New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 6th August 2021
Today's new releases include a French-language Carnaval des animaux from Duo Jatekok and the Orchestre National de Lille; Britten, Walton, Elgar and Vaughan Williams from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla; orchestral songs by Wagner, Mahler and Berg from Anja Harteros and Valery Gergiev, and Chopin Preludes interwoven with contemporary works from Alice Sara Ott.
Two of the works here (Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem and the Symphonic Suite from Walton's Troilus & Cressida) were released digitally in October 2020 and March 2021 respectively, with Gramophone declaring that 'The CBSO throw [the Britten] off with all due virtuosity and sonically the DG engineering is exceptional'; for this physical release they are flanked by Elgar's Sospiri and Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Currently Principal Flute of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Olech took First Prize in her category at the 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition; his Flute Concerto from 1926 opens her debut orchestral recording, with The Guardian observing that ‘Olech gets [Nielsen's] neurotic solo flute writing, and its reactions to the rude intrusions from a solo trombone, spot on.’ It’s followed by Dutch composer Theodor Verhey’s Flute Concerto No. 1 from 1902, and Jean Françaix’s concerto from the mid-1960s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Twentieth-Century Works for Clarinet and Orchestra
Blaž Šparovec (clarinet), Odense Symphony Orchestra, Vincenzo Milletarì
The Slovenian clarinettist was also placed first at the 2019 Nielsen Competition, with juror Michael Collins predicting that ‘his technical skill and warm sound will make him stand out as a true individual’; his programme comprises Debussy’s Première rhapsodie, Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, Lutosławski’s Dance Preludes, and the original version of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (without the simplifications made by its dedicatee, Benny Goodman).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Saint-Saëns: Le carnaval des animaux - Poulenc: Double Concerto
Alex Vizorek (narrator), Duo Jatekok (Naïri Badal and Adélaïde Panaget), Orchestre National de Lille, Lucie Leguay
Following Saint-Saëns’s ‘zoological fantasy’ (given here with a new French text by Belgian comedian Alex Vizorek), Badal and Panaget stay centre-stage for Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos from 1932 and Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre in Wendy Hiscock’s version for four hands.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded in Tallinn in 2019, this album takes its title from a ballet-score written for Nederlands Dans Theater, which was inspired by the migrant crisis and what Richter describes as ‘the universal subject of journeys’ and the choices (or lack thereof) behind them; there are also new orchestrations of On the Nature of Daylight, The Haunted Ocean, Infra 5, and Sunlight.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Two years on from their debut disc of Mendelssohn (praised in Gramophone for ‘the airiness and fingeriness of the group’s approach’), the French siblings turn to twentieth-century repertoire. Cellist Justine observes that the trio’s father ‘brought us up on a diet of Shostakovich from a very early age’, and this album features his two piano trios from 1923 and 1944, followed by Weinberg’s sole essay in the genre from 1945 - which like his friend Shostakovich’s second trio makes use of Jewish themes.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For her tenth recording on Deutsche Grammophon, Ott intersperses Chopin’s 24 Preludes Op. 28 with music by Ligeti, Nino Rota, Chilly Gonzales, Arvo Pärt and Toru Takemitsu; the programme opens with Francesco Tristano’s specially-commissioned In The Beginning Was (inspired by the C major Prelude from JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier) and closes with Ott’s own Lullaby to Eternity, based on fragments from the Lacrimosa of Mozart’s Requiem.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The American pianist and musicologist’s fascinating programme interleaves JS Bach’s English Suites with suites by Black composers: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Four Characteristic Waltzes and African Suite, Jeffrey Mumford’s Four Dances for Boris, R. Nathaniel Dett’s In the Bottoms, and H. Leslie Adams’s Contrasts.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
In the wake of the German soprano’s warmly received role-debut as Isolde at the Bayerische Staatsoper last month, the Munich orchestra release these live recordings of Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder (two of which were described by the composer as ‘studies’ for Tristan und Isolde), Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder, and Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded a few months after the 92-year-old singer-songwriter, satirist and mathematician relinquished the rights to his songs last October, this programme includes favourites such as Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, The Vatican Rag, The Masochism Tango, and We will all go together when we go, all in new arrangements by members of the Windsor-based vocal ensemble and friends.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
