New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 30th August 2019
Today’s new releases include Brahms from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien, the original version of Gounod’s Faust from Christophe Rousset with Benjamin Bernheim in the title-role, the fourth instalment of Osmo Vänskä’s Mahler cycle from Minnesota, and a fascinating trio of pasticcios drawing on the music which Mozart composed in the run-up to his three great collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte.
Ibragimova's and Tiberghien's joint discography on Hyperion has included complete sets of Schubert, Ravel, Szymanowski, Mozart and Beethoven, and now they turn their attention to Brahms’s Three Sonatas; reviewing their 2018 recital of these works at Wigmore Hall, The Arts Desk praised their ‘sensitive but dynamic playing [which] perfectly conveys the music’s carefree spirit.’ The programme is completed by the first of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances Op. 22.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Veress: String Trio & Bartók: Piano Quintet
Vilde Frang (violin), Barnabás Kelemen (violin), Lawrence Power (viola), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Alexander Lonquich (piano)
German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt is the driving force behind this double-bill of Hungarian chamber works, made in partnership with the Lockenhaus International Chamber Music Festival, of which Altstaedt became artistic director last year; the early Piano Quintet is one of Bartók’s least-recorded works, and the String Trio by his pupil Sándor Veress is also a relative rarity.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The fourth instalment of the Finnish conductor’s Mahler series, which began in 2017 with a recording of the Fifth Symphony which was subsequently nominated for a Grammy – you can read James’s full review of that recording (and his first impressions of Vänskä’s approach to Mahler) here.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Michelle DeYoung (mezzo), John Relyea (bass) Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner
Both singers here have decades of experience in their roles as the uxoricidal nobleman and his new bride: de Young has sung Judit over 100 times and recorded it with Esa-Pekka Salonen in 2014, and Relyea’s performances as Bluebeard include a Krzysztof Warlikowski staging at the Opéra national de Paris (available on DVD and Blu-ray) in which he was described as ‘beguilingly virile’ (Classical Source) and ‘the perfect mix of hangdog and beast’ (BachTrack).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Across The Stars
Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), The Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles, John Williams
Recorded at the former MGM Studios earlier this year, Across the Stars features Williams’s own arrangements of themes from Dracula, Sabrina, Schindler’s List, Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back, the Harry Potter series and The Adventures of Tin-Tin - all custom-made for Mutter, with whom he has been friends for many years. Read James's exclusive interview with Anne-Sophie about the project here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This second ‘highly enjoyable wander away from the familiar British path’ (BBC Music Magazine) features Eugene Goossens’s By the Tarn, Eric Fogg’s Merok, Patrick Hadley’s Kinder Scout, Arthur Bliss’s Mêlée Fantasque, and music by Vaughan Williams, Dorothy Howell, Frederic Cowen, and John Foulds.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded on the Great Silbermann Organ of Freiberg Cathedral, the third volume of Suzuki’s Bach series includes the Chorale Partita Ach, was soll ich Sunder machen?, the Fantasia & Fugue in C minor BWV537, and the Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor BWV582; Volume One was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2016.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Libertà!
Sabine Devieilhe, Siobhan Stagg (sopranos), Serena Malfi (mezzo), Linard Vrielink (tenor), John Chest (baritone), Nahuel di Pierro (bass-baritone) Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
Three years on from their Gramophone Award-winning Mozart recital The Weber Sisters, French coloratura soprano Devieilhe and her conductor husband team up with five outstanding young singers for a trio of pasticcios including Mozart concert-arias and excerpts from Thamos, König in Ägypten, L’oca del Cairo and Lo sposo deluso, plus music by Salieri, Soler and Paisiello.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Gounod: Faust (1859 version)
Benjamin Bernheim, Véronique Gens, Andrew Foster-Williams, Jean-Sébastien Bou; Les Talens Lyriques, Flemish Radio Choir, Christophe Rousset
Rousset conducts the original version of Gounod’s most popular opera (premiered at the Théâtre-Lyrique in 1859) rather than the more familiar revision from a decade later; this early incarnation includes spoken dialogue, and is closer in spirit to opéra comique than to the grand opera aesthetic of its successor. The title-role is sung by French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, whose debut solo album of opera arias on Deutsche Grammophon will appear later this autumn.
Available Formats: 3 CDs + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As well as the complete symphonies and newly-recorded three piano concertos, this set includes the Serenade for Strings, Francesca da Rimini, and Romeo and Juliet; the latter work and Symphony No. 6 were originally released in 2016 and were shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, whilst The Sunday Times declared that Manfred (first released in 2017) has ‘rarely been played with such conviction on disc’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
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