New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 4th December 2020
Today's new recordings include world premiere recordings of orchestral works by Italian-British composer Elisabetta Brusa and the original Roman version of Rossini’s 1821 opera Matilde di Shabran, the recording debut of the young American pianist Paul Ji, and a boxed set celebrating Adrian Boult’s four-decade relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
This fourth volume of orchestral works by the Italian-British composer (b. 1954) on Naxos features the world premiere recordings of Symphony No. 2 (composed between 2000 and 2010 and orchestrated five years after completion) and the ‘song without words’ Simply Largo for string orchestra from 2008. Reviewing the first instalment of the series, Classics Today observed that ‘the music of Elisabetta Brusa comes as a breath of fresh air’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Launching just in time for the 150th anniversary of his birth tomorrow, this first volume of a new series focusing on the orchestral music of the Czech composer (and student of Dvořák) comprises the tone-poem Toman and the Wood Nymph from 1907 and the folk-song-inspired South Bohemian Suite from 1937.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following on from their album of British violin sonatas (which BBC Music Magazine described as ‘notably refreshing’) earlier this year, Howick and Callaghan turn their attention to Anglo-French music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - including sonatas by Delius, Ireland and Debussy and shorter works by Cyril Scott, Bax and Ravel.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The sixteen-year-old pianist, who won French television’s Prodiges competition last year with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, makes his debut on Warner Classics with a recital which includes pieces by Schumann, Debussy, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, Chopin’s Grande Valse Brillante, and (in recognition of the song and dance categories of the competition) Liszt’s Paraphrase on Verdi’s Rigoletto and the Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For her first solo recording on CAvi, the Moscow-born pianist (and wife of Daniel Barenboim) explores a work which she only discovered recently, Dvořák’s neglected set of thirteen character-pieces from 1889; these vividly pictorial miniatures paved the way for the symphonic poems such as The Golden Spinning Wheel, The Noon Witch, and The Water Goblin which followed in the 1890s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Michael Haydn: Missa Sancti Nicolai Tolentini
Lawes Baroque Players, St Albans Cathedral Girls Choir, Tom Winpenny
Composed in Salzburg in 1768, the Missa Sancti Nicolai Tolentini was the younger Haydn brother’s first large-scale choral work, and is scored for a choir of trebles plus strings, trumpet and organ. It’s followed here by the Vesperae Pro Festo Sancti Innocentium and the Anima nostra in G major.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Russian coloratura soprano and pianist present a recital dedicated to the Romances of Alexander Dargomïzhsky (1813-1869) - perhaps best known today for his final opera The Stone Guest, based on a Pushkin play which follows the same basic narrative as Don Giovanni. Several Pushkin settings feature here, including Night Zephyr, The fire of desire burns in my blood, The Youth and the Maiden and The Secret Garden.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Rossini: Matilde di Shabran
Michele Angelini (Corrdino), Sara Blanch (Matilde); Passionart Orchestra, Górecki Chamber Choir, José Miguel Pérez-Sierra
This is the world premiere recording of the original version of Rossini’s melodramma giocoso, first performed in Rome in 1821 under the baton of Paganini; the central role of ‘iron-hearted’ tyrant Corradino (which propelled Juan Diego Flórez to stardom in the mid-1990s) is taken here by the Italian-American Rossini specialist Michele Angelini, who has frequently been cast in tandem with Flórez over the past few years years and was recently described as ‘a bright and agile tenor with more high Cs than a pirate movie’ by the Seattle Times.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This five-disc collection celebrating the long association between Boult and the LPO (which he served as Principal conductor from 1950 to 1957 and continued to work with regularly until his retirement in 1978) includes symphonies by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Beethoven, ballet music by Holst and Delibes, and works by Bartók, Arnold, Stanford, Gershwin, Bax and Butterworth.
Available Format: 5 CDs
This is the first CD release of the recordings which the pianist made for American Decca in the late 1950s and early 60s, including a substantial selection of Chopin works, Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, concertos by Liszt and Saint-Saëns, and a disc of encores by Debussy, Villa-Lobos, Prokofiev, Schumann and others. Reviewing the recording of Études which opens the collection back in 1957, High Fidelity declared that ‘Slenczynska has technique to burn, has it under complete control, and uses it with masculine vigour and shrewd musicianship’.
Available Formats: 10 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
