Coming Soon,
Véronique Gens in La Voix Humaine and other forthcoming highlights
Stand-out releases for early 2023 include Véronique Gens realising a long-held ambition to record Poulenc's intense one-woman opera La voix humaine, Beatrice Rana joining forces with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Clara and Robert Schumann's Piano Concertos, Stephen Hough returning to the music of Federico Mompou on Hyperion, and Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida coming together for the first time on disc in Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte and Schubert's Schwanengesang.
Four years on from their Gramophone Award-nominated recording of Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer, Gens and the Lille orchestra join forces once again for a work which the great French tragédienne has long dreamed of performing and recording: Poulenc's searing one-act monodrama from 1958, depicting a woman's final telephone-conversation with her ex-lover. It's coupled with a much sunnier work for orchestra only: the Sinfonietta, commissioned by the BBC in 1947 to mark the first birthday of the ' Third Programme'.
Released 6th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Also on Alpha Classics, Gens's friendly rival Sandrine Piau embarks on an 'intimate journey' with a new recital-partner, taking in songs by Schubert, Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, Duparc, Debussy, Liszt and Wolf; reviewing their recital of the same programme at Wigmore Hall at the beginning of the year, The Arts Desk observed that 'there was no disguising the level of careful preparation and forethought which both singer and pianist had put into every nuance...the results were overwhelmingly convincing'.
Released 3rd February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Clara & Robert Schumann: Piano Concertos
Beatrice Rana (piano), Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
For her second concerto recording, the Italian pianist couples two works premiered by Clara Wieck-Schumann: the piano concerto which she composed in her teens and first performed at the Gewandhaus (with Mendelssohn conducting) in 1835, and her husband Robert's concerto from a decade later, expanded from an earlier one-movement draft at Clara's instigation. The programme is rounded off by Liszt's transcription of Robert's song 'Widmung' ['Dedication'], composed shortly before their marriage.
Released 3rd February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Twenty-five years on from his Gramophone Award-winning disc of the Catalan composer's Canción y Danzas, Préludes and other works, Hough returns to what he describes as ‘the music of evaporation’ with a complete recording of the Música callada - a set of 28 miniatures, published in four volumes between 1959 and 1967 and inspired by the poet St John of the Cross as well as carrying faint whispers of Fauré and Satie.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Schubert: Schwanengesang & Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte
Mark Padmore (tenor), Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
Captured live at Wigmore Hall in May, this recital was praised in Opera Today for Padmore's 'exemplary attentiveness to verbal sound, intellectual engagement with textual meaning, and vocal embodiment of the latter'; when the duo performed the same programme at Zankel Hall two months earlier, The New York Times declared that 'It’s difficult to avoid superlatives...As a pairing, Uchida and Padmore are wellsprings of wisdom and sensitivity, a truly equal partnership'.
Released 27th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Martinů, Krása & Kalabis: Harpsichord Concertos
Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Liebreich
One work on this trio of concertos by Czech composers has a particular personal significance for Esfahani: Viktor Kalabis’s 1975 Koncert pro cembalo a smyčcový orchestr was composed for the Iranian harpsichordist's beloved teacher, Zuzana Růžičková, who died in 2017 and credited Kalabis with helping her to heal from the trauma sustained in the concentration-camps of World War II. Hans Krása (who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944) composed his Kammermusik for harpsichord and seven instruments in 1936, six years before his internment at Theresienstadt.
Released 3rd February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Elgar: Viola Concerto & Bloch: Suite For Viola and Orchestra
Timothy Ridout (viola), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
The young British viola-player took First Prize at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition in 2016, so it's fitting that his first orchestral recording on Harmonia Mundi features Tertis's arrangement of the Elgar Cello Concerto; the composer himself described it as 'admirably done and fully effective', and conducted its premiere (with Tertis as soloist) in 1930. It's followed by Bruch's Suite for Viola and Orchestra from 1918, originally written for viola and piano but given here in the composer's own orchestration. Released 13th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Subtitled 'Dance Music from the Folies Bergère to the Opéra', this collection of waltzes, polkas and quadrilles includes music from Massenet's ballet Le Carillon, Gounod's Faust, Saint-Saëns's Le Timbre d’argent, and Hervé's Paris Exhibition & Sports in England, plus Waldteufel's 'Grande Vitesse' and 'Valse des patineurs', Isaac Strauss's 'Hébé-Polka', and Philippe Musard's 'Ouistiti-Polka'.
