New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 11th June 2021
Today's new releases include the final instalment of Iván Fischer's Brahms cycle with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Kodály and Dvořák piano trios from Alexander Lonquich, Barnabás Kelemen and Nicolas Altstaedt, Rameau from French haute-contre Mathias Vidal, Tchaikovsky piano sonatas from Vadym Kholodenko, and Bach and Beethoven from Andrew Von Oeyen.
After a six-year hiatus (during which he and the orchestra focused their energies on Mahler), Fischer completes his Brahms cycle from Budapest with what The Guardian described as ‘wonderfully svelte’ accounts of these works; previous instalments have been praised for their ‘clarity of texture’ (BBC Music Magazine on No. 1) and ‘intense freshness and lyricism’ (The Observer on No. 2).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Born in New Orleans in 1950, Gottsch is the South Florida Symphony’s Composer In Residence, and this album features world premiere recordings of two major orchestral works: Sunset (written in 2017 and inspired by an evening in Key West) and the symphonic poem Princess Yurievskaya from a year later, which depicts the love-affair between Catherine Dolgorukova and Tsar Alexander II.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kodály: Duo for Violin and Violoncello, Op. 7 - Dvořák: Piano Trio, Op. 90 'Dumky'
Barnabás Kelemen (violin), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Alexander Lonquich
Following their acclaimed 2019 recording of music by Veress and Bartók (which won prizes at the BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Awards, and was nominated for an International Classical Music Award), the Lockenhaus Festival team reunite for another pairing of Central European chamber works influenced by folk music: Dvořák's popular 'Dumky' Trio from 1891, and Kodály's Duo for Violin and Cello from 1914.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The young Canadian pianist (who took the Silver Medal and the Krystian Zimerman Prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015) has made quite a specialism of Chopin over the past few years, with BBC Music Magazine hailing him as ‘a technician of exceptional elegance and sophistication’ in the wake of his recording of the Piano Sonata No. 3 in 2015 and Gramophone describing him as ‘a supremely artistic, highly sensitive young pianist, whose strikingly original ideas remain true to the spirit of Chopin’ two years later.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Following a Górecki recital which caused Gramophone to ‘run out of superlatives’ last year, the Tippetts turn their attention to his compatriot and contemporary Krzysztof Penderecki, whose compositions for string quartet span over five decades and comprise four numbered Quartets and Der unterbrochene Gedanke [‘The Interrupted Thought’] from 1988; the String Trio from 1990 completes the programme.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Russian-American cellist’s programme comprises Brahms’s Cello Sonata No. 1, Reger’s Bach/Casals-inspired Cello Suite No. 2, and Schumann’s Fantasiestücke and Adagio & Allegro; Kotova has been described by Gramophone as ‘a strong and individual artist [whose] depth of feeling and technical control are never in doubt’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following acclaimed recordings of music by Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Kholodenko continues his explorations of Russian piano repertoire with two comparatively rarely-recorded works by Tchaikovsky: the G major sonata from 1878 and the posthumously-published Sonata in C sharp minor, composed in 1865.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Reflecting on how this programme came together during lockdown, the American pianist observes that ‘if Bach served as my first musical mooring in confinement, I returned to Beethoven for second-wave pandemic relief’; the recital comprises Bach’s Overture in the French Style BWV831, two arrangements of his flute works by Wilhelm Kempff, and Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata and Sonata Quasi una Fantasia.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This collection of works by the younger of Wolfgang Amadeus’s two sons includes sets of variations on the Act One finale of his father’s Don Giovanni, the Ukrainian folk-songs ‘The Wagons Rolling Down the Hill’ and 'A Neighbour has a White Horse’, a march from Henri-Montan Berton’s 1803 opera Aline, Reine de Golconde, and the Diabelli waltz which also inspired Beethoven.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Trotter arrived at King’s College Cambridge as Organ Scholar in 1976, and for this survey of the French composer’s complete organ works he returns to his alma mater and its Harrison & Harrison organ, which underwent a major restoration five years ago; Trotter enthuses that recording this music ‘on one of the world’s most famous organs – indeed the one on which I learned my craft – [was] a joy and a privilege’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The French haute-contre has an impressive track-record with Rameau’s operas on stage and on disc, with previous recordings including the title-role in Pigmalion, a ‘dramatic, lyrical and commanding’ (BBC Music Magazine) Leader of the Arts in Les Fêtes de Polymnie, and multiple roles in Les Indes Galantes; this recital features excerpts from those three works, plus extracts from Les Paladins, Platée, Naïs, Dardanus, and Castor et Pollux.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Commissioned by the Great Music in Irish Houses Festival to mark its 50th anniversary last year, Great Women is a 25-minute work for female voice and electronics setting texts from letters by Countess Markievicz and Rosie Hackett, and the inaugural speeches of former presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. Mulvey, a former pupil of Nicola Lefanu, is currently Professor of Composition at Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama.
Please note short playing-time of this EP.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This collection of music from the Old Hall Manuscript (dating from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and now housed in the British Library) features pieces by English and Franco-Flemish composers including Cooke, Power, Pycard, Dunstable, Dufay, Lymburgia and Binchois; the recording was made in Boxgrove Priory in West Sussex.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sigismondo d’India: Lamenti & sospiri
Julie Roset, Mariana Flores (sopranos), Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García Alarcón
This programme of vocal solos and duets by Monteverdi’s contemporary (whom Alarcón describes as his ‘twin or mirror’) includes the Lamentatione d’Olympia, Mercè! grido piangendo, Chi nudrisce tua speme, Io viddi in terra angelici costume, Voi che ascoltate in rime sparse, and Sprezzami bionda e fuggimi.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Gounod: Mireille (Blu-ray)
Inva Mula (Mireille), Charles Castronovo (Vincent), Opéra national de Paris, Marc Minkowski, Nicolas Joel
Filmed in Paris in 2009 and released on DVD two years later, Nicolas Joel’s production of Gounod’s 1864 opera is now available on Blu-ray; Gramophone praised Castronovo’s ‘winning blend of poetry and ardour’ as Vincent, whilst the New York Times applauded Minkowski’s ‘sensitively, astutely judged’ reading of the score and Mula’s ‘keen dramatic convictions’ as the heroine.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
