Coming Soon,
Joyce DiDonato's Winterreise and other forthcoming highlights
Highlights for April and May include a novel take on Schubert's Winterreise from the American mezzo and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire from Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends, Vaughan Williams from Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra, and Péter Eötvös's new Alhambra concerto from its dedicatees Isabelle Faust and Pablo Heras-Casado.
DiDonato approaches Schubert’s great cycle from the perspective of the woman who ‘spoke of love’ to the protagonist before his mysterious nocturnal departure: rather like Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther, she reflects on his suffering through reading the journals he’s sent her. The performance was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in December 2019, and was described by Limelight as ‘original and intriguing’.
Released 23rd April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Reviewing this live performance of the Fourth Symphony in December 2019, BachTrack declared that ‘the levels of intensity achieved by its final bars made it seem almost like a British Rite of Spring'. The performance of the Sixth Symphony took place just before the UK entered lockdown last March, with The Guardian observing that ‘the ambiguous finale hovered between exhaustion and acceptance’.
Released 16th April.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Erinnerung: Homage To Humperdinck
Christina Landshamer (soprano), Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Hinrich Alpers (piano), Schumann Quartet, Bamberger Symphoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker et al
Released to mark the centenary of the German composer’s death, this collection takes its title from a short piano-piece which he wrote at the age of seventeen (and which receives its world premiere recording here). Also includes a generous selection of lieder, the Piano Quintet in G minor and String Quartet in C major, plus excerpts from Königskinder, the two Shakespeare Suites and of course Hänsel und Gretel.
Released 23rd April.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Following their widely-praised accounts of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Gossec’s Symphonie à 17 parties last year, Roth and his period-instrument orchestra present another coupling of a Beethoven symphony with a work by one of his French contemporaries; Napoleon, to whom Beethoven had originally dedicated the Eroica, was present at the premiere of Les Amazones in 1811.
Released 23rd April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Tansy Davies: Nature
Huw Watkins (piano), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oliver Knussen, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Karen Kamensek
This collection of works by the English composer (b. 1973) takes its title from her 2012 concerto for piano and ten players, premiered by these musicians at Knussen’s sixtieth birthday concert and described by The Telegraph as 'the piece that actually set the heart and mind in motion'; the album also includes the suite What Did We See (drawing on material from Davies's 2014 opera Between Worlds), Re-Greening (2015), and Dune of Footprints, inspired by the Cave of Niaux in southwestern France.
Released 23rd April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The first instalment of Zimmermann and Helmchen’s Beethoven series (released last October) was praised in BBC Music Magazine for the violinist’s ‘effortless virtuosity’ and pianist’s ‘light, flexible, and finely shaded sound’, whilst Gramophone observed that ‘these performances wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’; this second volume features Sonatas Nos. 5-7.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Almost two years on from his Presto Award-winning accounts of the Toccatas (which David described as ‘an exhilarating ride in the harpsichord equivalent of a souped-up sports car, driven by surely the finest and most assured driver alive today’), Esfahani continues his mission to record Bach’s complete keyboard music incorporating the most recent textual findings; reviewing live performances of Nos. 2 & 3 at Wigmore Hall in 2018, The Arts Desk praised ‘the myriad ways in which contrasts are brought to the fore’ in his interpretations.
Released 28th May.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Meesun Hong, Julia Gallego, Reto Bieri, Thomas Kaufmann, Joonas Ahonen, Marko Milenkovic
Kopatchinskaja does double-duty as violinist and reciter in Schoenberg's set of twenty-one short melodramas, a feat she's performed regularly in concert over the past six years; it's followed by the same composer's Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op. 19, Phantasy Op. 47 and arrangement of Johann Strauss’s Kaiser-Walzer, plus Webern's Four Pieces for Violin & Piano Op. 7 and Kreisler's Little Viennese March.
Released 9th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps & Eötvös: Alhambra Concerto
Isabelle Faust (violin), Orchestre de Paris, Pablo Heras-Casado
Dedicated to Faust and Heras-Casado (whose names the composer has ‘hidden in the fabric’ of the work), Eötvös’s third violin concerto was inspired by what he describes as the ‘architectural marvel’ of the Granada palace, where it was premiered in July 2019; reviewing a performance at the BBC Proms a few weeks later, The Guardian described it as ‘a showpiece for the orchestra as well as the soloist’, whilst The Times deemed it ‘another welcome addition to the works of an engaging cosmopolitan who knows no borders’.
Released 9th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bach’s concertos are interleaved with new companion-pieces: Olga Neuwirth’s Aello, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Maya, Brett Dean’s Approach (Prelude to a Canon), Anders Hillborg’s Bach materia, Steven Mackey’s Triceros, and Uri Caine’s Hamsa. Soloists include Mahan Esfahani, Pekka Kuusisto, Håkan Hardenberger, Antje Weithaas, and Tabea Zimmermann.
Released 28th May.
Available Formats: 3 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Puccini: La Bohème (DVD)
Sonya Yoncheva (Mimì), Charles Castronovo (Rodolfo), Andrzej Filończyk (Marcello), Simona Mihai (Musetta), Gyula Nagy (Schaunard), Peter Kellner (Colline); Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Richard Jones, Emmanuel Villaume
This revival of Richard Eyre’s 2017 production was filmed at Covent Garden at the beginning of last year, with The Guardian declaring Villaume as ‘in many ways the star of this revival’ thanks to the ‘drive and intensity’ of his interpretation and his ‘full attention to the care and originality of Puccini’s scoring.’ Charles Castronovo’s ‘energetic, lyrical Rodolfo’ also impressed The Stage, whilst Opera Today praised the ‘wonderfully theatrical and balanced quartet’ of male Bohemians.
Released 23rd April.
Available Format: DVD Video
Puccini: La Bohème (Blu-ray)
Sonya Yoncheva (Mimì), Charles Castronovo (Rodolfo), Andrzej Filończyk (Marcello), Simona Mihai (Musetta), Gyula Nagy (Schaunard), Peter Kellner (Colline); Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Richard Jones, Emmanuel Villaume
Picture format: 1080i
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS-HD MA 5.1
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
