New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 30th October 2020
Today's new releases include Bach's Goldberg Variations from Pavel Kolesnikov, Tavener from Steven Isserlis, Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 5 and Scenes from Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' from Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the final instalment of The Tallis Scholars’s complete Josquin masses on Gimell.
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 & Scenes adapted from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Martyn Brabbins
The fourth instalment of Brabbins’s series of the Vaughan Williams symphonies (which began in 2017 with a London Symphony praised in BBC Music Magazine for its ‘sense of purposeful directness’) features the incidental music for Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress, seldom heard in its original guise since its premiere in 1906, with soloists including Kitty Whately, Marcus Farnsworth, Christopher Bowen and Jamie W Hall.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The veteran Estonian conductor returns to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with the suites from the ballets Sylvia, La Source and Coppélia, given here in versions which include several additional movements expanding upon the suites which appeared in Delibes’s lifetime.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the final volume in Litton’s Prokofiev cycle from Bergen, which has been praised for its ‘great momentum and nice colour’ (The Guardian on Symphony No. 5), ‘artfully shaded dynamics and seductive sheen’ (International Record Review on Symphony No. 6), and ‘fine championship of the composer’ (BBC Music Magazine on Symphonies Nos. 4 & 7).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Paul Ben-Haim: Music of Israel
Claudia Barainsky (soprano), John Bradbury (clarinet), BBC Philharmonic, Omer Meir Wellber
The BBC Philharmonic’s new Chief Conductor Omer Meir Wellber makes his Chandos debut with a disc devoted to the music of Paul Ben-Haim (born Paul Frankenburger in 1897), which features his Symphony No. 1 from 1940, the 1931 tone poem Pan for soprano and orchestra, and Pastorale Variée for clarinet, harp, and string orchestra from 1945.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ammann, Ravel & Bartok: Piano Concertos
Andreas Haefliger (piano), Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Susanna Mälkki
Haefliger gives the world premiere recording of Dieter Ammann’s single-movement Piano Concerto: Gran Toccata, which received its first performance at the 2019 BBC Proms and was described by The Arts Desk as ‘a grand-scale display piece, a tremendous workout for soloist and orchestra alike’; it’s programmed alongside Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto and Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The spirit of the dance has infused the Russian pianist’s recent recordings of Chopin and Couperin, and it’s entirely in evidence on his first Bach recording, which is the product of a collaboration between the pianist and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and was hailed in yesterday’s Guardian as ‘softly spoken [and] also extraordinarily eloquent’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Tavener: No longer mourn for me & other works for cello
Steven Isserlis (cello), Abi Sampa (vocals), Matthew Rose (bass), Philharmonia Orchestra Omer Meir Wellber
British cellist Steven Isserlis has a long-standing association with the music of the late John Tavener, having commissioned and premiered his best-known work The Protecting Veil in the 1980s, and here he performs his own arrangements of the Preces and Responses and No longer mourn for me for eight cellos, plus The death of Ivan Ilyich, Mahámátar, and Popule meus.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Josquin: Masses Hercules Dux Ferrarie, D'ung aultre amer & Missa Faysant regretz
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
This is the ninth and final instalment of The Tallis Scholars’ series of the complete Josquin masses, which reaches the finishing-line just in time for the composer’s 500th anniversary next year; the three masses here were written in the composer’s early middle age, and are described by Phillips as ‘a perfect showcase for a genius who felt challenged to make each setting different’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Georg Zeppenfeld (Sachs), Vitalij Kowaljow (Pogner), Adrian Erod (Beckmesser), Klaus Florian Vogt (Walther), Jacquelyn Wagner (Eva); Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann
Featuring Georg Zeppenfeld (more usually associated with the role of Pogner) in his debut as Hans Sachs, this Meistersinger was recorded live at last year’s Salzburg Easter Festival.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC
As well as a 1943 recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 26 (with Backhaus’s own ornamentation and cadenzas), this album features the German pianist’s last recordings for HMV, made in Zurich in March 1948: Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A major K331, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E flat Op. 31 No. 3, Bach’s Italian Concerto, and Schubert’s Impromptu in E flat D899/2.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
