New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 5th April 2019
Today’s new releases include the complete Schumann symphonies from Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden, Bach cello suites from Alban Gerhardt, a Nietzsche-inspired recital of French and German song from Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton, and Michelle Castelletti’s chamber orchestra realisation of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony.
Released to mark the German conductor’s sixtieth birthday on Monday, these performances were recorded in Suntory Hall, Tokyo in October 2018. Thielemann’s recording of these symphonies with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the 1990s prompted Gramophone to describe him as ‘a man of the theatre…who cares deeply about the euphony and expressive potential of Schumann’s orchestration’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Polish pianist’s recent Well-Tempered Clavier (also released on the Chopin Institute’s label and recorded last year) was Gramophone’s March Recording of the Month, and this archive release includes live recordings of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue and the Partita No. 6 from a recital given in Warsaw in 1985 as well as the Chopin concerto.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Taking their cue from a quotation from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Sampson and Middleton explore depictions of vulnerable and mistreated women such as Ophelia, Mignon and Bilitis in songs by composers including Brahms, Schumann, Strauss, Debussy, Koechlin, and Poulenc. Look out for Katherine’s interview with Carolyn about the project next week.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Australian saxophonist explores connections between classical composers and folk music in a programme which includes James MacMillan’s Saxophone Concerto and From Galloway, Peter Sculthorpe’s Djilile, Vaughan Williams’s Six Studies in English Folksong, and music by Percy Grainger, Falla, Brahms, William Barton, and Émile Pessard.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The baroque ensemble intersperse Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Roberto Molinelli’s arrangement for violin and string orchestra of Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, composed between 1965 and 1970 and inspired by the city of Buenos Aires; the album is rounded off by Molinelli’s own Estate Reloaded, which pays homage to both works.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Josef Mysliveček: Complete Music for Keyboard
Clare Hammond (piano), Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan
Though the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček (1737 -81) has enjoyed something of a renaissance over the past decade, the bulk of the attention has been focused on his operas; English pianist Clare Hammond redresses the balance with this recording of his two keyboard concertos (one of which receives its world premiere here) and the Six Easy Divertimenti and Six Easy Lessons for harpsichord.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mahler’s unfinished symphony is presented here not in the familiar completion by Deryck Cooke, but in a 2012 realisation for chamber orchestra by the Maltese conductor and composer Michelle Castelletti, drawing on the traditions of the Viennese ‘Society for Private Musical Performances’ which was founded by Arnold Schoenberg in 1918 and frequently programmed arrangements of Mahler’s music.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As Gerhardt explains in his booklet-note, he held off recording what he describes as 'the ultimate challenge…the cellist’s bible’ until his fiftieth birthday as he ‘never felt quite ready to set them in stone’; the recording is an Editor’s Choice in this month’s Gramophone, with the reviewer describing the German cellist as ‘sounding deliciously at ease in this music’.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As well as popular works like The Lamb, Hymn to the Mother of God and Song for Athene (famously performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997), this collection also includes comparative rarities such as They are all gone into the world of light and Love Bade Me Welcome, plus five anthems from the seven-hour The Veil of the Temple, which the composer described as ‘the supreme achievement of my life’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
