New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 17th April 2020
Today’s new releases include three Beethoven symphonies and two works by Gerald Barry from Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia, one of the finest casts you’re ever likely to hear in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten from the Vienna State Opera, music from eighteenth-century St Petersburg from Karina Gauvin and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and Messiah from Hans-Christoph Rademann, with a tenor soloist who’s been hitting the headlines this week after an astonishing performance in Leipzig last Friday.
Beethoven’s first three symphonies are interspersed with two works by Irish composer Gerald Barry: Beethoven (premiered by Adès and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in 2008) sets text from Beethoven’s sole surviving love-letter, whilst the 2013 Piano Concerto was written for Nicolas Hodges and was described by The Evening Standard as ‘an exhilarating assault course’.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten
Stephen Gould (Der Kaiser), Camilla Nylund (Die Kaiserin), Wolfgang Koch (Barak, der Farber), Nina Stemme (Die Farberin), Evelyn Herlitzius (Die Amme); Wiener Staatsoper, Christian Thielemann
Recorded last year at the Vienna State Opera (where the opera received its premiere a hundred years earlier), this Frau features one of the strongest casts imaginable for the work today; The New York Review of Books praised Thielemann’s ‘supreme sense of orchestral colour’ and Nylund’s ‘bell-like clarity of tone’ as the Empress.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nuits blanches: Opera Arias at the Russian Court of the 18th Century
Karina Gauvin (soprano), Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Alexander Weimann
As well as rarely-heard arias by Italian-trained Russian composers Maxim Sozontovich Berezovsky and Dmitri Stepanovich Bortniansky, this album also includes substantial selections from Gluck’s Armide (which was very popular in St Petersburg in the late eighteenth century) and a Cossack Dance by Domenico Dall’Oglio, a Tartini pupil who spent the latter part of his life at the Russian imperial court.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Handel: Messiah
Dorothee Mields (soprano), Benno Schachtner (alto), Benedikt Kristjánsson (tenor), Tobias Berndt (bass); Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
The Icelandic tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson has come to widespread attention over the past week, following his remarkable live-streamed performance of the St John Passion from the Thomaskirche in Leipzig on Good Friday, given in an empty church and reduced for one voice, keyboard and percussion with Zoom contributions from choirs. He takes on slightly less onerous duties on this 2019 recording of Messiah in its 1742 Dublin version.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As well as works by Debussy, Sibelius and Ravel, this album includes five world premieres: Marcelo Nisinman’s Die Albträume des Todes, Giovanni Sollima’s Heimat Terra, Pēteris Vasks’s Castillo Interior, three tangos by Astor Piazzolla, and the violin/viola version of the late Krzysztof Penderecki’s Ciaccona in memoriam Giovanni Paolo II.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Polish pianist makes his debut on Rubicon with the Suite in A minor from Rameau’s Nouvelles suites de Pieces de clavecin and Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schubert: Octet & Merlin: Passage éclair
Nicolas Baldeyrou, Julien Hardy, David Guerrier, Yann Dubost, Yan Levionnois, Shuichi Okada, Marc Desmons, Pierre Fouchenneret
Schubert’s great Octet is prefaced here by the world premiere recording of a new commission by Raphaël Merlin, the former cellist of the Quatuor Ébène who is now active as a composer and conductor: scored for the same forces as the Schubert, Passage éclair also pays homage to Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Rimsky-Korsakov: Kashchei the Immortal
Pavel Pontryagin, Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya, Pavel Lisitsian, Konstantin Polyaev, Lyudmila Legostayeva, Samuil Samosud
Released to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the composer’s birth, this is the CD debut of the first studio recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s one-act fairy-tale, made in 1949; Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya, mother of the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, sings the role of the captive princess Tsarevna.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Spontini: Fernando Cortez (ou La conquète du Mexique)
Dario Schmunck (Fernand Cortez), Alexia Voulgaridou (Amazily), Luca Lombardo (Télasco), Gianluca Margheri (Morales), David Ferri Durà (Alvar), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Jean-Luc Tingaud, Cecilia Ligorio
Captured last October at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, this is the first modern recording of Spontini’s pro-Napoleon three-act opera in its original version; the production (which sadly didn’t replicate the appearance of seventeen horses at the work's Paris premiere) is also available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Idomeneo (DVD)
Eric Cutler (Idomeneo), David Portillo (Idamante), Annett Fritsch (Ilia), Eleonora Buratto (Elettra), Benjamin Hulett (Arbace), Oliver Johnston (High Priest), Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Voice of Neptune), Teatro Real Madrid, Ivor Bolton
Robert Carsen’s production of Mozart’s first mature opera was filmed in Madrid last spring and was described by Opera News as a ‘politically poetic staging…full of imaginative moments’; the review also praised American tenor Cutler’s ‘ardent, potent Idomeneo’, Portillo’s ‘delicately sung and played Idamante’, and the ‘fire, razor-sharp precision and heart-wrenching delicacy’ supplied by the Teatro Real orchestra under Ivor Bolton.
Available Format: DVD Video
Mozart: Idomeneo (Blu-ray)
Eric Cutler (Idomeneo), David Portillo (Idamante), Anett Fritsch (Ilia), Eleonora Buratto (Elettra), Benjamin Hulett (Arbace), Oliver Johnston (High Priest), Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Voice of Neptune), Teatro Real Madrid, Ivor Bolton
Sound format: LPCM 24-bit stereo / 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Picture format: 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Larcher: Das Jagdgewehr (DVD)
Sarah Aristidou (Shoko), Giulia Peri (Midori), Olivia Vermeulen (Saiko), Robin Tritschler (The Poet), Andre Schuen (Josuke Misugi), Ensemble Modern, Michael Boder
The world premiere of Larcher’s first opera, filmed at Bregenz in 2018 and based on Yasushi Inoue’s 1949 novella The Hunting Gun; The Observer declared that the work boasts ‘a clear, powerful text, some striking imagery and a luminous score of great beauty and originality’, whilst The Telegraph praised its ‘rare beauty and addictive charm’.
Available Format: DVD Video
Larcher: Das Jagdgewehr (Blu-ray)
Sarah Aristidou (Shoko), Giulia Peri (Midori), Olivia Vermeulen (Saiko), Robin Tritschler (The Poet), Andre Schuen (Josuke Misugi), Ensemble Modern, Michael Boder
Sound format: PCM 24-bit stereo / 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Picture format: 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
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