New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 24th June 2022
Today's new releases include Massenet orchestral songs from Hervé Niquet and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris (with soloists including Véronique Gens, Cyrille Dubois and Étienne Dupuis), an imaginative 'reconstruction' of a Vivaldi solemn mass from Les Arts Florissants and Paul Agnew, music by three Latvian composers from Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, and Bach from Israeli multi-instrumentalist Alon Sariel.
Massenet: Songs with Orchestra
Véronique Gens, Nicole Car, Jodie Devos, Chantal Santon Jeffery (sopranos), Cyrille Dubois (tenor), Étienne Dupuis (baritone); Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Hervé Niquet
The majority of Massenet's orchestral songs remain unpublished, and here Bru Zane present twenty-two of the finest examples, many of them in world premiere recordings: highlights include 'Le Poète et le Fantôme' and the 'Prière de Saint Bernard' from Véronique Gens, the 'Pensée de printemps' and 'Pensée d’automne' from Cyrille Dubois, and excerpts from the Poème pastoral from Jodie Devos and Chantal Santon Jeffery.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Vivaldi: The Great Venetian Mass
Sophie Karthäuser (soprano), Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Les Arts Florissants, Paul Agnew
Although Vivaldi spent three decades composing for the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, no complete musical setting of any liturgy survives; drawing on material from the famous Gloria RV589, the Credo RV591 and the Kyrie RV587, Les Arts Florissants present a fanciful 'reconstruction' of the sort of solemn mass which the 'Red Priest' might have written for the choral forces and soloists at his disposal at the Venetian orphanage and music-school.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following the success of The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Ireland last year, Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra continue their exploration of baroque music with Irish connections: the main event on their programme is the world premiere recording of The Universal Applause of Mount Parnassus by Johann Sigismund Kusser, a Hungarian composer who spent the last twenty years of his life in Dublin. It's coupled with Purcell's ode Great parent, hail!, written to mark the centenary of Trinity College Dublin in 1694 and setting a libretto by Trinity alumnus Nahum Tate.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kremerata Baltica marks its twenty-fifth birthday with world premiere recordings of works by three of Latvia's most innovative composers: Georgs Pelēcis's Fiori musicali, Peteris Plakidis's Little Concerto for Two Violins, and Kristaps Pētersons's Ground Music for a Large Ensemble & Pi = 3,14. Kremer writes: 'I hope these works will inspire our listeners, and we see this music as a step by Kremerata Baltica towards the future'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Kévin Amiel (tenor), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Le Balcon, Maxime Pascal
Captured at the Festival de Saint-Denis in 2020, this recording uses Rainer Riehn's 1983 completion of the chamber arrangement which Schoenberg began in 1920; this is Paris-based chamber ensemble Le Balcon's first recording in five years, following their 2016 account of Arthur Lavandier's 'loose adaptation' of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique on Alpha Classics.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Phrases
Héloïse Werner (soprano), Amy Harman (bassoon), Lawrence Power (violin, viola), Calum Huggan (percussion), Colin Alexander (cello), Laura Snowden (guitar), Daniel Shao (flute)
Five of Werner's own compositions feature on this programme of solos and duos, which also includes new commissions by Elaine Mitchener, Nico Muhly, Oliver Leith, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Josephine Stephenson, plus four of Georges Aperghis’s Récitations. Reviewing the album this month, Gramophone observed that 'it is hard not to be in awe of Héloïse Werner: a soprano of extraordinary range, tone and vocal abilities, possessing a seemingly inexhaustible expressive range'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Subtitled The Master and the Minimalist, the young Danish-Hungarian organist's solo recording debut throws up some perhaps unexpected parallels between the two composers. Recorded on the Carsten Lund organ of the Garrison Church in Copenhagen (where Niels Gade and JPE Hartmann were once organists), the programme includes Pärt's Trivium and Spiegel im Spiegel, and Bach's Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor BWV582 & 'St Anne' Prelude & Fugue in E flat major BWV552.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Israeli mandolinist, lutenist and composer makes his Pentatone debut with a programme exploring Bach’s cello suites on six different plucked instruments, comprising his own arrangements of the complete Suites Nos. 1 & 2 for archlute and liuto attiorbato respectively, the Sarabande from Suite No. 2 for oud, the Prelude from Suite No. 5 for Cremonese mandolin, and the two gavottes from Suite No. 6 for baroque guitar. The recital closes with Sariel's Bach-inspired Mandolin Partita.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Twenty-one of Warlock's songs are complemented here by nine first recordings of songs by Frederick Howe (b.1951), a British composer who draws inspiration from Warlock's folk-song settings. The Warlock selections include favourites such as 'Pretty Ring Time' and 'Bright is the Ring of Words', as well as the world premieres of 'Little Trotty Wagtail' and 'The Magpie' (later reworked, with bowdlerised text, as 'Yarmouth Fair')
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Pier Giuseppe Sandoni: Cantatas & Instrumental Works
Francesca Aspromonte (soprano), Nicoleta Paraschivescu (harpsichord), La Floridiana
Born in Bologna in 1685, Sandoni was a celebrated harpsichord virtuoso as well as a fine composer, and spent part of his early career as Handel's assistant in London. It was there that he met and married the prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni (Handel's original Cleopatra and Rodelinda), for whom he is thought to have composed the three cantatas here: Dimmi crudel, Chi s'intende d'amar, and Del timor d'un cor geloso. The album also features a selection of his works for harpsichord, notably a suite containing movements previously attributed to JS Bach.
Available Format: CD
Premiered at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna in 1761 (the year before Gluck's masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice), Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre was based on a 1665 play by Molière, adapted by Ranieri de' Calzabigi who would later collaborate with the composer on Orfeo, Paride ed Elena and Alceste. Sémiramis, another joint project with de' Calzabigi and the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini, followed a year later.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Catalani: La Wally (DVD)
Izabela Matula (Wally), Leonardo Capalbo (Giuseppe Hagenbach), Jacques Imbrailo (Vincenzo Gellner), Ilona Revolskaya (Walter), Alastair Miles (Stromminger); Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Wiener Symphoniker, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Barbora Horáková Joly (director)
Filmed at the Theater an der Wien last November, this production of Catalani's 1892 opera prompted Wiener Zeitung to observe that 'Catalani's highly dramatic music finds an intense advocate in Andrés Orozco-Estrada', whilst BachTrack declared that Polish soprano Izabela Matula 'combines all the qualities one could wish for from a verismo diva in the demanding title-role'.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
