New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 15th February 2019
Today’s new releases include Mahler’s Third Symphony from François-Xavier Roth and his Cologne orchestra, two madcap cello concertos from Edgar Moreau, a piano-recital spanning seven centuries from Jeremy Denk, and the first CD release of a 1955 recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden from Belgrade.
Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Sara Mingardo (contralto), Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Women's choir of Schola Heidelberg, Young singers of the Kölner Dom, François-Xavier Roth
The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln gave the first-ever complete performance of Mahler’s great hymn to Nature in Krefeld in 1902, under the baton of the composer (Felix Weingartner had conducted three movements in Berlin five years previously). Their 2017 recording of the Fifth Symphony (which the orchestra also premiered in 1904) was described as ‘exciting and fresh-sounding’ (The Guardian) and ‘intensely vivid’ (The Sunday Times).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The young French cellist performs two witty and highly unusual concertos composed 130 years apart: Offenbach’s 1847 ‘Concerto militaire’, and pianist Friedrich Gulda’s uproarious Concerto for Cello and Wind Ensemble, which was written for Heinrich Schiff in 1980 and incorporates elements of jazz and rock as well as Austrian folk-music.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Colorado-born Scottish composer (1927-2001) composed five symphonies between 1955 and 1998, two of which receive their first recordings here: No. 3 was commissioned and premiered by the RSNO in 1979, whilst No. 4 (subtitled Passeleth Tapestry) was written in 1988 to mark the 500th anniversary of Paisley. The album is completed by Carillon, composed in honour of Glasgow’s European City of Culture celebrations in 1990.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mendelssohn & Britten: Violin Concertos
Sebastian Bohren (violin), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton
Following distinguished accounts of the Beethoven and Pleyel Violin Concertos and a set of the Bach solo partitas and sonatas which was described as ‘individual, concentrated and technically assured’ (Classical Music), the Swiss violinist joins the Liverpool orchestra for the first time on disc in a work which he describes as ‘the most important violin concerto in the English tradition’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French cellist’s first album on Harmonia Mundi ( a recital of Beethoven and Schubert) won a Victoire de la Musique Classique last year; now he teams up with his regular recital-partner Jérôme Ducros in a programme which couples Rachmaninov’s mighty sonata of 1901 with Myaskovsky’s first sonata from 11 years later.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schoenberg’s 1937 orchestration of Brahm’s Piano Quartet No. 1 (made at the suggestion of Otto Klemperer, who conducted its premiere) is coupled with Charles Hubert Parry’s symphonic Elegy from forty years earlier, composed just months after Brahms’s death but not performed until Parry’s own memorial service in 1918.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Spanning seven centuries, Denk’s programme includes music by Machaut, Binchois, Gesualdo, Stockhausen, Ligeti and Glass and stems in part from his ‘purely musical love [of] the art of counterpoint’; the album was described in this week’s Sunday Times as ‘thrilling and deft… periodically administering a stylistic jolt’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Edmund Finnis: The Air, Turning
Mark Simpson (clarinet), Víkingur Ólafsson (piano), Ilan Volkov, Andrew Gourlay et al
NMC’s Debut Discs series presents six world premiere recordings of works by the British composer (b. 1984 and described by the Sunday Telegraph as ‘hugely gifted’): Elsewhere for solo violin, Four Duets for clarinet and piano, and the orchestral pieces Between Rain, The Air, Turning, Shades Lengthen, and Parallel Colour.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
In the sequel to his debut album Heritages (released on Deutsche Grammophon two years ago), the French pianist presents an eclectic programme of Alkan, Tárrega, Schumann, Philip Glass, and Michael Nyman, which also includes two works which Ghraichy commissioned himself: Chilly Gonzales’s Robert on the Bridge and Jacopo Baboni Schilingi’s HUGE.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Verdi: Messa da Requiem
Dinara Alieva (soprano), Olesya Petrova (mezzo-soprano), Francesco Meli (tenor) & Dmitry Belosselskiy (bass); Bolshoi Theatre Chorus & St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Yuri Temirkanov
This performance was recorded live in St. Petersburg in memory of the great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and was described in this month’s BBC Music Magazine as ‘a sensitively shaped and dignified rather than theatrical account’; the concert was released on DVD and Blu-ray in November and now appears on CD for the first time.
Available Format: 2 CDs
Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden
Sofiya Jankovic (Snow Maiden), Militza Miladinovich (Lel), Valeria Heybalova (Kupava), Dushan Popovich (Mizgir); Belgrade National Opera, Kresimir Baranovich
Eloquence’s series of Russian opera recordings made in Belgrade during the mid-1950s continues with the first CD release of this 1955 account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘spring fairy-tale’, described by Gramophone as ‘a very vivid and engaging interpretation’ when it first appeared on vinyl in 1957.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Adam: Le Corsaire (DVD)
Robert Gabdullin, Maria Yakovleva, Wiener Staatsballett & Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Valery Ovsianikov
Adam’s Byron-inspired ballet has long been associated with Marius Petipa, but this 2016 production from Vienna also includes choreography by Manuel Legris, who was one of the star dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet until his retirement in 2009 and was appointed as artistic director of the Vienna State Ballet the following year.
Available Format: DVD Video
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