New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 27th August 2021
Today's new releases include Schubert's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies from René Jacobs and B’Rock Orchestra; Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 from Alexander Melnikov, Sinfonieorchester Basel and Ivor Bolton; French baroque heroines (including Charpentier’s Médée and Lully's Amadis, Alceste and Atys) from Véronique Gens and Ensemble Les Surprises, and seventeenth-century laments by Schütz, Schein, Scheidt and others from Iestyn Davies and Fretwork.
This is the third instalment of Jacobs’s Schubert series with the Belgian period-instrument orchestra (formed in Ghent in 2005), which launched in 2018 with Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6; previous volumes have been praised for their ‘bracing textures and tempi’ (The Sunday Times), ‘sprightly wind playing, fleet tempos and Jacobs’s sense of drama’ (The Times), and ‘pungent bravery’ (Record Review).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 & Tragic Overture
Alexander Melnikov (piano), Sinfonieorchester Basel, Ivor Bolton
Melnikov has received widespread acclaim for his previous recordings of the Brahms Horn Trio, piano sonatas and violin sonatas on period-appropriate instruments, with BBC Music Magazine hailing him as ‘a formidable Brahmsian’ and Gramophone deeming him ‘every inch the klavier-tiger’; here he plays a Blüthner piano from 1859, the year of the concerto’s premiere. The concerto is flanked by the Tragic Overture and the overture to Cherubini’s Eliza ou Le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2; Scherzi
Seong-Jin Cho (piano), London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda
The South Korean pianist recorded Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in 2016, shortly after winning the 17th International Chopin Competition, with Gramophone praising his ‘effortless clarity and articulation’ and BBC Music Magazine describing his playing as ‘unfailingly cultivated’; five years on, he reunites with the same orchestra and conductor for its successor, which is paired with the Four Scherzi.
Read David's interview with Seong-Jin Cho here.
Available Format: CD
This is the first instalment of a projected series exploring repertoire composed for Dresdner Hofkapelle, which was founded in the 1540s and had become one of Europe’s most celebrated ensembles by the early eighteenth century. The programme includes concerti by Quantz, Heinichen and Telemann, excerpts from sacred works by Zelenka, and a sonata by one of the orchestra’s leaders, Johann Georg Pisendel.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French pianist’s recital of music by nineteenth- and twentieth-century female composers includes Henriette Hilda Bosmans’s Six Préludes, Ethel Smyth’s Variations on an Original Theme (of an Exceedingly Dismal Nature), and shorter works by Mel Bonis, Cécile Chaminade, Jeanne Barbillion, Amy Beach, Emilie Zumsteeg, Agathe Backer Grøndahl, Germaine Tailleferre, Fanny Mendelssohn, and Clara Schumann.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For his debut on Delphian, the Scottish marimba-player gives the world premiere recordings of Ivan Trevino’s Immigrant Song, Strive to be Happy, Feeling Better and Memento; the programme also includes works by Michael Burritt, Emmanuel Séjourné’s Nancy, and Eric Ewazen’s Northern Lights. Huggan, who was a semi-finalist in the 2011 Royal Overseas League Competition, was described by The Herald’s Michael Tumelty as ‘play[ing] with an expressive flexibility of which I did not think the marimba was capable’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Passion
Véronique Gens (soprano), Ensemble Les Surprises, Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
Praised in last month’s Sunday Times for Gens’s ‘clarity of diction and histrionic eloquence’, the soprano’s programme of French baroque music includes scenes from Lully’s Amadis, Alceste, Atys, Proserpine and Le triomphe de l'amour, Desmarets’s Circée and La Diane de Fontainebleau, Collasse’s Achille et Polyxène and Thétis et Pélée, and Charpentier’s Médée.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Two years on from their critically-acclaimed recording of works by Purcell and Michael Nyman, Davies and Fretwork team up again for a recital of laments from seventeenth-century Germany, including music by Johann Christoph Bach, Heinrich Schütz, Franz Tunder, Samuel Scheidt, Christian Geist, and Johann Hermann Schein. The rising young countertenor Hugh Cutting joins Davies for the latter’s Christ unser Herr zum Jordan Kam and Schütz‘s Auf dem Gebirge.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The British soprano’s discography to date has focused predominantly on Baroque and Classical repertoire, but here she makes her Linn debut (alongside her long-term recital-partner Anna Tilbrook) with a programme of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century song, including Schoenberg’s Vier Lieder Op. 2, Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder, Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder and a selection from his early Acht Gedichte aus Letzte Blätter.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ina Boyle: Songs
Paula Murrihy (mezzo), Robin Tritschler (tenor), Ben McAteer (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano)
A pupil of Vaughan Williams, Boyle lived a secluded life in County Wicklow; despite being one of the most prolific Irish composers of the first half of the twentieth century, she received relatively little recognition during her lifetime owing to family responsibilities which prevented her from travelling. Recorded at Wigmore Hall last year, this programme includes the Three Songs by Walter de la Mare, Five Sacred Folksongs of Sicily, and her prize-winning setting of Walt Whitman’s The Last Invocation.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Giosquino: Josquin Desprez in Italia
Odhecaton, The Gesualdo Six, La Pifarescha, La Reverdie, Paolo Da Col
Released to mark the 500th anniversary of the composer's birth, this celebration of Josquin's time in Italy comprises the Missa Hercules dux Ferrariæ (written for the Duke of Ferrara Ercole I d’Este) and a selection of motets commissioned by Italian patrons; the Gesualdo Six join Odhecaton for the larger-scale works written for the Roman and Ferrarese chapels, augmenting the number of singers to 22.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Zingarelli: Giulietta e Romeo
Franco Fagioli (countertenor), Adèle Charvet (mezzo), Orchestre de l'Opéra Royal, Stefan Plewniak
Premiered at La Scala in 1796, Zingarelli’s opera about the ‘star-cross’d lovers’ was subsequently performed several times in Paris for Napoleon, who was an enormous fan of the singers who created the title-roles; Romeo (which later became a favourite role of Maria Malibran) was written for the soprano castrato Girolamo Crescentini and Giulietta for the contralto Giuseppina Grassini (who had love-affairs with both Napoleon and Wellington).
Available Formats: CD + DVD Video, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
