New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 30th September 2022
Today's new releases include orchestral works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor from Chineke! (with Elena Urioste as soloist in the Violin Concerto) on the orchestra's own label in partnership with Decca; Debussy, Roussel and Dukas from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and their new Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan (making his debut recording) on Onyx, Schubert's Schwanengesang from Ian Bostridge and the late Lars Vogt on Pentatone, and a triptych of albums exploring the legacy of Charlotte Sohy from new female-centring label La Boîte à Pépites.
In partnership with Decca, Chineke! launch their own self-titled label with a programme of works by African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, including the Violin Concerto, Othello Suite, African Suite, Nonet and Romance of the Prairie Lilies; the album also features the world premiere recording of his daughter Avril's Sussex Landscape, which Chineke! performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall in their 2019/2020 season.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is not only the Venezuelan conductor's first album at the helm of the Liverpool Philharmonic, but also his first-ever commercial recording: the programme features Debussy's Jeux (which he describes as 'one of the greatest scores of the twentieth century'), the Suite No. 2 from Roussel's 1930 ballet Bacchus et Ariane, and Dukas's La Péri. Look out for our interview with Domingo next week about his plans for bringing South American music to Liverpool, and the inspiration he drew from his time with El Sistema and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra...
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following Winterreise with Thomas Adès and Die schöne Müllerin with Saskia Giorgini, Bostridge's partner for the final instalment of his Schubert trilogy is the late Lars Vogt, with whom he frequently performed this work in recital (including at Wigmore Hall and at The Sage during Vogt's time as Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia). In an affecting tribute for The Guardian earlier this month, Bostridge described his friend as 'one of the kings of German pianism'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Charlotte Sohy: Compositrice de la Belle Epoque
Marie-Laure Garnier (soprano), David Kadouch (piano), Héloïse Luzzati (cello), Orchestre national Avignon-Provence, Debora Waldman et al
French cellist and musicologist Héloïse Luzzati's new label La Boîte à Pépites is dedicated to celebrating music by women; this inaugural release focuses on the French pianist and composer Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955), who studied with Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d’Indy. The 3-CD set covers a range of her piano, chamber and orchestral works (most of which receive their first recordings here), including the Tryptique champêtre, the Chants nostalgiques, and two string quartets.
Available Format: 3 CDs
Berg: Violin Concerto & Three Pieces for Orchestra
James Ehnes (violin), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis
Described in The Guardian earlier this month as 'a wonderfully idiomatic and accomplished Berg collection, with some outstanding playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra', this programme also includes Andrew Davis's own new orchestrations of the Piano Sonata Op. 1 and the Passacaglia which Berg sketched in around 1913 and left in short score - thought to have been conceived as part of a symphony, it shows the influence of his friend Webern's Op. 1 of five years earlier.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons & Saint-Georges: Violin Concertos Op. 5 & 8
Renaud Capuçon (violin), Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne
The French violinist resisted playing Vivaldi's best-known work for many years, on the grounds that he'd 'heard it too much in the corridors of the Métro in Paris and as holding music on the phone!', but has fallen under its spell in recent seasons; it's juxtaposed here with two concertos by the French-Creole virtuoso violinist, composer and conductor Chevalier de Saint-Georges, written in Paris around forty years after Vivaldi's death.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their superb Beethoven Révolution project (which Gramophone's Mark Pullinger declared 'may well have just become my favourite period-instrument Beethoven cycle of them all' upon the arrival of the final volume in January), Savall and his Catalan musicians release their first Schubert recording, featuring the Unfinished and Great symphonies.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their award-winning survey of Kabeláč's symphonies, Ivanović and his Prague forces turn to three of his other orchestral works. Composed in the mid-1950s, the orchestral passacaglia Mystery of Time explores his fascination with space and the cosmos; it's followed here by the Hamlet Improvisation (written in 1962/3 to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth) and the Metamorphoses II of the oldest Czech Hymn 'Hospodine, pomiluj ny' for piano and orchestra (1979).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The Brodskys celebrate their fiftieth anniversary with a recording of a work which has been in their repertoire since their early days, and for which they've been joined by 'a long line of illustrious cellists' over the course of their career. Their guest for one of their first performances was their mentor Terence Weil (a founding member of the Melos Ensemble), and this time they are joined by Laura van der Heijden, whom they observe 'represents with respect to us a similar age gap, proving that age is insignificant where there is a meeting of musical minds'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Scored for a wide range of pitched percussion and electronics, this collection of specially-commissioned 'songs without words' includes pieces by John Metcalfe, Tunde Jegede, Dario Marianelli, Yazz Ahmed, Graham Fitkin, Dobrinka Tabakova and Gabriel Prokofiev, with the composers drawing on literary inspirations encompassing Robert Graves, Michael Ondaatje, Isaac Asimov, and Saudi Arabian folk tales.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The focal point for this album is the seventeenth-century Czech poet, Jesuit and composer Adam Václav Michna, perhaps best-known for his Christmas songs but represented here by a collection of of poetic hymns praising the Virgin Mary; the programme also includes music by Alessandro Grandi, Vincenzo Albrici, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Samuel Capricornus, all of whom had close ties with the Jesuit community and with Baroque Bohemia.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
To mark the Ukrainian composer's 85th birthday, the Kyiv Chamber Choir release a live performance of his Maidan 2014, written in the immediate aftermath of the Euromaidan protests which took place that year and setting liturgical passages alongside verses by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchencko. The album also includes the Diptych (also on poetry by Shevchencko), Triptych, and four songs: 'The Mighty Dnieper', 'On Earth There is Fortune', 'A Cherry Orchard by the House', and 'My Testament'.
Available Format: CD
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
