New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 11th March 2022
Today's new releases include a recital of Rachmaninov songs from Asmik Grigorian and Lukas Geniušas, Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 0 & 5 from Boris Giltburg, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, two comprehensive Knappertsbusch editions on Eloquence, and Jeanine Tesori & Tazewell Thompson's powerful new opera Blue, which confronts racially-motivated police brutality in contemporary America.
The Lithuanian soprano kicks off a new relationship with Alpha Classics in an all-Rachmaninov recital, taking its title from the opening song on the programme and also featuring 'Spring Waters', 'How Fair this Spot', 'Do not Sing, My Beauty', and 'Believe Me Not, Friend!'. Grigorian's plans with the label include a recording of Strauss's Four Last Songs with Mikko Franck and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14 (with the same artists plus Matthias Goerne) is already in the can...
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 5 'Emperor' & 0
Boris Giltburg (piano), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko
Two years on from their recording of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (which was nominated for an Opus Klassik Award and praised in Gramophone for 'Giltburg’s polished and cultivated pianism'), Giltburg and Petrenko team up again for two works which share the key of E flat: the Piano Concerto No. 0, WoO 4 (written when the composer was just thirteen) and the 'Emperor' Concerto from twenty-five years later.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following his 'outstanding' (Sunday Times) accounts of Shostakovich's piano concertos, the Macedonian pianist's first solo album on Linn features Mozart’s sets of variations on Paisiello's 'Salve tu, Domine' and 'Come un'agnello' from Sarti's Fra i due litiganti (a theme which the composer also quotes in the supper-scene of Don Giovanni), Brahms's Variations on a theme by Schumann, and Beethoven's Variations on a Russian Dance and 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Written in the summer of 1821, the Symphony in E major (D 729) is one of five unfinished symphonies by Franz Schubert, and the only one to exist in complete draft form; it's presented here in a new version by Austrian composer Richard Dünser, which replaces the middle movements with draft material from the year of Schubert's death, and is preceded by the Overture for Fierrabras (composed two years after the symphony).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concertos For Trumpet and Piano
Selina Ott (trumpet), Maria Radutu (piano), ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dirk Kaftan
On the sequel to her disc of trumpet concertos by Arutiunian, Peskin and Desenclos, Ott joins forces with Maria Radutu for two works with prominent roles for trumpet and piano: Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Jolivet's Concertino for Trumpet, String Orchestra and Piano. The album also includes Weinberg's Trumpet Concerto (written for Russian virtuoso Timofey Dokshitser and premiered in 1968), and an arrangement of Rachmaninov's Do Not Sing, My Beauty.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Centring on composers who came to London to seek (or augment!) their fortunes in the early eighteenth century, Gaillard's programme includes cello concertos by Giovanni Battista Cirri and Nicola Porpora, shorter instrumental works by Hasse, Vivaldi and Scottish composer James Oswald, and vocal pieces by Handel and Geminiani (where she and the Pulcinella Orchestra are joined by Sandrine Piau and Lucile Richardot).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Manchester-based chamber music ensemble celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with a collection of world premiere recordings, including their patron Mark Anthony Turnage's Black Milk (setting Paul Celan's poem Todesfuge and featuring jazz singer Ian Shaw), Tom Coult's Two Games and a Nocturne, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade’s Patdeep Studies, and John Casken's Winter Reels.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Edward Nesbit: Sacred Choral Music
Ruby Hughes (soprano), Joshua Simões, The Choir of King’s College, London, Joseph Fort
A former pupil of Julian Anderson and George Benjamin, Nesbit won the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2010 and was appointed as Lecturer in Composition at King's in 2018; this album features his Mass (written in 2014 and featuring soprano Ruby Hughes), the Evening Psalms from 2019, Fanfares and Rounds for organ, and The King's Service (dedicated to these performers and composed last year).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded in Venice last year, this is the first complete edition of Franck's works for voice and piano; highlights include 'S’il est un charmant gazon' and 'Roses et papillons' (on texts by Victor Hugo), 'Le sylphe' (setting a poem by Alexandre Dumas père), and the Six Duos on poetry by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Amable Tastu, Guy Ropartz, André Theuriet, and Alphonse Daudet.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jeanine Tesori: Blue
Kenneth Kellogg (The Father), Brianna Hunter (The Mother), Aaron Crouch (The Son), Gordon Hawkins (The Reverend), The Washington National Opera, Roderick Cox
Commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival in 2015 (and premiered there four years later), Blue is set in contemporary Harlem and tells the story of an African-American police officer whose son is killed by a colleague during a protest against racially-motivated police brutality; the work was named Best New Opera by The Music Critics Association of North America in 2020, and was described by The New York Times as 'a strong yet subtle score that avoids the obvious and exudes a personal voice'.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Premiered in Czech (as Testament Tetý Karoliny) in 1936, Roussel's opéra bouffe shares something of the spirit of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi in its depiction of a family squabbling over the terms and conditions attached to a late relative's will. This recording presents the work in its 1964 French-language incarnation, prepared by Roussel's librettist Nino, which condenses the original three acts down to one.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bringing together the German conductor's recordings for Decca, Polydor and Westminster, this 18-CD collection includes landmark accounts of Beethoven and Brahms concertos with Clifford Curzon, newly remastered selections of Wagner overtures and preludes from the 1940s, Brahms's Alto Rhapsody with Lucretia West, and Bruckner's Symphonies Nos. 3-5 with the Wiener Philharmoniker from the mid-1950s.
Available Format: 18 CDs
As well as complete live recordings of Parsifal from 1951 and 1962, the Vienna studio recording of Die Meistersinger from 1950/51 and a 1961 Fidelio, this set includes Wagner recitals with George London and Kirsten Flagstad, excerpts from Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Grace Hoffmann, and Act One of Die Walküre with Flagstad, Set Svanholm and Arnold van Mill.
Available Format: 19 CDs
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
