New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 23rd October 2020
Tody's new releases include world premiere recordings of Dussek’s late Messe Solemnelle from Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music and Hahn’s early opera L'île du rêve from Hervé Niquet and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, plus Schumann and Klengel Cello Concertos from Raphaela Gromes, and John Sheppard’s Media vita from the Choir of New College Oxford.
Handel: Messiah
Julia Doyle (soprano), Tim Mead (countertenor), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) and Roderick Williams (baritone); RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Justin Doyle
Like John Butt and the Dunedin Consort’s 2006 recording, this period-instrument Messiah aims to recreate the scale and intimacy of the work’s 1742 premiere in Dublin, with a choir of just 32; the recording was made at Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche this January, shortly after these artists performed the piece at the Berlin Philharmonie on New Year’s Day.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Klengel, Schumann: Romantic Cello Concertos
Raphaela Gromes (cello), Julian Riem (piano); Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Carter
In the wake of her widely-praised recording of Strauss’s cello sonata and song transcriptions with Julian Riem earlier this year, the German cellist opens her new album with the composer’s early Romance for Cello and Orchestra, followed by Julius Klengel’s Cello Concerto No. 3, Schumann’s Cello Concerto, Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 5, and a transcription of the slow movement of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto.
Available Format: CD
The Edinburgh-based chamber ensemble’s first recording exploring the kinship between Handel and his Italian, Scotland-domiciled contemporary Francesco Barsanti was praised in Gramophone for its ‘enormous spirit and joy’ when it appeared in 2017, and this volume presents the second instalment of Barsanti’s Op. 3 Concerti Grossi alongside Handel’s overture to Atalanta, and a selection of Old Scots Tunes.
Available Format: CD
Following their debut recording Resilience (featuring music by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov and Mendelssohn), the young American quartet present a programme of works inspired by ‘the intersection of music and language’: Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays, Schumann’s String Quartet No. 3 in A minor, and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9. Look out for David’s interview with the players about the project next week.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Emersons make their first appearance on Pentatone with Schumann's three string quartets, written in the summer of 1842 and first performed as a birthday-present for his wife Clara (though the composer would later dedicate the works to Mendelssohn upon publication). Founding member Eugene Drucker observes that he and his fellow players ‘have lived with this music since [their] early years’, but this is their first recording of the complete set.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Herreweghe’s Bruckner symphonies with the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées have been praised for their ‘clarity of texture’ (Sunday Times) and ‘lightness of tread’ (BBC Music Magazine), and now he turns to two large-scale sacred works: the Mass No. 2 (composed in 1866 for the inauguration of a votive chapel in Linz Cathedral) and the Te Deum of 1881, much admired by Mahler and Hans Richter.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Dussek: Messe Solemnelle
Stefanie True (soprano), Helen Charlston (mezzo), Gwilym Bowen (tenor), Morgan Pearse (bass); Choir of the AAM, Academy of Ancient Music, Richard Egarr
Described in this week’s Sunday Times as ‘a hugely worthwhile discovery of an unknown work by one of Mozart’s most gifted younger contemporaries’, this is the first-ever recording of the Bohemian composer’s last major work, written for the name-day of Nicolas II, Prince Esterházy, in the early 1800s. The recording uses a new scholarly edition prepared from Dussek’s original manuscript by Egarr and Reinhard Sieger.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Alex Woolf: Requiem
Nicky Spence (tenor), Philip Higham (cello), Iain Burnside (piano), Vox Luna, Alex Woolf
This is the world premiere recording of Woolf’s Requiem, written in 2018 to commemorate the end of the First World War and first performed at Holy Trinity Church, Chelsea; named BBC Young Composer of the Year in 2012, Woolf is currently a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers and mentors have included David Sawer, Colin Matthews, Huw Watkins, and the late Oliver Knussen.
Available Format: CD
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Folk Songs Volume 1
Mary Bevan (soprano), Nicky Spence (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), Jack Liebeck (violin), William Vann (piano)
The first instalment of a projected series encompassing the eighty folk songs in English which the composer arranged for voice and piano or violin, this album features fifteen world premiere recordings. The first half of the disc is devoted to the Folk Songs from Sussex from 1912, collected by Percy Merrick from Lodsworth farmer Henry Hills around twelve years earlier. Read our recent interview with the artists and researcher John Francis here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sheppard spent part of his career in Oxford (though he was based down the road at Magdalen rather than at New College), and the celebrated choir make their Linn debut with his masterpiece Media vita. It’s preceded by six motets on texts from the Old Testament, four of which - A solis ortus cardine, Inclina Domine, Iudica me Deus and Confitebor tibi - are world premiere recordings.
Available Format: CD
Hahn: L’île du rêve
Hélène Guilmette, Cyrille Dubois, Artavazd Sargsyan, Anaïk Morel, Thomas Dolié, Ludivine Gombert; Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Chœur du Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet
Composed when Hahn was still in his teens, this ‘idylle polynésienne’ was premiered at the Opéra Comique, and prompted Massenet to tell the young man that ‘to have written that, you must be a poet’. Set in Tahiti, the opera prefigures elements of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in its depiction of a French naval officer who seduces and abandons a young Polynesian girl, whilst the score is shot through with the influences of Bizet and Massenet.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Picture format: 1080i/30
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2:0 / DTS-HD Master Audio 5:1
Available Format: Blu-ray
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