New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 25th November 2022
Today's new releases include Florence Price's Songs of the Oak and Concert Overtures, Bach's Goldberg Variations from Fazil Say, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana from Riccardo Muti in Chicago (starring Anita Rachvelishvili as Santuzza), and Shostakovich and Mahler's Tenth Symphonies from Jaap van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
The title-work (receiving its world premiere recording on this album) is a Hollywood-influenced tone-poem from 1943 - often confused with the darker, more restive The Oak from the same year, which follows it here. The programme also includes the two Concert Overtures based on spirituals, and the brief, ebullient Suite of Dances - originally conceived as a solo piano piece and orchestrated by the composer in around 1950.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana
Piero Pretti (Turiddu), Anita Rachvelishvili (Santuzza), Ronnita Miller (Lucia), Luca Salsi (Alfio), Sasha Cooke (Lola), Alessandra Visconti (Lucia); Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Riccardo Muti
Recorded live in concert in February 2020 at the Symphony Center, this performance of Mascagni's popular one-act opera was hailed as 'an utterly superlative offering in every way' by The Chicago Sun Times, whilst Opera News declared that 'Muti’s forces provided all the passion imaginable, yet never descended into sensation or vulgarity'. The Intermezzo featured on the programme for the orchestra's second-ever concert, in 1891, though these 2020 concerts constituted their first performances of the complete score in almost a century.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the world premiere recording of Mahler's Tenth Symphony its earliest incarnation - written in fair copy by Ernst Krenek and adapted by the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg (who championed his music throughout his career after the pair met and struck up a friendship in 1902) and his assistant Cornelis Dopper. It's coupled with Shostakovich's Tenth, premiered after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana's fourth album for ECM features premiere recordings of two works written especially for them by Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits: the Notturni and Stalker Suite, the latter an homage to Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovski. The programme also includes Schumann's Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor and Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 3 in C minor.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the Turkish pianist's first all-Bach recording since his accounts of the French Suite No. 6 and Italian Concerto back in 1999 for Teldec; an accomplished composer himself, Say immersed himself in the Goldbergs during lockdown, musing that 'the interpreter must deeply internalise this long piece, to the degree of presenting it as though it were their own composition...Approaching a musical work of this kind is a lifelong journey.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Handel published his 'Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin' (now known as the 'Eight Great Suites') in London in November 1720, shortly after the success of Radamisto; the suites include a significant amount of original music as well as material recycled from earlier works for harpsichord or transcribed from pieces for other instruments. Koopman, who believes that these suites 'show Handel the harpsichordist at his best', performs Nos. 2, 3,5, 7 and 8 here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The Italian pianist's previous Bach recordings include a set of the Goldbergs which was described by BBC Music Magazine's Michael Tanner as 'one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard' and a disc of the French Suites which prompted International Record Review to remark that 'Bacchetti’s Bach playing possesses a high degree of an indefinable but recognizable quality: musical good will'. This new recording has already been praised by MusicWeb International for his 'fine touch and keen intellect'.
Available Format: 2 CDs
The Bulgarian pianist makes her debut on Rubicon with a programme exploring the ideas of light and darkness, including Ravel's La Valse and Gaspard de la nuit, Debussy's 'Reflets dans l'eau', 'La Cathédrale engloutie' and 'La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune', and the contemporary Swiss composer Georges Zanon's two-movement Nuit et Jour.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Compiled in 1325 and rediscovered in 1904, the Codex Las Huelgas is the only known manuscript of its time which is still kept in its original place: a Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas, located on the road to Compostella in Burgos; Savall has selected eleven pieces from the 186 which make up the collection, including 'Audi pontus, audi tellus', 'Kyrie, fons bonitatis', 'Gaude, Virgo, plena Deo' and 'Flavit auster'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Music of Richard Pantcheff, Vol. 3
James Orford (organ), London Choral Sinfonia, Michael Waldron
This third volume of music by the British composer and conductor (b.1959) features the Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and Trumpets (which was commissioned by the London Choral Sinfonia and Waldron), the chorale preludes 'Jesu, sei nun gepreiset' and 'Jesu meine Freude', the Fantasia on Haec Dies, and the choral works Come, My Beloved, For, lo, the days come, and Te lucis ante terminum.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Verdi: Rigoletto (DVD)
Carlos Álvarez (Rigoletto), Lisette Oropesa (Gilda), Liparit Avetisyan (Il Duca), Ramonza Zaharia (Maddalena), Brindley Sherratt (Sparafucile), Eric Greene (Monterone); Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano, Oliver Mears
Recorded at Covent Garden last September, this was Oliver Mears's first production since he succeeded Kasper Holten as Director of Opera in 2017, with BachTrack noting that 'Mears’ direction of his principals hits home as truthful' and hailing Oropesa as 'the finest lyric coloratura in the world today'; the Evening Standard observed that Pappano (conducting the work on home turf for the first time) 'brings his signature command of textural detail and rhythmic propulsion to the whole score'.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
