Coming Soon,
Benjamin Grosvenor's Chopin and other forthcoming highlights
Highlights for late January and February include Benjamin Grosvenor’s first concerto recording in nearly a decade, Schoenberg from Isabelle Faust and friends, Sibelius symphonies from Sir Mark Elder and Santtu-Matias Rouvali, world premiere recordings of two major works by Thomas Adès, and a documentary on Russian ballet star Natalia Osipova.
Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Benjamin Grosvenor (piano), Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Elim Chan
Grosvenor describes Chopin as ‘the first composer to whom I felt a strong connection as a child’ (he included a selection of the scherzos and nocturnes on his debut album in 2011, which was described as ‘quite superlative in every way’ by International Record Review and won two Gramophone Awards), and for his first recording with orchestra in eight years he pairs the two concertos, which he will perform across Europe and the US throughout the spring. Released 21st February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Adès conducts Adès
Mark Stone (baritone), Christianne Stotijn (mezzo), Kirill Gerstein (piano); Boston Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Adès
Two world premieres of large-scale works by the British composer and conductor: Totentanz, which was commissioned in memory of Witold Lutosławski and his wife and premiered at the BBC Proms in 2013, and the Piano Concerto, performed here by its dedicatee Kirill Gerstein who gave the first performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last year. The work was described as ‘refreshingly, even radically, normal’ by The New York Times. Released 28th February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Järvi recorded the complete Mahler symphonies to considerable acclaim with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra during his tenure as their Principal Conductor in the early 2010s, and his live accounts of the Sixth with the NHKSO have been no less well received; their performance of the work at the Royal Festival Hall in 2017 (shortly after he took over as Chief Conductor) was described by The Guardian as ‘swashbuckling…fabulously disciplined, crisp and purposeful, and yet also expressive’. Released 31st January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 & King Christian II Suite
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali
The first instalment of the Gothenburg orchestra’s Sibelius cycle with their young Finnish Chief Conductor (pairing En Saga and Symphony No. 1) was hailed as ‘one terrific disc’ by Gramophone and went on to win a Diapason d’Or and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik; this second volume couples Symphony No. 2 with the incidental music for Adolf Paul’s play King Christian II, written three years earlier. Released 14th February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto & Verklärte Nacht
Isabelle Faust (violin), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding et al
Faust is widely recognised as one of the finest exponents of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (her recording of the work with the late Claudio Abbado in 2012 won a Gramophone Award, and she performed the piece with Andris Nelsons in a memorial concert for Abbado two years later); now she turns her attention to another Second Viennese School concerto, coupled here with Verklärte Nacht, for which she is joined by musicians including Antoine Tamestit , Christian Poltéra, and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Released 28th February.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Elder and the Hallé’s cycle of the Sibelius symphonies (begun in 2009, and described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘reaffirm[ing] the orchestra’s thriving Sibelian tradition’) reaches completion with these accounts of the Fourth and Sixth symphonies, recorded in the Bridgewater Hall in August 2018 (No. 4) and January 2019 (No. 6). Released 7th February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As part of their fiftieth-birthday celebrations over the past year, the Fitzwilliam Quartet have been focusing on a composer who hasn’t figured prominently in their discography so far: as viola-player Alan George told David last autumn when they spoke about the quartet’s recent Shostakovich recording, the group ‘have had Schubert coming out of their ears’ of late! Recorded on gut strings, this set of Rosamunde and Death and the Maiden will be followed by Nos. 12 and 15 later this year. Released 14th February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The insightful French pianist makes his debut on Harmonia Mundi with two late masterpieces by Schubert, whose music has played a pivotal role in his career to date – he’s previously recorded the Arpeggione Sonata twice (with violist Lise Berthoud and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière respectively) and included the final sonata on his first solo album for Mirare in 2016. Released 7th February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For their sixth album together, Sampson and Middleton’s exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century English song is bookended by two groups of songs by William Walton, and features music by Quilter, Bridge and Vaughan Williams as well as Huw Watkins’s Five Larkin Songs, which were written for Sampson in 2010 and receive their world premiere recording here. Released 7th February.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Pichon has been conducting the Monteverdi Vespers in various locations across Europe for the past couple of years, often in ambitious immersive stagings; reviewing a Dutch production directed by Pierre Audi in 2017 BachTrack praised the young French conductor’s ‘perfectly judged’ interpretation and described the playing and singing of Pygmalion as ‘close to miraculous’. Recorded live at the Chapelle Royale in Versailles last spring, this concert performance features mezzos Lea Desandre, Lucile Ricardot and Eva Zaïcik among the soloists. Released 14th February.
Available Format: DVD Video
Directed by BAFTA-winner Gerry Fox, this documentary follows the Russian ballet star as she prepares for her fifth season as a principal at The Royal Ballet; we see Osipova in rehearsal for a revival of Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadère (which is also due to be released on Opus Arte next month) and two new works, Arthur Pita’s The Mother and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Medusa, and in conversation about her childhood and early career in America. Released 21st February.
Available Format: DVD Video
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 + Master Audio 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 1080i / 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
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