New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 1st April 2022
Today's new releases include Handel's La Resurrezione from Harry Bicket and The English Concert (with soloists including Sophie Bevan, Lucy Crowe and Iestyn Davies), a tribute to two rival French baroque divas from Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau, Strauss, Korngold and Schreker from John Wilson and the strings of Sinfonia of London, and Schubert from Stephen Hough.
Just over a year on from their widely-acclaimed album of works by Britten, Bliss, Bridge and Berkeley, the Sinfonia of London strings turn their attention to German repertoire from the first half of the twentieth century: Strauss's Metamorphosen, Schreker's Intermezzo from 1900, and Korngold's large-scale Symphonische Serenade (composed shortly before the Symphony in F sharp, which was the main event on the orchestra's award-winning debut recording).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Long-standing friends Piau and Gens pay homage to another pair of French baroque divas: Mme Dugazon and Mme Saint-Huberty, who enjoyed enormous success in Paris in the late eighteenth century. Their programme includes arias from Edelmann's Ariane dans l'isle de Naxos, Gluck's Alceste and Sacchini's Renaud, plus duos from Dalayrac's Camille, ou Le souterrain, Cherubini's Démophoon, and JC Bach's La Clemenza di Scipione.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Handel: La Resurrezione
Lucy Crowe (Angel), Sophie Bevan (Mary Magdalene), Iestyn Davies (Mary Cleophas), Hugo Hymas (John the Evangelist), Ashley Riches (Lucifer); The English Concert, Harry Bicket
Following their superb Rodelinda last year (which also starred Crowe and Davies and is shortlisted for the upcoming BBC Music Magazine Awards), Bicket and The English Concert continue their Handel series with this account of the composer's 1708 oratorio depicting events between the Crucifixion and Resurrection and centring on Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas. The recording was made at The Sage Gateshead last Easter.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Hot on the heels of extraordinary recitals of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, the fruits of Hough's lockdown recording-sessions continue in the form of the late G major sonata (composed after the ‘Great’ C major symphony and Schubert's final string quartet), the decidedly sunnier A major sonata from 1819, and the minute-long fragment from a projected Sonata in E minor, thought to date from the mid-1820s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Chiaroscuros complete their survey of Beethoven's Op. 18 quartets, composed between 1798 and 1800; No. 4 is the sole minor-key work of the set, whilst No. 5 in A major draws on Mozart’s quartet in the same key, and No. 6 shows the influence of Haydn (with whom Beethoven had studied briefly before friction developed). The first instalment was described as 'dynamic, intelligent, agile and argumentative' in Gramophone and was also one of Record Review's Records of the Year in 2021.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge
Nicky Spence (tenor), Julius Drake (piano), Timothy Ridout (viola), Piatti Quartet
Following their multi-award-winning recording of Janáček's Diary of One Who Disappeared in 2019, Spence and Drake team up for another programme of works by a composer who drew inspiration from folk-music. In addition to On Wenlock Edge, the album includes The House of Life, the Four Hymns from 1914 (in the version for tenor, viola and piano), and two numbers from the 15 Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties: 'The saucy bold robber' and 'Harry the Tailor'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 22 & 23
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano), Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy
The French pianist and Hungarian conductor continue their Mozart series (which began in 2016) with two works written in Vienna during the winter of 1785/86, whilst the composer was working on Le nozze di Figaro; they are preceded here by the overture to Der Schauspieldirektor, which was also composed during the same period. Look out for David's interview with Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy (who joined him via video-call just an hour or two before their recent concert in Manchester!) in the coming weeks.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For his fourth recording on Ondine, Trevino presents four of the the Finnish composer's late works for violin and orchestra: the Deux Sérénades (written for Hilary Hahn and completed by Kalevi Aho after Rautavaara's death), the Fantasia premiered by Anne Akiko Meyers in 2015, the world premiere recording of In the Beginning, and Lost Landscapes. (The latter work, inspired by Rautavaara's student spells in Tanglewood, Vienna, Switzerland and New York, was written for Midori in 2005 and was originally for violin and piano; this is the first recording of the 2015 orchestration).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This recital of 'Songs of Separation' is book-ended by two dramatic cantatas for voice and keyboard: August Bernhard Valentin Herbing's Montan und Lalage and Haydn's much better-known Arianna a Naxos. The programme also features lieder by Mozart and Haydn, plus works by their less familiar contemporaries Friedrich Gottlob Fleischer and Christian Michael Wolff (both of whom contribute songs in praise of the fortepiano itself).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
For his second recording on Arcana, the brilliant young Neapolitan mandolinist performs on three different period instruments in concertos by Vivaldi, Hummel, Paisiello, and Lecce; Il Pomo d'Oro also contribute sinfonie by Haydn, Galuppi, and Paisiello. Reviewing his debut disc Beethoven and his Contemporaries, Le Monde declared that 'young Raffaele La Ragione is to the mandolin today what Gustav Leonhardt once was to the harpsichord'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Callaghan and Brabbins present six works for piano and orchestra from the first half of the twentieth century: John Addison's Wellington Suite, Arthur Benjamin's Concertino for Piano and Orchestra, Geoffrey Bush's Little Concerto on themes of Thomas Arne, Eliabeth Maconchy's Concertino No. 2 for Piano & String Orchestra, Humprey Searle's Concertante for Piano, Percussion & Strings, and Edmund Rubbra’s Nature's Song (reconstructed by Callaghan).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The Bulgarian pianist's debut recording celebrates music by two of her compatriots: Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978) and Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980). Her programme opens with Vladigerov's 11 Variations for Piano on a Bulgarian Folksong 'Majestic Old Mountain' and closes with his Impressions, with Tabakova's Modetudes (a set of etudes on seven different modes, written in 1999) as the centrepiece.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wilbye featured briefly on I Fagiolini's The Triumphs of Oriana in 2002, and now they dedicate an entire recording to the English madrigalist (1574-1638); covering roughly a third of Wilbye's known output, the programme ranges from the bucolic charm of Flora gave me fairest flowers and Sweet honey-sucking bees to the melancholy of Cruel, behold my heavy ending, Weep, weep, mine eyes and When shall my wretched life.
Available Format: CD
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
