New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 31st March 2023
Today's new releases include Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 from John Wilson & Sinfonia of London, Sir Georg Solti's Siegfried in all its newly-remastered glory on Decca, Berlioz Roméo et Juliette & Cléopâtre (both featuring Joyce DiDonato) from John Nelson in Strasbourg, and a Pushkin-inspired recital of Britten, Shostakovich and Prokofiev from Gemma Summerfield, Gareth Brynmor-John, Abi Hyde-Smith and Jocelyn Freeman.
Five months on from their recording of Symphony No. 3 and The Isle of the Dead (praised by Fanfare for its 'x-ray clarity' and by the Financial Times for its 'full, rich, atmospheric sound'), Wilson and Sinfonia of London continue their Rachmaninoff project with Symphony No. 2, composed mainly in Dresden in 1906-7; it's preceded here by Leopold Stokowski's orchestral transcription of the Prélude in C sharp minor for piano, written fifteen years earlier.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette & Cléopâtre
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo), Cyrille Dubois (tenor), Christopher Maltman (baritone), Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Coro Gulbenkian, Chœur de l’OnR, John Nelson
Following hugely acclaimed recordings of Les Troyens (which was Gramophone's Recording of the Year in 2018), Harold en Italie, Les Nuits d'été and La damnation de Faust, Nelson's Berlioz series from Strasbourg continues with the composer's symphonie dramatique from 1839 and the cantata Cléopâtre, which he submitted for the Prix de Rome a decade earlier. Reviewing a performance of the programme in Paris shortly after the recording was made, Early Music World noted Nelson's ability 'to inspire the augmented Strasbourg orchestra to playing of the greatest fervour and affecting sensitivity'.
The physical release includes a bonus DVD featuring 30 minutes of highlights from the live performance in Strasbourg last summer.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Swedish clarinettist makes his recording debut as conductor on this 2-CD album, as well as doing double-duty as soloist and director in the Clarinet Concerto (performed here on a basset clarinet, as originally intended). The first disc is based on a concert which Mozart gave at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in May 1789, featuring the 'Jupiter' Symphony, the Piano Concerto No. 25 and the concert-aria 'Ch'io mi scordi di te?'; the second takes its cue from his visit to Prague in the final year of his life, and comprises the 'Prague' Symphony, 'Parto, parto' from La clemenza di Tito, and the Clarinet Concerto.
Available Format: 2 CDs
The Arcadias began their traversal of Weinberg's seventeen string quartets in 2021, with a recording of Nos. 2, 5 and 8 which was nominated for an International Classical Music Award and featured as Record Review's Record of the Week. This third volume couples Quartet No. 4 (written shortly after the composer had moved to Moscow on the advice of Shostakovich in the mid-1940s) with his penultimate work in the genre, composed at the beginning of 1981 and dedicated to the memory of his sister Esther, who was killed at Trawniki following the Nazi invasion of Poland and would have been sixty that year.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This fascinating recital of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music includes Humphris's own arrangements as well as works originally written for trumpet. In the latter camp are Peter Maxwell Davies's Litany for a Ruined Chapel between Sheep and Shore, Toru Takemitsu's Paths (In Memoriam Witold Lutosławski, and Filippos Raskovic's Ostria (which Humphris premiered at the International Trumpet Guild conference in 2018); in the former are Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 1, Janáček's In the Mists, and Messiaen's Vocalise-étude.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Poet’s Echo
Gemma Summerfield (soprano), Gareth Brynmor-John (baritone), Abi Hyde-Smith, Jocelyn Freeman (piano)
This Pushkin-inspired recital takes its title from the song-cycle on texts by the Russian poet which Britten composed during a trip to the Soviet Union in 1965 and dedicated to Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich (who premiered the piece at the Moscow Conservatoire later than year); it's given here in a new version which incorporates the cello, in tribute to Rostropovich's association with the cycle. The programme also includes Shostakovich's Cello Sonata and Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin and Prokofiev's Three Romances on Words by Alexander Pushkin
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The German soprano (and great-niece of the celebrated Wagnerian Helen Traubel) is joined by Scholl for a programme inspired by the sentiments expressed in Psalm 130 ('Out of the Depths Have I Cried To Thee'). Repertoire includes a new string quintet arrangement of JS Bach's chorale prelude 'Aus tiefer Not schrei', arias from the St John & St Matthew Passions and Ascension Oratorio, and music by Berg, Schoenberg and Penderecki.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Piatti Quartet have enjoyed a close working relationship with Turnage since 2015, when they won the Sidney Griller Award for their performance of his Contusion at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition (their recording of that work will be released on NMC next week). Here they perform his third string quartet Shroud and Winter's Edge, both written in 2016; the Piattis gave the world premiere of the latter in Brussels in 2019.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wagner: Siegfried
Wolfgang Windgassen (Siegfried), Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), Gerhard Stolze (Mime), Hans Hotter (Wanderer), Gustav Neidlinger (Alberich), Marga Höffgen (Erda), Kurt Böhme (Fafner), Dame Joan Sutherland (Waldvogel); Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti
This is the third instalment of Decca's all-new transfer of the first stereo Ring Cycle, remastered from the original two-track stereo mastertapes in HD sound at 24bit/192kHz and issued to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Solti's death. Supporting documentation includes detailed notes on the original recording and the remastering techniques used for this edition, session-photographs and facsimiles, and a complete libretto in German and English.
Götterdämmerung will be released on 30th June.
Available Formats: 4 SACDs, MP3, FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
