New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 3rd September 2021
Today's new releases include a recital of songs by Mahler, Ives and Grime from British soprano Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton, British oboe quintets from Nicholas Daniel and the Doric String Quartet, organist Anna Lapwood's first solo recording (featuring music by Britten, Ravel, Nadia Boulanger and Cheryl Frances-Hoad), and Strauss's Don Quixote and Till Eulenspiegel from François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln.
Richard Strauss: Don Quixote & Till Eulenspiegel
Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth
Following acclaimed recordings of Mahler’s Third and Fifth Symphonies, Roth continues his exploration of repertoire premiered by the Gurzenich Orchestra with this pairing of early Strauss tone-poems; reviewing his previous accounts of these works with the SWR Sinfonieorchester, Gramophone declared that ‘I have rarely heard [Till Eulenspiegel] played better’, whilst American Record Guide pronounced that his Don Quixote ‘goes to the top of recent recordings’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the second instalment of Dausgaard’s Bruckner project from Bergen, following an account of the Sixth Symphony last year which was described as ‘in-the-moment’ and ’vibrantly alive’ by Fanfare and received five stars from BBC Music Magazine, who applauded his ‘swift tempos and strong rhythmic sense’. Dausgaard uses the original 1873 version of the score here.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Four Visions of France
Daniel Müller-Schott (cello), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Alexandre Bloch
Müller-Schott’s programme of French works for cello and orchestra opens with Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and also features concertos by Honegger and Lalo, plus Faure’s Élégie and Saint-Saëns’s Romance in F major; the German cellist recently won an Opus Klassik award for his solo album #CelloUnlimited, which was also praised in Gramophone for ‘the intense focus, the sense of line and the gleaming purity of tone’ on display.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Four years on from their Gramophone Award-nominated recording of the String Quintets and Octet (all written in the aftermath of World War One), the Nash Ensemble perform a programme of works from both ends of Bruch’s long composing career: the Piano Trio in C minor from 1857, the Four Pieces for Cello and Piano from 1896, the Romance for Viola from 1911, and the String Quartet No. 2 in E from 1860.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The majority of the works featured on this programme – the Oboe Quintets by Bliss and Bax, Finzi’s Interlude for oboe and string quartet, and the two interludes for Delius’s Fennimore and Gerda - were written for the British oboist Leon Goossens, on whose 110-year-old instrument Daniel plays the latter work. The recital also includes Vaughan Williams’s Six Studies in English Folksong in an arrangement for cor anglais.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Whilst many large-scale orchestral, operatic and choral recording projects have necessarily been on ice during the pandemic, solo instrumentalists have had rather more opportunities to get busy in the studio, and Stephen Hough has certainly taken full advantage of the fact - this is the first of four recordings which the British pianist (who celebrates his sixtieth birthday this November) made during lockdown.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Performed on the Steinmeyer Organ of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Herrick’s recital includes music by the contemporary Scandinavian composers Mons Leidvin Takl, Christian Praestholm, Anders S Börjesson and Sverre Eftestøl, plus works by Iain Farrington, Percy Fletcher, Pietro Yon, Gigout, Dubois, Brahms, and Hans-André Stamm.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Recorded after hours at Ely Cathedral, the organist, choral conductor and broadcaster’s debut solo album includes her own arrangements of the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s Peter Grimes and Messiaen’s Vocalise-étude, plus excerpts from Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and Debussy’s String Quartet and works by Owain Park, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kerensa Briggs, Nadia Boulanger and Patrick Gowers.
Listen to the latest episode of the Presto Podcast with Anna Lapwood here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Cooper presents a programme of works which she learned in her teens and twenties but has never performed in public, including Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, Jeux d’eau and Sonatine, Liszt’s Réminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13, and Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este (from Années de pèlerinage III), Fauré’s Theme and Variations Op. 73, and Respighi’s Notturno.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their acclaimed recording of Die schöne Müllerin last autumn, Bostridge and Giorgini team up again for an all-Respighi programme, including Nebbie, Stornellatrice, Deita silvane, the Quattro Liriche dal Poema Paradisiaco di Gabriele d'Annunzio and Arie scozzesi, Bella porta di Rubini, and Le fontanelle.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The centrepiece of Hughes and Middleton’s second joint album is Helen Grime’s song-cycle Bright Travellers, which the pair premiered in 2018 and which was praised in The Guardian for its ‘fiercely compelling grip’; the programme also includes Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and Charles Ives’s The Children’s Hour, Serenity, Mists, The Housatonic at Stockbridge and Songs My Mother Taught Me.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded in July 2017, this account of Bellini’s 1835 opera on the English Civil War features two of the US’s finest bel canto singers in the leading roles: Brownlee has sung Arturo for companies including Chicago Lyric Opera and the Metropolitan Opera (where The New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini observed that the role ‘brings out the best in him’), whilst Coburn’s Elvira for Boston Lyric Opera was praised by Boston Classical Review for her ‘agile coloratura, great musicality, and complete command of the stage’.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Glass: Akhnaten
Anthony Roth Constanzo (Akhnaten), J'Nai Bridges (Nefertiti), Zachary James (Amenhotep III), Richard Bernstein (Aye), Aaron Blake (High Priest), Will Liverman (General Horemhab), Disella Larusdottir (Queen Tye); Metropolitan Opera, Karen Kamensek
Filmed at the Met in 2019, this production of Glass’s 1984 opera was described by BachTrack as ‘a magnificent musical and dramatic spectacle’, whilst The New York Times praised Roth Costanzo’s ‘gleaming high notes and melting sound that cuts through the orchestra with surprising ease’ and J’Nai Bridges’s ‘auspicious’ house debut as Nefertiti.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
