New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 1st October 2021
Today's new releases include British solo cello music from Steven Isserlis, the third and final instalment of Beethoven violin sonatas from Martin Helmchen and Frank Peter Zimmermann, Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne from Carolyn Sampson and the Tapiola Sinfonietta, and a recital of Elgar songs (including the soprano and piano version of Sea Pictures) from Julia Sitkovetsky and Christopher Glynn.
The catalyst for this album was Isserlis’s rediscovery of Frank Merrick’s Suite in the Eighteenth-Century Style - a work which he hadn’t performed for over three decades – during the early days of lockdown; that piece and Britten’s Cello Suite No. 3 are the mainstays of the programme, which also includes music by Walton, Gardner and Adès, plus Isserlis’s own arrangements of traditional themes used in the Britten Suite.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Zimmermann and Helmchen complete their acclaimed Beethoven cycle with Sonatas Nos. 8 -10; reviewing the previous instalment, Gramophone declared that 'anyone who loves these works will surely come away from this recording feeling entertained, stirred and thoroughly refreshed', whilst BBC Music Magazine described the inaugural volume as a series of 'conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3
Thierry Escaich (organ), Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège, Jean-Jacques Kantorow
Following what BBC Music Magazine described as 'driven, lively and largely convincing performances' of Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 earlier this year, Kantorow and the Liège orchestra continue their Saint-Saëns cycle with the Organ Symphony (in which Escaich plays the grand organ of the Salle Philharmonique) and Urbs Roma, which Saint-Saëns composed aged 21 for a competition hosted by the Société Sainte Cécile of Bordeaux.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This live recording was made on 15th June 2019 as part of the NTR Saturday Matinee series, and captures Haitink's final concert in his native Amsterdam, with an orchestra which he first conducted in 1957; Classical Source described the performance as 'an enriching, inexorable voyage, no other view seeming conceivable or needed'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
A stalwart of Hyperion's Classical Piano Concerto series, Shelley directs from the keyboard and supplies five of his own cadenzas in four concertos by the Bohemian composer; his previous contributions to the project have included works by Leopold Kozeluch, Johann Baptist Cramer (both with the London Mozart Players), Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Daniel Steibelt.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For his second recording on Harmonia Mundi, the French pianist couples the Piano Sonata No. 3 (composed in the early 1850s) with the 7 Fantasies Op. 116 from almost forty years later; Laloum's Brahms discography also includes recordings of the Piano Concertos (praised in The Sunday Times for the 'intelligence, mercuriality, lyric eloquence, intensity' of his playing) and the Clarinet Sonatas and Trio (which won a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in 2015).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Sampson joins the Finnish orchestra for a selection of 25 of the 30 songs which Canteloube collected, arranged and published between 1923 and 1954, including the famous Baïlèro, Brezairola, Jou l'Pount d'o Mirabel, Obal, din lou limouzi, La delaïssádo, Pastourelle, and Uno jionto pastouro.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French mezzo’s gallery of female warriors includes characters from Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte, Carlo Pallavicino’s L'Antiope, André Cardinal Destouches’s Marthésie, première reine des amazons, Francesco Provenzale’s Lo schiavo di sua moglie, Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani’s Mitilene, regina delle amazzoni, and André Danican Phildor’s Les Amazones.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This 'Journey through Songs by Edward Elgar' opens with the composer's own version of Sea Pictures for soprano and piano, and also includes lesser-known songs such as 'Like to the Damask Rose', 'Pleading', 'The Torch', 'The Muleteer's Serenade' (from Don Quixote), 'The Self-Banished', and 'When The Spring Comes Round'. 'Pansies' (adapted from 'Salut d'amour' by Max Laistner) receives its first recording in this version here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Berlioz: Requiem
Javier Camarena (tenor), Concertgebouworkest, Santa Cecilia Chorus, Antonio Pappano
Recorded live at the Concertgebouw in May 2019 to mark both the 150th anniversary of the composer's death and Dutch Memorial Day, this performance was applauded by Opera Today for Pappano's sensitivity to 'the work’s myriad spatial and dynamic facets', the 'sumptuous, full-bodied' sound of the Santa Cecilia Chorus, and Mexican tenor Camarena's 'irreproachable legato and top notes'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
In addition to the title-work, this collection of sacred works by the Flemish Renaissance composer (c.1540-1599) includes the Missa Freu dich, du werthe Christenheit and the motets 'Rühmbt alle Werck deß Herren', 'Wann ich nur dich hab' and 'Maria fein, du klarer Schein'. One of five brothers who all pursued careers in church music, Jacob Regnart spent much of his career in the employ of the Imperial Habsburg family.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lennox Berkeley: The One Act Operas
BBC Northern Orchestra, Martin Handford, BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Steurt Bedford, English Opera Group Chorus, English Chamber Orchestra, Meredith Davies
Hot on the heels of a recording of Berkeley's first opera Nelson, Lyrita present a triptych of one-acters which all received their premieres at Aldeburgh: the 1954 upstairs-downstairs comedy A Dinner Engagement, its 1967 companion-piece Castaway (based on the Nausicaa episode from Homer's Odyssey), and the Old Testament-inspired Ruth from 1956, which sets a libretto by Britten's regular collaborator Eric Crozier.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Released on BIS between 2013 and 2020, Andrew Litton's recordings of the Prokofiev symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have been praised by BBC Music Magazine for the American conductor's 'fine championship of the composer' and 'unstinting work on detail', and described in Gramophone as ' one of the most sonically sophisticated [Prokofiev cycles] in the lists'.
Available Formats: 5 SACDs, MP3, FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
