New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 22nd November 2019
Today’s new releases include Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and orchestral works by Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Shchedrin and Rachmaninov from Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann in songs from her homeland, and an arresting debut recording from early music collective Solomon’s Knot, exploring Christmas music from the three ‘Johanns’ - JS Bach, Kuhnau and Schelle - who held the position of cantor at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche.
Recorded live at the Barbican’s Milton Court last December (a concert which prompted The Times to describe the ensemble as a ‘crack team of musicians, each with their individual colour and voice, yet always in sync as a group’), this debut album from British early music collective Solomon’s Knot features Magnificats by JS Bach and Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor at St Thomas’s Leipzig.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Back in 2017 when the final instalment of Petrenko’s Tchaikovsky cycle appeared on Onyx, Gramophone observed that the RLPO ‘must rank as one of the finest ‘Russian orchestras’ in the UK today’, and here they show their mettle with an all-Russian programme featuring Shchedrin’s Concerto for Orchestra ‘Naughty Limericks’, Kabalevsky’s Overture Colas Breugnon, excerpts from Khachaturian’s Spartacus, and Ravel’s orchestration of Pictures.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Langgaard: Prelude to 'Antichrist' & R. Strauss: An Alpine Symphony
Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard
The American orchestra and their Danish music director explore two works inspired (albeit in very different ways) by the figure of the Antichrist; reviewing the live performance of the Strauss in 2017, BachTrack observed that ‘Dausgaard treated the vast ensemble like the rich palette it is, expertly contrasting grandiose climaxes with chamber-like subtleties.’
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Märkl’s survey of Saint-Saëns’s orchestral works continues with this collection of overtures and excerpts from operas and incidental music: the mainstay is the ballet music from the 1888 opera Ascanio (based on the same source-material as Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini), with other works including the Overture and act IV Prelude from the score for Racine’s Andromaque, the Prologue to the tragédie lyrique Les Barbares, and the Ouverture d'un Opéra-Comique Inachevé.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Swiss soprano performs songs by her compatriots Richard Flury, Friedrich Niggli, Othmar Schoeck, Emil Frey, Marguerite Roesgen-Champion, Wilhelm Baumgartner and Walther Geiser, alongside music by Liszt, Rossini and Schubert which was inspired by the Swiss landscape; clarinettist Daniel Ottensamer joins for the latter’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.
Available Format: CD
Une soirée chez Berlioz
Stéphanie d'Oustrac (mezzo), Thibaut Roussel (guitar), Tanguy de Williencourt (piano)
This delightfully niche contribution to this year’s Berlioz anniversary focuses on his early career as a guitarist and includes his arrangements of songs by composers such as Martini, Devienne, Meissonnier and Dalayrac for voice and guitar as well as several of his own original compositions for the same forces; Thibaut Roussel plays an instrument gifted to the composer by Paganini, which is currently housed in Paris’s Musée de la musique.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kurt Weill: Street Scene (DVD)
Patricia Racette, Paulo Szot, Mary Bevan, Jeni Bern, Lucy Schaufer; Teatro Real de Madrid, Tim Murray, John Fulljames
Filmed in Madrid last February, this staging of Weill’s 1946 opera is an upcycled revival of John Fulljames’s award-winning Opera-Group/Young Vic production from 2008; reviewing one of the live performances, BachTrack praised American soprano Patricia Racette’s ‘warmly sympathetic’ Anna Maurrant and Eric Greene’s ‘mellow timbre and friendly acting’ as Henry Davis.
Available Format: DVD Video
Kurt Weill: Street Scene (Blu-ray)
Patricia Racette, Paulo Szot, Mary Bevan, Jeni Bern, Lucy Schaufer; Teatro Real de Madrid, Tim Murray, John Fulljames
Video: Colour, 16/9, Full HD
Audio: PCM 2.0, DTS HD Master audio 5.1
Available Format: Blu-ray
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