Coming Soon,
Norma from the Metropolitan Opera and other forthcoming highlights
November highlights include a superbly-sung and traditionally-staged Norma from the Metropolitan Opera, period-instrument Debussy from Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth, the continuation of Naïve’s ambitious Vivaldi Edition, and Mozart from Seong-Jin Cho, the winner of the 2015 International Chopin Competition.
Bellini: Norma
Sondra Radvanovsky, Joyce DiDonato, Joseph Calleja, Matthew Rose The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Carlo Rizzi
Filmed almost exactly a year ago at the Metropolitan Opera, David McVicar’s new staging of Bellini’s most popular work offers a surprisingly traditional alternative to the Royal Opera’s recent contemporary take on the piece - The Telegraph described the production as ‘a solid, unpretentious piece of work that will bear revival’, and praised Radvanovsky’s ‘admirably paced and sturdily projected’ heroine and DiDonato’s ‘warmly expressive and sensitively musical’ Adalgisa. Released on 16th November.
Available Format: 2 DVD Videos
Bellini: Norma (Blu-ray)
Sondra Radvanovsky, Joyce DiDonato, Joseph Calleja, Matthew Rose The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Carlo Rizzi
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.66:1
Available Format: Blu-ray
Several years before Roth and his period-instrument orchestra embarked on their acclaimed ongoing Ravel series (Daphnis et Chloé won the Orchestral Category at this year’s Gramophone Awards), they recorded historically-aware accounts of La mer and the little-known Première suite on Actes Sud; now they return to Debussy’s music as part of Harmonia Mundi’s celebration of the composer’s centenary. Released on 30th November.
Available Formats: CD + DVD Video, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 & Piano Sonatas K281 & K332
Seong Jin-Cho (piano), Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Following his ‘unfailingly cultivated’ (BBC Music Magazine) account of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and ‘riveting’ (The Guardian) Debussy album last autumn, the 24-year-old winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition records his first Mozart, complementing the D minor Piano Concerto with Piano Sonatas Nos. 3 and 12. Released on 16th November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette
Sasha Cooke, Nicholas Phan, Luca Pisaroni; San Francisco Symphony & Chorus, Michael Tilson Thomas
Recorded live in concert last summer (shortly before Tilson Thomas announced his intention to retire as music director in 2020), this account of Berlioz’s Shakespearian ‘symphonie dramatique’ was described by the San Francisco Examiner as ‘a large-scale reading full of thrilling details’, with special praise for Luca Pisaroni’s ‘dramatic authority and weighty, dark-hued vocalism’ as Friar Laurence. Released on 30th November.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
After returning from a brief sabbatical last winter with Dorilla in Tempe, Naïve’s mammoth Vivaldi Edition continues with this epic drama per musica, composed in 1724 for the Roman carnival; a fine cast of Vivaldi specialists is headed by recent Gramophone Award-winner Delphine Galou in the title-role, whilst the opera’s best-known aria ‘Vedrò con mio diletto’ is taken by German contralto Silke Gäng as Anastasio. Released on 16th November.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony & The Lark Ascending
Sarah Fox, Mark Stone, James Ehnes; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze
This is the penultimate instalment of Manze’s Vaughan Williams cycle, a series which has attracted admiration for its ‘poetry, raw splendour and poignancy’ (The Observer on Nos. 3 & 4), ‘clarity of orchestral sound’ (Gramophone on Nos. 5 & 6) and ‘expressive and atmospheric playing, rarely heard since Boult’ (BBC Music Magazine on Nos. 2 & 8). Released on 30th November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Verdi: Macbeth
Giovanni Meoni, Nadja Michael, Giuseppe Valentino Buzza, Fabrizio Beggi; Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi
Verdi isn’t perhaps the first composer you’d associate with Fabio Biondi or Europa Galante (the Italian violinist and conductor is more often to be found performing Vivaldi and Handel with the ensemble), but this is a Macbeth with a difference: directing from the violin, Biondi presents the opera in its original 1847 version rather than the vastly more common Paris revision from nearly two decades later. Released on 16th November.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Handel: Italian cantatas
Sabine Devieilhe (soprano), Léa Desandre (mezzo) Le Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm
The young French soprano and mezzo join forces for the pastoral two-hander Aminta e Fillide, and take on a dramatic solo cantata apiece: Armida abbandonata for Devieilhe, and La Lucrezia for Desandre. Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée also have a ‘solo’ of their own spot in the form of the Trio Sonata in B minor, HWV386. Released on 23rd November.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
