New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 17th January 2020
Today’s new releases include CPE Bach concertos and symphonies from oboist Xenia Löffler and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand‘ from Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the complete Beethoven piano sonatas from Fazil Say, and another Liszt rarity from Kirill Karabits and the Staatskapelle Weimar.
An Editor’s Choice in this month’s Gramophone thanks to Löffler’s ‘spontaneous flair and singing eloquence’ and the Berlin ensemble’s ‘athletic precision and devil-may-care abandon’, this album also includes the G major and F major symphonies (Wq. 180 and 181) which – like the two oboe concertos – were composed towards the end of CPE Bach’s time in Berlin.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This performance of the Eighth was recorded live in Philadelphia, just a week after the hundredth anniversary of the work’s US premiere, which was given by the orchestra under Leopold Stokowski; the soloists are Angela Meade, Erin Wall, Lisette Oropesa, Elizabeth Bishop, Mihoko Fujimura, Anthony Dean Griffey, Markus Werba and John Relyea.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Turkish pianist and composer began his preparations for this year’s Beethoven anniversary back in May 2017, at which point he had fourteen of the piano sonatas under his belt (including The Tempest, Waldstein, Moonlight and Appassionata, which he recorded for Naïve in his thirties) and eighteen to learn from scratch; he describes the results as ‘some of the very sincerest work I [am] capable of’.
Available Formats: 9 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Liszt: Dante Symphony, Künstlerfestzug; Tasso
Staatskapelle Weimar, Knabenchor der Jenaer Philharmonie, Damen des Opernchores des Deutschen Nationaltheaters Weimar, Kirill Karabits
Following their riveting account of the single completed act of the opera Sardanapalo last March (which was crowned Rediscovery of the Year in our 2019 awards), Karabits and his Weimar forces undertake more Lisztian excavation with the world premiere recording on CD of the Künstlerfestzug zur Schillerfeier from 1859, initially conceived as a prelude for the melodrama Vor hundert Jahren.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The first volume of Forck’s Handel trilogy (comprising the first six concerto Op. 6) with the Akademie für Alte Musik was one of our Recordings of the Week last summer, impressing David with the ‘extroverted and multi-faceted playing’ on show and with Forck’s foregrounding of ‘the Italian roots of the music’; now they return with the remaining concertos from the set, with Op. 3 set to follow later this year.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This 2-CD set celebrates the legacy of the Australian-British composer and Olympic rower, who was killed in the final days of the Battle of the Somme and was close friends with the poet Rupert Brooke; the album opens with the Elegy to Brooke which he composed in a dug-out in 1915, and also includes the first recordings of the German Symphony (which Kelly modestly styled as a ‘Suite’) and A Coin for the Ferryman.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Uzbek pianist’s live recording of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with Gergiev from the BBC Proms in 2016 (available on DVD and Blu-ray from Naxos) was hailed as ‘sublime and dazzling’ in BBC Music Magazine, and here he makes his Concertgebouw debut with the same conductor and work; Rachmaninov himself performed the concerto with the Concertgebouw in 1911, observing ruefully that ‘The musicians thought it was beautiful, but the audience and the critics did not.’
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The first recordings of three very different piano concertos which were composed and premiered by the French pianist between 2012 and 2017: Hans Abrahamsen’s Left, alone (which as the title suggests is in the tradition of Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche), Gérard Pesson’s Future is a faded song (inspired by TS Eliot’s The Dry Salvages), and Oscar Strasnoy’s single-movement chamber concerto Kuleshov.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This programme of encores and lollipops from friends and regular recital-partners Queyras and Tharaud includes Popper’s Serenade and Dance of the Elves, Saint-Saëns’s Le Cygne, Fauré’s Papillon, and music by Zemlinsky, Kreisler, Haydn, Dutilleux, John Coltrane, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Zimmermann.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French-Danish soprano and Operalia winner’s debut album of opera arias on Warner in 2018 was deemed ‘phenomenally good’ by BBC Music Magazine and won both a Diapason d’Or de l’Année (Jeune Talent) and the Recital category at last year’s International Opera Awards; her first song recital recording includes Strauss’s Four Last Songs (with piano) and genuinely last song Malven, Duparc’s Phidylé, L'Invitation au voyage and La Vie antérieure, and Rachmaninov’s The Pied Piper and Daisies.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The fourth volume of Martineau’s intrepid survey of nineteenth-century song opens with Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 24 (sung by baritone Florian Boesch), followed by music by Dargomïzhsky, Franck, Donizetti, Mendelssohn, and Swedish composers Jacob Axel Josephson, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad and Erik Gustaf Geijer. The line-up of exciting young singers includes soprano Anush Hovhannisyan, tenor Nick Pritchard, and baritone Samuel Hasselhorn.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ravi Shankar: Sukanya
Susanna Hurrell (Sukanya), Alok Kumar (Chyavana), Keel Watson (King Sharyaati), London Philharmonic Orchestra, David Murphy
Premiered by the London Philharmonic in 2017, Shankar’s sole opera (on which he began work aged 90) was unfinished at the time of his death in 2012 and was completed and orchestrated by his friend David Murphy in collaboration with the composer’s daughter Anoushka and wife Sukanya (who herself inspired the work and is the namesake for the heroine). Based on a tale from the Mahābhārata, the opera was described as ‘a delightful evening of pure escapism’ by The Telegraph, and was staged again by the LPO earlier this week.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
