New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 3rd April 2020
Today’s new releases include Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 from Lars Vogt, directing the Royal Northern Sinfonia from the keyboard, Shostakovich’s First and Fifth symphonies from Gianandrea Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra, late Beethoven from the Tetzlaff Quartet, and world premiere recordings of Sir James MacMillan’s Symphony No. 5 and The Sun Danced from The Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia.
The Royal Northern Sinfonia’s music director conducts from the keyboard, as with his account of the First Concerto last year, which Gramophone hailed as ‘nothing short of sensational…perhaps the most sensitive and subtle reading of the score in recent memory’ and MusicWeb described as ‘a triumphant vindication of Vogt’s courage in taking on the role of piano-conductor’; look out for Katherine’s interview with him later this month.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
James MacMillan: Symphony No. 5 'Le grand Inconnu' & The Sun Danced'
The Sixteen, Britten Sinfonia, Genesis Sixteen, Harry Christophers
World premiere recordings of two new works by the Scottish composer: the Fifth Symphony, a meditation on the Holy Spirit which received its first performance at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and was described by The Scotsman as ‘a turbulent three-movement adrenalin rush of all that MacMillan is known for’, and The Sun Danced, a celebration of the Miracle of Fátima commissioned for the Celebration of the Centennial of the Apparitions in Portugal.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The third physical release in the LSO’s live Shostakovich series with their Principal Guest Conductor, this album captures performances from September 2016 (No. 5, which was released digitally in 2018) and March 2019 (No. 1, which BachTrack described as ‘a magnificent performance that made the brilliant scoring sizzle with life and played up the work’s emotional strengths and ambiguities’). You can read Katherine’s 2019 interview with Noseda about the cycle here.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Tetzlaff siblings have won considerable acclaim for their Beethoven concertos in recent years (Christian’s account of the violin concerto with Robin Ticciati last September was nominated for an ICMA, and the pair’s recording of the Triple with Lars Vogt and the Royal Northern Sinfonia impressed BBC Music Magazine with its ‘warmth and bristling energy’); this is the quartet’s first recording of his music, following well-received Wigmore Hall performances in 2018.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This album brings together the complete surviving orchestral music of Lithuanian polymath Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), who is thought to have composed around 400 works in total and was admired by Messiaen; it opens with the concert overture Kęstutis from 1902, followed by the symphonic poems Miške (‘In the Forest’) and Jūra (‘The Sea’).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Crees conducts his own arrangements of eight of Scott Joplin’s piano pieces and ragtime-influenced works by Debussy, Auric, Milhaud and Satie; the album was recently described by The British Bandsman as ‘a worthy addition to any listener’s library, arranged and performed by musicians of the highest calibre’, whilst Brass Band World praised ‘the new arrangements, the uncovering of neglected gems and the general body of research’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Couperin: Leçons de ténèbres & Gesualdo: Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday
Tenebrae, Nigel Short
In the run-up to Holy Week, the award-winning British choir release two of their namesake works; soprano alumni Grace Davidson and Julia Doyle return for the Couperin, a work which Short performed on numerous occasions at a lower pitch in his former life as a countertenor. The Gesualdo is the second instalment of a projected trilogy, the first of which was released in 2013 to mark the 400th anniversary of the composer’s death.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Baroque repertoire (particularly Bach) has dominated the Dutch mezzo’s discography to date, but this intriguing programme of songs dealing in lust and eroticism spans four centuries, from Purcell’s Sweeter than Roses to William Bolcom’s rueful reflection on an ill-advised hook-up in Toothbrush Time and Jake Heggie’s Animal Passion, taking in songs by Mozart, Wolf, Schubert, Berg, Schoenberg and Eisler along the way.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Stanislaw Moniuszko: Flis (The Raftsman)
Ewa Tracz (Zosia), Matheus Pompeu (Franek), Mariusz Godlewski (Jakub), Aleksander Teliga (Antoni), Wojtek Gierlach (Szóstak), Paweł Cichoński (Feliks), Chór Opery i Filharmonii Podlaskiej, Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi
The Polish composer’s operas appear to be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, at least on disc, and this is the first period-instrument recording of his folksy one-acter about a love-triangle on the banks of the Vistula, premiered in Warsaw in 1858; it follows Biondi’s account of Halka this time last year, which was praised in Opera Magazine for the ‘lightness and colour’ imparted by Europa Galante and the ‘authentic snap’ of the Polish dance-rhythms.
Available Format: CD
Four years on from his ‘intensely dynamic’ (BBC Music Magazine) Rheingold, Rattle resumed his Munich Ring Cycle with a stellar cast including Iréne Theorin as Brünnhilde, James Rutherford as Wotan, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Stuart Skelton as the Wälsung twins, and a line-up of Valkyries which includes several fine Brünnhildes in their own right.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
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