New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 20th January 2023
Today's new releases include two sets of Préludes by Belgian composer Joseph Jongen from Ivan Ilić, the final instalment of Peter Donohoe's survey of the complete Mozart piano sonatas, Mahler's own piano version of Das Lied von der Erde from Claudia Huckle, Nicky Spence and Justin Brown, and live recordings of early Wagner, Reger, Brahms and Mozart from veteran Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi in Tallinn.
Following three discs exploring the music of Anton Reicha, the Serbian-American pianist turns his attention to the Belgian organist, composer and pedagogue Joseph Jongen. Born in Liège in 1873, Jongen is perhaps best-known today for his organ music, but also composed a number of works for solo piano; the two sets of Préludes here were written in 1922 and 1940/41 respectively, with the latter set cycling through all 24 keys.
Read our interview with Ilić about Jongen's 'huge appetite for contrast' here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Donohoe's survey of the Mozart sonatas (which began in 2018) has been praised by BBC Music Magazine for its 'compelling vitality and freshness' and by Gramophone for the 'unforced brilliance of his playing'; this final instalment features the 'little piano sonata for beginners' (K545), the Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat major K282 (written when the composer was still in his teens), the Fantasia in C minor K475, and the Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor K457.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nimrod Borenstein: Piano Concerto
Clélia Iruzun (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Nimrod Borenstein
The British-Israeli composer and conductor (b.1969) makes his debut on SOMM with the world premiere recording of his Piano Concerto (2022), performed here by its dedicatee Clélia Iruzun; the album also includes the Mendelssohn-inspired Shirim (which the composer describes as 'my own songs without words') and the 2018 piano quintet Light and Darkness, which Borenstein notes 'begins and ends with pure light, but is full of melancholy, and contains sections of great despair'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res 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'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Released to mark the Estonian conductor's 85th birthday, these live recordings were made in Tallinn in 2019; the programme comprises Wagner's early concert overture Polonia (inspired by the young composer's experience of hearing an evening of Polish songs in Leipzig in 1832), Reger's Serenade in G, Brahms's Schicksalslied, and Mozart's Ave verum corpus.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This programme of works for high Baroque trumpet comprises concertos by Telemann, Capel Bond and Christoph Graupner, sonatas by Gottfried Finger and Romanus Weichlein, Gottfried Weiche's Abblasen in C, Philip Jakob Rittler's Ciaccona a 7, and Johann Endler's Sinfonia a 7 in F major. One of the most in-demand Baroque trumpeters in the United States and Canada, Josh Cohen appears regularly as a soloist with ensembles including Tafelmusik, Arion Baroque, Apollo's Fire and the Washington Bach Consort.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Van Bellen and Halvorsen's arrangement of music from La Bohème was the Chamber Choice in the latest issue of BBC Music Magazine, with Puccini expert Alexandra Wilson declaring that 'such is the emotional commitment of the two musicians, the sense of immediacy in the recording, and the lush, dynamic playing...that by the time we reach the end it is quite possible to forget that we have not been listening to ‘the real thing’.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For their fourth recording on Avi Music, Trio Imàge present three works inspired by folk music and composed during or shortly after World War One: Frank Martin's piano trio (which draws on traditional Irish and Celtic music and was written during a summer vacation in 1926), Pancho Vladigerov's 1916 Piano Trio incorporating influences from his native Bulgaria, and Joaquín Turina's Piano Trio No. 2 from 1933, which makes imaginative use of Spanish dance rhythms.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Following their set of the complete Beethoven Quartets on Rubicon, the Berlin-based string quartet present a programme of music which 'embraces emotional turmoil, suffering, and psychological stresses', including movements from Janáček's 'The Kreutzer Sonata', Smetana's 'From My Life', Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet and Steve Reich's WTC 9/11, and new commissions from Francesco Ciurlo, Birke Bertelsmeier and Óscar Escudero.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Taking its title from a suite of motets which draws on the music of Heinrich Schütz, this collection of works for vocal ensemble by the Anglo-German composer (b. 1955) also includes a setting of Edmund Spenser's A Spousal Verse, the Wordsworth-inspired Preluding, and the Canti del carcere - a set of three Italianate madrigals intercutting texts by Gramsci and Dante.
Available Format: CD
Nicola Porpora: L'Angelica (DVD)
Ekaterina Bakanova (Angelica), Teresa Iervolino (Orlando), Paola Valentina Molinari (Medoro); La Lira di Orfeo, Federico Maria Sardelli, Gianluca Falaschi
Setting a libretto by the young Pietro Metastasio, Porpora's serenata L'Angelica was composed for the birthday of Empress Elizabeth Christine (wife of Charles VI) in 1720; the premiere performance is believed to have featured the debut of the composer's star pupil, the castrato Farinelli, in the role of Orlando. This performance was recorded live at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in 2021, with BachTrack applauding Sardelli's 'lively and refined reading of the tense score' and Iervolino's 'poetic and tormented' Orlando.
Also available on Blu-ray and CD.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
