New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 7th April 2023
Today's new releases include Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles... from the Utah Symphony Orchestra & Thierry Fischer, a second all-Schubert recital from Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton, Byrd's 1589 collection of 'Songs of sundrie natures' from Fretwork & Alamire, and a sacred album (taking in opera and Lieder as well as oratorio) from Joseph Calleja with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and Sergey Smbatyan.
Commissioned by philanthropist and singer Alice Tully to mark the bicentenary of American Independence, Des canyons aux étoiles... was directly inspired by the Utah landscape: Messiaen paid a visit to the state whilst preparing the piece in 1972, noting down the bird-song which he heard there and also marvelling at the presence of 'all possible varieties of red, of orange and of violet'. Last summer Fischer and the orchestra performed the work at Zion National Park (which the composer described as the 'ultimate joy') to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the score's completion.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Billed as the Maltese tenor's 'first-ever sacred album', this programme stretches the definition to include prayers and devotional music from opera (notably 'Allmächt'ger Vater' from Wagner's Rienzi and the famous duet from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles) and songs such as 'Der Engel' from Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder and Schubert's 'Ave Maria'. Also includes arias from Rossini's Petite messe solennelle & Stabat Mater and Verdi's Requiem, and arrangements of Adam's O Holy Night and Liguori's Tu scendi dalle stelle.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Following A Soprano's Schubertiade in 2018, Sampson and Middleton's second all-Schubert album focuses on the composer's responses to texts exploring the idea of an afterlife, including settings of Goethe, Schiller and Rückert (many of them composed in Schubert's final years). Among the best-known songs here are 'Litanei auf das Fest Allerseelen', 'Nacht und Träume', 'Ganymed', 'Die junge Nonne', and 'Du bist die Ruh'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Byrd 1589: Songs of sundrie natures
Jacob Heringman, Lynda Sayce (lutes), Fretwork, Alamire, Fretwork, David Skinner
Two years on from their Gramophone Award-nominated Byrd 1588: Psalmes, Sonets & Songs of Sadnes and Pietie (described by BBC Music Magazine as 'a delight from start to finish'), Alamire and Fretwork team up again to mark the composer's quatercentenary with this collection from the following year - an anthology of songs in 3-6 parts, which Byrd hoped would 'serue for all companies and voyces: whereof some are easie and plaine to sing, [while] other more hard and dificult'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the sixth and final instalment in Neschling's Respighi series with the Belgian orchestra, which has been hailed by BBC Music Magazine as 'the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor'. The album brings together four sets of what the composer described as ‘free transcriptions for orchestra’: The Birds (1928) is based on harpsichord and lute pieces by Rameau, Pasquini, van Eyck and Gallot, whilst the Ancient Dances and Airs rework music by Italian and French composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Missy Mazzoli: Dark with Excessive Bright
Arctic Philharmonic, Tim Weiss, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, James Gaffigan
The title-work on this collection of music by the American composer is a Baroque-inspired violin concerto (taking its cue from a line in Milton's Paradise Lost and originally written for double bass soloist); it's given here in two versions, one for string orchestra and another for string quintet. The album also includes Vespers for Violin (scored for amplified violin and electronics) and three orchestral works: These Worlds in Us, Orpheus Undone, and Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (which was performed at the BBC Proms in 2017).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Born in Stockholm in 1882, Melcher Melchers spent much of his early career in Paris, where his circle of friends included Satie and members of Les Six as well as Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani. Two symphonic poems (both composed after he returned to his home city to take up a teaching position at the conservatory) receive their world premiere recordings here: the Élégie from 1919 and La Kermesse: poème symphonique d'après le tableau de Rubens (written the following year). His sole symphony, composed in 1925 and regarded as his magnum opus, completes the programme.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Skalkottas: Two Concertos
George Zacharias (violin), Alexandros Koustas (viola), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
This is the world premiere recording of the Concerto for violin, viola and wind orchestra which Skalkottas composed after returning home to Athens from Berlin in the 1930s due to a combination of personal and political factors; the Violin Concerto, dating from the same period, is given in a critical edition prepared by soloist George Zacharias. A pupil of Schoenberg and Weill, Skalkottas began his career as a violinist and earned a living as an orchestral musician in Athens in the later part of his life.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
On this tenth instalment of their widely acclaimed Haydn series, the period-instrument quartet present The Seven Last Words (originally scored for orchestra and commissioned for Good Friday 1787) in the composer's own arrangement for string quartet, alongside his two final completed works in the genre. Previous instalments of the cycle have been described as 'provocative interpretations - of enthralling magnitude' (Gramophone) and 'without a doubt one of the all-time great Haydn quartet recordings' (Classic FM on the Op. 9 set).
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
2022 was a stellar year for the 24-year-old Italian countertenor, who took prizes at both the Renata Tebaldi Competition and the Cesti Competition in Innsbruck; his second solo recording for BIS features arias from Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso, Il Farnace & Il Giustino, Handel's Serse & Rinaldo and Egidio Duni's Demofoonte, plus Riccardo Broschi's 'Son qual nave' (composed as a showpiece for his brother Farinelli).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
This is the first full-length album to be devoted to the music of Swiss composer Ivo Antognini (b. 1963), whose career encompasses jazz and film/television work as well as sacred choral music. The title-work, written in 2019, sets a poem on loss and grief by Christina Rossetti, and was composed for The Aeolians of Oakwood University, Alabama; the programme also includes settings of O Magnum Mysterium and the Jubilate Deo, and the canticles written for Trinity College Choir in 2021.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Verdi: Requiem (orch. Blackford)
Helena Dix (soprano), Catherine Carby (mezzo), Luis Gomes (tenor), Jihoon Kim (bass), Iain Farrington (piano), Anna Tilbrook (piano), Philip Scriven, Peter Fry (percussion), Bach Choir, David Hill
Commissioned by David Hill for The Bach Choir, Blackford's arrangement of the Requiem is scored for two pianos, organ & percussion plus the usual choral forces and vocal soloists. Blackford writes: 'I immediately saw the potential of an orchestration that would have a distinctive sound world of its own, not a watered-down reduction of Verdi’s original...Having six keyboard hands available generally meant that Verdi’s contrapuntal writing, especially in the Sanctus, is fully reproduced'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
