New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 4th November 2022
Today's new releases include the Brahms Double Concerto & Clara Schumann's Piano Trio from Anne-Sophie Mutter and her cellist protégé Pablo Ferrández (with Lambert Orkis joining for the latter work), lesser-spotted Poulenc from the BBC Concert Orchestra and the late Bramwell Tovey, Cherubini's 1813 opera Les Abencérages from György Vashegyi (with Edgaras Montvidas and Anaïs Constans as the star-crossed lovers Noraïme and Almanzor), and Mozart's La clemenza di Tito from the Opera de Rouen Normandie and their new Music Director Ben Glassberg, with a cast including Nicky Spence as Tito, Simona Šaturová as Vitellia and Anna Stéphany as Sesto.
Brahms: Double Concerto & Clara Schumann: Piano Trio
Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), Pablo Ferrández (cello), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Manfred Honeck, Lambert Orkis (piano)
A year on from his debut album Reflections (which won a Newcomer of the Year prize at the Opus Klassik Awards), Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández teams up with his mentor Anne-Sophie Mutter for this live recording of the Brahms Double, made in Prague this January. It's followed by a studio recording of Clara Schumann's 1846 Piano Trio, which influenced her husband Robert's subsequent compositions in the genre.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
George Walker: Antifonys, Lilacs, Sinfonias Nos. 4 & 5
Latonia Moore (soprano), Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst
The Cleveland Orchestra marks the centenary of Walker's birth with this quartet of works spanning half a century of his lengthy composing career: the early composition for string orchestra Antifonys, the Walt Whitman setting Lilacs (which was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Music), and the two single-movement sinfonias 'Threads' (2012) and 'Visions' (2018). All four works were recorded live at Severance Hall.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Barenboim previously recorded a complete Schumann cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin for Teldec in 2003 (when The Guardian noted that 'the rounded string tone, reedy woodwind and effulgent brass create an authentic world for Schumann that other orchestras struggle to match'); this new set was recorded live in concerts at the Philharmonie and Staatsoper in autumn 2021.
Available Formats: 2 CDs + Blu-ray, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The mainstays of this all-Stravinsky programme are the Symphony in C (a fiftieth-anniversary present to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the Symphony in Three Movements from 1946, and the Divertimento which the composer compiled from his 1928 ballet Le baiser de la fée. Also includes the Greeting Prelude written for Pierre Monteux's eightieth birthday, and the orchestral version of the Circus Polka - originally scored for circus band and organ, and commissioned by George Balanchine as a dance for Barnum & Bailey's elephants!
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This recording was made just four months before Tovey's death in July, and is dedicated to his memory: Chandos described the British conductor as 'an immensely personable and humorous [man], who possessed an innate understanding of the qualities of his fellow orchestral musicians and quickly earned their respect and devotion'. The programme features the Sinfonietta, two short pieces from Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, the Pastourelle, and the composer's third and final ballet Les Animaux modèles.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This collection of Williams's own orchestrations of some of his favourite English songs is released in advance of Remembrance Day and includes music by three composers who were killed in the First World War: George Butterworth, William Denis Browne, and Ernest Farrar. Also features specially-commissioned arrangements of songs by Vaughan Williams, Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring, and Rebecca Clarke.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Inspired by his love of nature and written when he was still in his mid-teens, the Danish composer's Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Max Fiedler in 1913; Oramo (whose recording of Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 won a Gramophone Award in 2019) has championed Laangaard's music for much of his career, and this live recording captures the orchestra's first performance of the work since the premiere, using the 2010 critical edition by Bendt Viinholt Nielsen.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Following the success of Echoes of an Old Hall (which was nominated for a Gramophone Award this year), Gothic Voices present a programme of Franco-Flemish music that was found in or associated with Florence; culminating in Dufay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores (written for the consecration of Florence Cathedral in 1436), the album also includes works by Ockeghem, Busnois, Tinctoris, van Ghizeghem, Compère, and Agricola.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The sequel to Capuçon and Ducros's best-selling Emotions features arrangements of popular classics such as Smetana's Vltava, Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King and Puccini's Nessun dorma, plus popular French songs including La vie en rose and Quand on n'a que l'amour. Guest artists include soprano Fatma Said (for Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5) and trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary (for Bert Kaempfert’s L-O-V-E).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This excellent Portuguese chamber choir hit the ground running in 2019, when their debut recording of sacred music by Manuel Cardoso won the Gramophone Award for Early Music; a second album focusing on Duarte Lobo was also widely acclaimed, and now they explore the music of a third compatriot, monk and composer Pedro de Cristo (c.1550 - 1618). The centrepiece of the album is the Missa Salve regina, which is the only surviving complete mass which can be attributed to the composer with any certainty.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Mozart: La clemenza di Tito
Nicky Spence (Tito), Simona Šaturová (Vitellia), Anna Stéphany (Sesto), Chiara Skerath (Servilia), Antoinette Dennefeld (Annio), David Steffens (Publio); Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie, Ben Glassberg
Like Pierre Dumoussaud's account of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (released on Alpha last September), this recording was made after a planned production of the opera was cancelled due to lockdown restrictions. Spence makes his role-debut as the merciful emperor and Stéphany returns to a role which she sang to great acclaim at Glyndebourne in 2017, when The Guardian noted that '[she] trawls Sesto’s emotional and moral anguish with tragic intensity. Her technique is also formidable'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Rameau: Zoroastre
Jodie Devos (Amélite), Véronique Gens (Erinice), Reinoud Van Mechelen (Zoroastre), Tassis Christoyannis (Abramane); Les Ambassadeurs, La Grande Écurie, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Alexis Kossenko
Although Rameau's Masonic tragédie en musique has received fine studio recordings from William Christie and Sigiswald Kuijken, this is the first set to rehabilitate the original 1749 version of the score - Rameau and his librettist Louis de Cahusac radically reworked the piece in 1756 in response to the rather muted response at the premiere. Kossenko's performing edition here was prepared in collaboration with the Société Jean-Philippe Rameau and the Centre de Musique Baroque Versailles, and aims to recreate the original performance style and forces as faithfully as possible.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Cherubini: Les Abencérages
Anaïs Constans (Noraïme), Edgaras Montvidas (Almanzor), Thomas Dolié (Le Vizir), Tomislav Lavoie (Alamir), Artavazd Sargsyan (Gozalve), Douglas Williams (Abderam); Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra and György Vashegyi
Subtitled 'L'étendard de Grenade' and set in fifteenth-century Spain, Les Abencérages centres on the feud between the Abencerrage and Zegri dynasties and the clandestine (but ultimately happily-resolved) love-affair between Almanzor and Noraïme, who each belong to a rival family. The opera was premiered in Paris in 1813 (to an audience which included Napoleon) and enjoyed considerable success in the early nineteenth century, but is now perhaps best known for the tenor aria 'J’ai vu disparaître' (which has been recorded by artists including Georges Thill and Roberto Alagna).
Available Formats: 3 CDs + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
