New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 3rd March 2023
Today's new releases include Tchaikovsky transcriptions by Yevgeny Sudbin (with a cameo from his young daughter Bella in the arrangements for four hands), Silvestrov's Silent Songs from Hélène Grimaud & Konstantin Krimmel, the long-awaited resumption of Robert Levin's Mozart keyboard concertos series with the Academy of Ancient Music, and the Ruisi Quartet's debut recording on Pentatone (featuring music by Haydn, Matthew Locke and Oliver Leith).
Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antartica & Symphony No 9
Elizabeth Watts (soprano), BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Martyn Brabbins
This recording of two late symphonies concludes Brabbins's Vaughan Williams cycle, which began in 2017 with what The Guardian described as a 'fabulously assured' London Symphony; the series has since been praised for the 'conspicuous finesse and lustre' of the orchestral playing (Gramophone) and Brabbins's 'sense of purposeful directness' (BBC Music Magazine).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Three years on from their recording of Symphony No. 11 'The Year 1905' (described by Gramophone as 'a terrific performance and a terrific-sounding disc' and praised by Fanfare for Storgårds's 'special sensitivity for the score at its quietist'), the BBC Philharmonic and their Chief Conductor continue their Shostakovich series with No. 12 'The Year 1917' (premiered in 1961 and dedicated to the memory of Lenin) and his final symphony, written at a composer’s rest home in Repino in July 1971.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Grimaud fell in love with the music of Valentin Silvestrov around twenty years ago, when ECM founder Manfred Eicher gave her a recording of this song-cycle as a birthday-present; last year she met the composer for the first time at the concert where this recording was made, at the Turbine Hall on the Stienitzsee. Composed in the mid-1970s, Silent Songs sets texts by poets including Pushkin, Lermontov, Shevchenko, and (in Russian translation) Keats and Shelley.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This programme of symphonic works by Kurt Weill (perhaps best known for his compositions for the theatre) opens with a set of excerpts from the 1933 'play with music' Der Silbersee, with HK Gruber performing the vocal parts as well as conducting; it's followed by the Symphonie in einem Satz (also known as the 'Berliner Symphonie' and completed when Weill was just 21) and the Fantaisie symphonique, which was composed shortly after Weill's flight from Nazi Germany and draws on material from the sung ballet The Seven Deadly Sins.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nino Rota: War and Peace and other works
Esther Peristerakis (harp), Marcel Sobol (horn), WDR Funkhausorchester Köln, Felix Bender, Michael Seal
This album is bookended by suites from two of Rota's scores for cinema: King Vidor's 1956 adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace (starring Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Anita Ekberg) and the 1979 Fellini short Prova d'orchestra. The remaining three works were composed for the concert-hall: the 1947 Harp Concerto, the Concerto for Strings from the mid-1960s, and the 'ballad for horn & orchestra' Castel del Monte, inspired by King Frederick II’s castle in southern Italy.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 24
Robert Levin (fortepiano), Academy of Ancient Music, Richard Egarr
To mark its fiftieth birthday, the Academy of Ancient Music resume a series which began on Decca in 1993 under the direction of the late Christopher Hogwood; the cycle is scheduled for completion in 2024, with the next volume (featuring Levin's reconstruction of the Concerto movement in G major from Nannerl's Music Book) set for release in June. Look out for David's podcast with Levin (recorded yesterday) in the coming weeks!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Miaskowsky, Liadov & Rimsky-Korsakov: Cello Works
Raphael Wallfisch (cello), Simon Callaghan (piano), Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Łukasz Borowicz
The lion's share of this programme is given over to the music of Nikolai Miaskowsky, whose two-movement Cello Concerto from 1944 opens proceedings in fine style. The two cello sonatas from 1911 and 1948 follow, and recital is completed by shorter works by two of his teachers at the St. Petersburg Conservatory: Rimsky-Korsakov's Serenade from 1893, and the Prelude and Mazurka from Liadov's Trois Morceaux Op. 11.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
After appearing alongside soprano Mary Bevan in works by Augusta Holmès and Debussy on Visions Illuminées last month, the Ruisis make their debut on Pentatone with a programme which takes its title from a newly-commissioned work by Oliver Leith and also features Matthew Locke's Fantasie in F and two string quartets by Haydn. Formed ten years ago by British/Sicilian brothers Alessandro and Max Ruisi, the quartet received the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Young String Players in 2015.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Stenhammars embarked on this survey of the complete string quartets by their namesake back in 2013, when Gramophone declared that 'this is music not just for Nordic specialists and should be investigated' and The Guardian noted that 'the performances, bristling with tension and lyrical beauty, are exceptional'. As well as the six numbered quartets (composed between 1894 and 1916), the set includes the world premiere recording of a quartet in F minor that Stenhammar withdrew from his official catalogue after completing it in the late 1890s.
Available Formats: 3 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Polish pianist came to international prominence in 2005 after sweeping the board at the 15th International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition, and signed to Deutsche Grammophon the following year; reviewing his debut recording of the complete preludes, Gramophone remarked that 'you will rarely hear more flawlessly judged or calibrated performances'. His first solo recital for the label in six years features the Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3, the Barcarolle in F sharp major Op. 60, and the Nocturne in F sharp minor Op. 48 No. 2.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Russian pianist fell in love with the music of Tchaikovsky as a child, and here he's joined by his 12-year-old daughter Bella for his own four-hand arrangements of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker and a waltz from Sleeping Beauty; the programme also includes his solo piano transcriptions of the Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture and the Overture to Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila, plus excerpts from The Seasons and the Morceaux Opp. 10, 19 and 72.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The American pianist couples Schubert's first completed piano sonata with one of his last and greatest works in the genre, written in the final year of his short life. Ohlsson's previous solo recording for Hyperion (comprising Brahms's first two piano sonatas and the much later Rhapsodies) was a Record Review Record of the Week, with Gramophone also noting that 'he has power and agility in reserve, which means that he can take fences in his stride that find others huffing and blowing'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Morales: Missa Mille regretz & Missa Desilde al cavallero
De Profundis, Robert Hollingworth, Eamonn Dougan
Following acclaimed recordings of music by Sebastián de Vivanco, Bernardinus Ribera and Juan Esquivel, the Cambridge-based male-voice ensemble embark on a survey of the work of another Spanish Renaissance composer - Cristóbal de Morales, who spent much of his career in Rome before returning to his native country in the mid-1540s. This first of twelve planned volumes features two of his early masses, plus the first of his celebrated eight Magnificats and Josquin's Mille Regretz.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Jade Mountain: Songs by Edmund Rubbra
Lucy Crowe (soprano), Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano), Timothy Ridout (viola), Catrin Finch (harp)
Having done much to champion the large-scale choral and orchestral music of Rubbra (including a superb cycle of the complete symphonies with Richard Hickox), Chandos now present all of his published songs with piano or harp accompaniment; the title-work is a 1962 set of five songs for harp and high voice on poems of the Tang Dynasty (in English translations by American poet Witter Bynner). Violist Timothy Ridout joins 2021 Cardiff Singer of the World finalist and Audience Prize-winner Claire Barnett-Jones for the Two Sonnets by William Alabaster.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
