New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 9th December 2022
Today's new releases include a powerful debut solo album from American soprano Julia Bullock, a Vaughan Williams rarity from Mark Bebbington and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Fanny Hensel from German pianist Sontraud Speidel, and Sir Georg Solti's legendary 1965 Die Walküre (starring Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter, James King and Régine Crespin) in a new remastering.
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on the Old 104th, The Lark Ascending
Mark Bebbington (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hilary Davan Wetton
The main event on one of the year's final releases celebrating Vaughan Williams's 150th birthday is the Fantasia (Quasi Variazione) on the Old 104th for solo piano, choir and orchestra, which was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1950 but performed and recorded only rarely since then. The programme also includes the Brahmsian Piano Quintet in C minor from 1903, the undated Romance for viola and piano, and The Lark Ascending in the original 1914 version for solo violin and piano.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Walking in the Dark
Julia Bullock (soprano), Philharmonia Orchestra, Christian Reif (piano/conductor)
Praised in The Guardian last month for Bullock's 'range, versatility and emotional power', the soprano's first solo recording is an all-American affair, featuring Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, 'Memorial de Tlatelolco' from John Adams's El Niño, Connie Converse's 'One By One', Oscar Brown Jr.'s 'Brown Baby', Sandy Denny's 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes?', Billy Taylor's 'I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free', and the spiritual 'City Called Heaven'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Premiered in 1782 and given here in a new edition by violist and musicologist Emilio Moreno, these six symphonies were composed during Boccherini's time in Spain in order to lift the spirits of his patron Don Luis de Borbon, who had been exiled from Madrid by his brother Charles III some seven years earlier after making an unsuccessful claim to the throne. Although Don Luis's in-house band was typically a string quintet, these pieces were conceived for up to four players per part, as recorded here.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
This programme of music for violin and orchestra by GRAMMY-winning American composer Steven Mackey (b.1956) takes its title from the concerto which he wrote in 2008. Mackey writes: 'All of the music on Beautiful Passing engages with memory, albeit in different ways. Mnemosyne's Pool deals with memory within the music itself, and in so doing it deals with our memory, the human capacity for memory and the act of remembering. Beautiful Passing deals with a particular memory from my personal experience which gave rise to the music and may in turn invite related memories from the listener.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Composed between 1821 and 1846, all but four of the pieces here receive their world premiere recordings; some of the earlier examples are thought to have first been performed at the Sunday concerts which took place at the Mendelssohn family home from 1821 onwards, and provided Fanny and her brother Felix with the opportunity to collaborate with professional musicians during their teenage years. Currently Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, Sontraud Speidel has been described as 'the Clara Schumann of today' by the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Swiss-Canadian pianist recital of works inspired by the folk-music of Central and Eastern Europe kicks off with Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No. 1, which he first heard as a teenager in Bucharest and which he describes as 'an unforgettable whirlwind of joyous tunes arranged in perfect chaos'. It's followed by Bartók's Allegro barbaro and Romanian Folk Dances, Mussorgsky's Pictures at the Exhibition, and Gurdjieff's Enter the realm (arranged by Fabian Russ).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Romanian pianist has brought Schubert and Janáček together on disc before, with a 2013 recital featuring the Wanderer Fantasy and the Piano Sonata 'From The Street' which prompted MusicWeb International to applaud his 'gift for finding about a hundred different gradations in volume, warmth and tonal colour'. Here he intersperses On An Overgrown Path with inidividual Moments Musicaux, after opening with Schubert's Four Impromptus, D899.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
In addition to music from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, the Birthday Ode for Queen Mary, The History of Dioclesian and The Maid's Last Prayer, this collection of 'Songs from the English Restoration' from Ceruleo (comprising two sopranos and continuo) includes Eccles's 'Haste, give me wings', Blow's 'Couch'd by the Pleasant Helliconian Spring' and 'The Queen's Epicedium', and a chaconne by the Italian guitar virtuoso Francesco Corbetta.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wagner: Die Walküre
Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), Hans Hotter (Wotan), Régine Crespin (Sieglinde), James King (Siegmund), Christa Ludwig (Fricka), Gottlob Frick (Hunding); Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti
To commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Solti's death, Decca release an all-new transfer of his now-legendary Ring Cycle, which was described by Gramophone in 1965 as 'the greatest achievement in gramophone history yet'; remastered in HD sound at 24bit / 192kHz from the original two-track stereo mastertapes, all four operas will be released in deluxe hybrid SACD editions, with Das Rheingold coming up next week, and Siegfried and Götterdämmerung scheduled for March and May 2023.
Available Formats: 4 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
