New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 19th July 2019
Today’s new releases include the world premiere recording of Cavalli’s Ipermestra and the first-ever DVD and Blu-ray recording of Berthold Goldschmidt’s award-winning Roman opera Beatrice Cenci, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony from Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the final instalment of Carus’s Complete Heinrich Schütz Edition with Hans-Christoph Rademann and the Dresdner Kammerchor.
Recorded live in concert in October 2016 at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Jurowski’s Mahler Four was praised by BachTrack for the ‘exceptionally characterful playing’ of the LPO, whilst The Daily Telegraph described Sofia Fomina’s ‘shining soprano’ as ‘an ideal voice for this music’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Composed in 1908 and revised thirteen years later on the advice of Prokofiev, Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 1 draws on the music of Tchaikovsky and Glazunov, who awarded the aspiring young composer a scholarship on the spot after seeing a draft; Symphony No. 13 was written in 1933 and is a significantly shorter and less Romantic work, closer in spirit to the sound-world of Shostakovich.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Originally issued in the 1990s, these two albums include the Siegfried Idyll, the Good Friday Music from Parsifal, Siegfried’s Funeral March from Götterdämmerung, the Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, and preludes from Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Arrangements of Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango and Falla's Suite populaire espagnole are the mainstays of this recital of transcriptions from the German-born cellist and Finnish guitarist; the programme also includes Burgmüller’s Three Nocturnes, Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera, and music by Satie, Gnattali, Henry Mancini, Villa-Lobos and Paganini.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Recorded in Germany in 1985 on a Conrad Graf piano from the 1830s, this album is now released to mark the Austrian pianist’s death in April; Demus remained deeply committed to Schumann’s music (and to the use of authentic instruments) throughout his long career, and recorded the complete piano works a decade before making this recording.
Available Format: CD
This is the final instalment of Carus’s mammoth Complete Schütz Edition, which launched in 2009, and has attracted praise for its ‘entirely apt clarity and austerity’ (International Record Review) and ‘cast of distinguished and sympathetic singers’ (Gramophone); this volume focuses on relatively unknown choral works composed between 1618 and 1648 for occasions when pomp and circumstance were required.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the world premiere recording of Cavalli’s three-act festa teatrale, and was made shortly after Fentross mounted its first modern revival at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2006: composed in Venice in the 1650s, Ipermestra was granted a lavish staging to mark the birth of Philip IV of Spain’s eldest son, but subsequently languished unperformed for over 300 years. Fentross’s advocacy paved the way for Glyndebourne’s staging of the work in 2017.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Goldschmidt: Beatrice Cenci (DVD)
Christoph Pohl, Gal James, Dshamilja Kaiser, Christina Bock Prague Philharmonic Choir Wiener Symphoniker, Johannes Debus
Filmed at the Bregenz Festival last summer, this production was only the second full staging of Goldschmidt’s Shelley-inspired 1949 opera, which won its composer a major prize in the Festival of Britain but still had to wait nearly forty years before it was premiered; in a four-star review of the opening night, The Telegraph described it as a ‘brilliantly focused staging of a neglected work’.
Available Format: DVD Video
Goldschmidt: Beatrice Cenci (Blu-ray)
Christoph Pohl, Gal James, Dshamilja Kaiser, Christina Bock; Prague Philharmonic Choir Wiener Symphoniker, Johannes Debus
Sound Format: BD: PCM Stereo, DTS-HD MA 5.1
Picture: NTSC, 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
