a ballet in which a child celebrating his confirmation in a Viennese cake-shop falls into sugar-rush induced hallucinations!
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The American countertenor (whose previous recording credits include Jake Heggie’s Great Scott and the Metropolitan Opera’s baroque pasticcio The Enchanted Island) makes his solo album debut with an eclectic programme of music by Handel and Philip Glass – the title-role in Glass’s Akhnaten and Handel’s Giulio Cesare have figured prominently in his stage repertoire over the past couple of seasons.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jonas Kaufmann: Live from the Waldbühne Berlin (DVD)
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Anita Rachvelishvili (mezzo); Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Jochen Rieder
Recorded earlier this summer, this ‘night under the stars’ with the German tenor includes operatic arias by Ponchielli, Puccini and Mascagni and popular Italian songs such as Torna a Surriento, Mattinata, Volare, Core ‘ngrato and ‘Parla più piano’; Georgian dramatic mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili joins him for Santuzza and Turiddu’s great confrontation from Cavalleria rusticana.
Available Format: DVD Video
22 discs of live recordings made between at the Swiss festival between 2002 and 2016; Argerich’s distinguished guests include Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Gidon Kremer, and fellow pianists Stephen Kovacevich, Nelson Goerner, Maria João Pires and Piotr Anderszewski, Featured composes include Mozart, Bartók, Shostakovich, Ravel, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Janáček and Lutosławski.
Available Formats: 22 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
