New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 14th October 2022
Today's new releases include Hans Rott's Symphony No. 1 (plus works by Mahler and Bruckner) from Jakub Hruša and the Bamberger Symphoniker, Ruth Gipps's Oboe Concerto and Symphony No. 3 from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, the second instalment of Semyon Bychkov's Mahler cycle with the Czech Philharmonic, and Lully's Acis et Galatée from Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (with Cyril Auvity and Ambroisine Bré in the title-roles).
Described by his Vienna Conservatory classmate Gustav Mahler as 'the founder of the new symphony as I understand it', Hans Rott submitted the first movement of his Symphony in E major for a composition contest in 1878, where a largely hostile panel was rebuked by Rott's organ-teacher Bruckner: 'Do not laugh, gentlemen, of this man you will hear great things yet!'. The complete work is presented here alongside Mahler's Blumine and Bruckner's Symphonisches Präludium.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Three years on from his recording of Gipps's Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 (plus Knight in Armour and the Song for Orchestra) with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Gamba conducts the BBC Philharmonic in the Chanticleer Overture (derived from an opera which was never completed), the Oboe Concerto, the tone poem Death on the Pale Horse and the Third Symphony, which received its first professional performance under Gipps's direction in 1969.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Fifth Symphony was the first work by Mahler which Bychkov conducted, making his professional US debut with the piece in 1979: in an interview with Presto earlier this year, he confided that the Scherzo 'remains a tremendous challenge to this day'. This is the second release in his Mahler series with the Czech Philharmonic, following a recording of No. 4 which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Beethoven & Stravinsky: Violin Concertos
Vilde Frang (violin), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Pekka Kuusisto
Four years on from her award-winning recording of Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1, the Norwegian violinist teams up with fellow violinist Pekka Kuusisto for the Beethoven concerto - a work which she describes as 'a piece of overwhelming power [which] takes me by surprise, over and over again' - and Stravinsky's much more compact, neo-Classical concerto from 1931, which she views as 'a constant dialogue with the orchestra'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Sehnsucht: Berg - Mahler
Barbara Hannigan (soprano), Raoul Steffani (baritone), Camerata RCO, Rolf Verbeek
Recorded in the empty De Doelen concert-hall during lockdown (when restrictions on the number of performers were still in place), this programme exploring depictions of longing, melancholy and nostalgia makes a virtue of necessity by presenting three early twentieth-century works in pared-down versions for chamber ensemble: Erwin Stein's astute reduction of Mahler's Symphony No. 4, Henk de Vlieger's arrangement of Berg's Vier Lieder Op. 2 (sung by Raoul Steffani), and the late Reinbert de Leeuw's transcription of the Sieben frühe Lieder (with Hannigan as soloist).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Born in Anatolia in 1898, Alberto Hemsi devoted much of his career to the collection and notation of traditional Sephardic music, working across the former Ottoman Empire and amassing over 200 songs and poems in the course of his research. This album features three airs from his ten-book collection Coplas Sefardies, plus the Danze nuziali greche, the Pilpúl Sonata for violin and piano, the Armenian-influenced Méditation for cello and piano, and the Quintet for strings from the mid-1940s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Washington orchestra continue their celebration of Walker's centenary with the first of his five Sinfonias, premiered under Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood in 1984. Cast in two movements, the work packs an extraordinary amount of energy and emotional contrast into its ten-minute running time: Noseda loves the score's 'rarified, chamber-like moments' as well as its 'really powerful' climaxes.
(Please note that this download-only release has a playing time of 11 minutes; a physical album of Walker's complete Sinfonias will be released in 2024).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Based on the Fourteen Stations of the Cross, The Street received its world premiere at King's College on Easter Saturday this year, and was written especially for Ramsay (a former organ scholar at King's). Each movement for solo harp is inspired by original texts by the poet, librettist and Anglican priest Alice Goodman (who wrote the libretti for John Adams's Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer), and the work is presented here in two versions: one for harp alone, and another including readings of Goodman's words and plainchant from the King's choir between the movements.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This is the Czech string quartet's first recording-project since the death of their founder Jan Talich in 2020, and since they were joined by cellist Michal Kaňka (formerly a member of the Pražák Quartet). The programme pairs a work which has been at the heart of the quartet's repertoire since its inception with the world premiere of the complete Waltzes Op. 54, which were originally composed for piano: Dvořák himself arranged two of the eight pieces, and the remainder were transcribed especially for the Talich by Czech violist and composer Jiří Kabát.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Born into an aristocratic family in Lyon in 1764, Montgeroult was imprisoned twice during the French Revolution, but escaped execution by improvising a set of variations on the Marseillaise which apparently moved her judges to tears; upon release she became the first woman to be appointed Professor of Piano at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris. Hammond discovered her music whilst performing in France in summer 2019, and here presents 29 of the 114 études which she composed between 1788 and 1812 (some as teaching-aids for her pupil Johann Baptist Cramer).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Edward Cowie: Streams and Particles
Peter Sheppard Skærved, Mihailo Trandafilovski (violins), Hugh Millington, Saki Kato (guitars), Spectrum Guitar Quartet, Christopher Redgate (oboe)
Released in advance of the English composer, painter, writer and scientist's eightieth birthday next year, this collection of Cowie's instrumental works (all in world premiere recordings) reflects his fascinations with both the natural world and abstract art: two pieces for solo oboe and guitar quartet respectively draw inspiration from Kandinsky, whilst the Particle Partita for two violins harks back to Cowie's undergraduate studies in physics.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
JS Bach: The Complete Works For Keyboard, Vol. 7
Benjamin Alard (organ), Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque, Marine Fribourg, Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris
For the seventh instalment of his imaginative survey of Bach's keyboard music, Alard teams up with two French choirs to offer a new angle on the Orgelbüchlein BWV 599-644: Alard explains that he 'felt it was essential for each chorale prelude to be heard followed by its sung version', and enlisted the singers 'to play the role of an "honest assembly" '. The recording was made on the Organ Quentin Blumenroeder at the Temple du Foyer de l’Âme in Paris.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This young German baritone emerged as a compelling story-teller on Saga, his debut recording for Alpha last year; now he delves into a selection of eighteenth-century operas dealing with magic and fantasy, including Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Peter von Winter's 1798 sequel Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen, Paul Wranitzky's Oberon, König der Elfen, Salieri's La grotta di Trofonio, and Haydn's L'Anima del filosofo and Orlando Paladino.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lully: Acis et Galatée
Cyril Auvity (Acis/Apollon), Ambroisine Bré (Galatée/Diane), Edwin Crossley-Mercer (Polyphème); Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset
Composed in 1686 (three decades before Handel's popular work on the same subject, and just a few months before Lully's death), Lully's final completed opera makes especially imaginative use of the orchestra in depicting the terror inspired by the cyclops Polyphemus and his murderous jealousy of the love between the sea-nymph Acis and the nymph Galatea.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Featuring candid behind-the-scenes interview-footage as well as a generous selection of performance and rehearsal-excerpts, this ninety-minute documentary follows three of today's great singing actresses as they prepare for opening nights - Asmik Grigorian (as Salome, Iolanta and Tatyana), Barbara Hannigan (as Mélisande and as Gerda in Hans Abrahamsen's new opera The Snow Queen), and Ermonela Jaho (as Violetta, Cio-Cio San and Suor Angelica). Kirill Petrenko, Francesco Piemontesi and Reinbert de Leeuw (who frequently collaborated with Hannigan until his death in 2020) are among the other musicians featured along the way.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
