New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 19th June 2020
Today's new releases include Vivaldi's and Piazzolla's depictions of the seasons from Arabella Steinbacher and the Münchener Kammerorchester, Thomas Adès's In Seven Days from Kirill Gerstein (with the composer conducting), an intriguing baroque programme exploring the idea of 'folly' from Stéphanie d'Oustrac and Ensemble Amarillis, and the first-ever video recording of Korngold's early one-act opera Violanta, filmed in Turin earlier this year.
The German violinist couples Vivaldi’s evergreen set of concertos with Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro estaciones porteñas, originally scored for violin/viola, piano, electric guitar, double bass and bandoneón but given here in a new arrangement for violin and string orchestra by Peter von Wienhardt, who also provided the beautiful song transcriptions on her 2018 Strauss album.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Originally released on Decca in 2013, Kavakos and Pace’s complete Beethoven sonatas won an ECHO Klassik Award and was nominated for a Grammy; the cycle received outstanding reviews, with the BBC describing it as ‘a vital, joyous set which takes its place among the very best’ and International Record Review deeming it ‘a milestone in Kavakos's remarkable career and a worthy successor to the four-decades-old Perlman/Ashkenazy classic’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Not Our First Goat Rodeo
Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Stuart Duncan (violin), Edgar Meyer (double bass), Chris Thile (mandolin)
The quartet’s first ‘Goat Rodeo’ (a term used in aviation to refer to a situation in which a hundred things need to align if disaster is to be avoided!) was released in 2011 and won the awards for Best Engineered Album and Best Folk Album at the 2013 Grammys; partly composed and partly improvised, the quirkily-titled tracks on this sequel include Waltz Whitman and Your Coffee is a Disaster, with singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan joining as a special guest.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Adès: In Seven Days
Kirill Gerstein (piano),Thomas Adès (piano/conductor), Tanglewood Music Centre Orchestra
Following the world premiere recording of his Piano Concerto (written for Gerstein) on Deutsche Grammophon at the end of February, Myrios present an earlier Adès work for piano and orchestra: the Genesis-inspired In Seven Days, premiered by Nicolas Hodges and the London Sinfonietta in 2008. The album also includes the first recordings of the concert paraphrase for two pianos from Powder Her Face, the Berceuse from The Exterminating Angel, and the Three Mazurkas from 2009.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Christopher Gunning: Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto & Birdflight
Harriet MacKenzie (violin), Richard Harwood (cello), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Christopher Gunning
Composed in 2011 and inspired by the composer’s walks in the hills of Monmouthshire, Gunning’s Violin Concerto was described by The Guardian as ‘instantly accessible, warmly melodic yet never trite or cloying’; it’s followed here by the darker Cello Concerto (praised by Gramophone for its ‘generosity of spirit, deft craftsmanship and abundant songfulness’), and the short tone-poem Birdflight.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Hot on the heels of her glorious accounts of Sea Pictures and The Music Makers with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (released last week on Onyx), the Liverpudlian mezzo and her regular recital-partner present 23 songs by Elgar’s near-contemporary, including 17 world premiere recordings. Many of the songs celebrate Harty’s Irish heritage, and the programme includes settings of texts by Walt Whitman, Thomas Campion, and Harty himself.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Featuring a mixture of vocal and instrumental works, this exploration of baroque constructions of ‘madness’ includes Handel’s solo cantata Ah! Crudel, nel pianto mio, excerpts from André Destouches and Marin Marais’s settings of the Semele myth, Purcell’s From silent shades (aka ‘Mad Bess of Bedlam’) and From Rosy Bowers (from Don Quixote), Heinichen’s Concerto in G S214, and music by Eccles and Keiser.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Korngold: Violanta
Annemarie Kremer (Violanta), Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Simone Trovai), Norman Reinhardt (Alfonso), Peter Sonn (Giovanni Bracca), Soula Parassidis (Bice), Anna Maria Chiuri (Barbara); Orchestra e Coro Teatro Regio Torino, Pinchas Steinberg, Pier Luigi Pizzi
Composed when he was only seventeen and premiered to great acclaim under Bruno Walter in Munich two years later, Korngold’s second opera is set in fifteenth-century Venice and tells the story of a planned revenge-killing which is derailed when the would-be murderess falls in love with her intended victim; reviewing this live performance of the Italian premiere, The New York Times observed that ‘the lyric sound of the soprano Annemarie Kremer is well suited to the title role — and the orchestra likewise revels in the opera’s eroticism’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Korngold: Violanta (Blu-ray)
Annemarie Kremer (Violanta), Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Simone Trovai), Norman Reinhardt (Alfonso), Peter Sonn (Giovanni Bracca), Soula Parassidis (Bice), Anna Maria Chiuri (Barbara); Orchestra e Coro Teatro Regio Torino, Pinchas Steinberg, Pier Luigi Pizzi
Also available on DVD, this is the work's world premiere video recording, with director Pier Luigi Pizzi placing the action at the beginning of the 1920s. The production, which was streamed on the theatre's website earlier this year, was one of The Guardian's lockdown viewing highlights for May, Tim Ashley declaring it 'way over the top, but utterly compulsive'.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