Released 27th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition makes his first foray into Baroque repertoire with three of Handel's Keyboard Suites, plus Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a theme from the Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B flat. Cho writes that he has largely avoided the use of the sustaining pedal 'in order to ensure greater clarity', but has modified some of the dynamics to exploit the possibilities of a modern concert grand.
Released 3rd February.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Although the British countertenor has a distinguished discography to his name (including appearances on Raphaël Pichon's award-winning St Matthew Passion, Christian Curnyn's superb recent Amadigi, and Arcangelo's excellent recording of Bach's Mass in B minor), this is his first solo album; the all-Vivaldi programme features the Nisi Dominus and Salve Regina, plus the secular cantatas Cessate, omai cessate and Amor, hai vinto.
Released 20th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Les Heures Claires
Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Anne de Fornel (piano), Raquel Camarinha (soprano), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Emmanuelle Bertrand
This lovely recital comprises the complete songs of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, and takes its title from the cycle on poems by Émile Verhaeren which Nadia composed with Raoul Pugno in 1909; other highlights include Lili's thirty-minute cycle Clairières dans le ciel (dedicated to Gabriel Fauré and published a year after her untimely death in 1918), Nadia's Heine settings, and instrumental works by both sisters.
Released 24th February.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Claudia Huckle (contralto), Nicky Spence (tenor), Justin Brown (piano)
Although Mahler prepared a piano version of Das Lied (and intended it for performance rather than purely for rehearsal purposes), it's been relatively neglected on record - Brigitte Fassbaender, Thomas Moser and Cyprien Katsaris's fine recording from 1990 standing as a notable exception. This new project was born out of lockdown, with Claudia Huckle reflecting: 'During the spring of 2020, I realised that if I never performed again, my greatest regret would be never having sung Das Lied von der Erde...I have always felt that for a German-speaking contralto like me it would be the biggest and most exciting musical challenge of all'.
Released 20th January.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Jessye Norman - The Unreleased Masters
Jessye Norman (soprano), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, Berliner Philharmoniker, James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa
Released with the support of Norman’s family and estate, this collection of previously-unreleased recordings comprises highlights from Tristan und Isolde (with Thomas Moser as Tristan and Norman as both Isolde and Brangaene), Haydn's Scena di Berenice, Berlioz's Cléopâtre, Britten's Phaedra, Wagner's Wesendonk-Lieder, and a 1989 recording of Strauss's Four Last Songs with James Levine and the Berliner Philharmoniker.
Released 24th March; amended from the original 27th January.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC
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Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Reich was personally involved with this recording of the three string quartets which he composed between 1988 and 2010 (Different Trains, Triple Quartet and WTC 9/11), which here appear on a single album for the first time. Described by The Chicago Reader as 'one of America's most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles', the Mivos Quartet have a long-standing collaborative history with Reich, and have previously received critical acclaim for their recordings of music by contemporary composers including Yotam Haber, Frank Horvat and Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto & Chamber Works
Isabelle Faust (violin), François-Xavier Roth, Les Siècles
Following the success of her recording of The Soldier's Tale (which was nominated for a Gramophone Award last year), Faust turns her attention to the concerto which Stravinsky composed for Samuel Dushkin in 1931. It's preceded here by the 'Variation d'Apollon' from the 1928 ballet Apollon musagète, and followed by the Three Pieces for String Quartet (arranged by the composer from the original version for four-hands one-piano), the tiny Concertino for String Quartet from 1920, and the violin & piano version of the 1907 Pastorale (transcribed for Dushkin in 1933).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
