New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 5th May 2023
Today's new releases include Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde from Piotr Beczala, Christian Gerhaher & Gerold Huber, the first commercial period-instrument recording of Spontini's La vestale (with Marina Rebeka in the title-role and Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Licinius) from Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset, Stanford's Requiem from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins, and an eclectic East-meets-West recital from tenor Karim Sulayman & guitarist Sean Shibe.
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Piotr Beczala (tenor), Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano)
Gerhaher recorded Mahler's 'Song of the Earth' with Klaus Florian Vogt, Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal fifteen years ago (when The Guardian declared that he 'makes a better case for a male voice in this cycle than any baritone I've heard since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau'). Now he returns to the work in the composer's own version for piano, and in the company of another distinguished Lohengrin - Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, in his first Mahler on disc.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Spontini: La vestale
Marina Rebeka (Julia), Stanislas de Barbeyrac (Licinius), Tassis Christoyannis (Cinna), Aude Extrémo (La Grande Vestale), David Witczak (Un Consul / Chef des Aruspices), Nicolas Courjal (Le Grand Pontife); Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset
Although it was enormously popular during the composer's lifetime (and also enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the mid-twentieth century thanks to Rosa Ponselle and Maria Callas), Spontini's 1807 opera about a priestess of Vesta who is sentenced to be buried alive for resuming a previous relationship with a Roman general has been remarkably neglected on disc: this is the first period-instrument recording of the work, and uses the 1994 critical edition of the score by Ricordi. More on this one later this month...
Available Formats: 2 CDs + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Stanford: Requiem
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo), James Way (tenor), Ross Ramgobin (baritone); City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, University of Birmingham Voices, Martyn Brabbins
Stanford composed his large-scale Requiem in 1896 in memory of the painter and sculptor Frederic Leighton, who became a close friend after meeting during Stanford's first trip to London aged ten. The work was premiered at Birmingham Town Hall (as part of the Triennial Festival) the following year, and this recording was made down the road at Symphony Hall last year to mark the event's 125th anniversary, prompting The Spectator to remark that the piece 'has never sounded more beautiful'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Shibe joins forces with Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman (who won a Grammy for his Songs of Orpheus with Apollo's Fire in 2019) for an eclectic programme exploring the ideas of diaspora and musical connections between East and West; traditional songs from the Middle East sit alongside music by composers including Dowland, Monteverdi, Britten (the Six Songs from the Chinese), Rodrigo, Takemitsu, Harvey and Chaker.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Vänskä's Mahler cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra began in 2017, with a recording of Symphony No. 5 which was nominated for a Grammy and described as 'admirably unhistrionic' by The Guardian; this is the antepenultimate instalment, with Symphonies Nos. 3 and 8 still to come. Reviewing the new recording last week, The Classic Review praised BIS's sound-engineering as 'an audio masterclass in the art of Mahler’s orchestration' and noted that 'the Minnesota Orchestra, too, is glorious'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bach: Notebooks for Anna Magdalena
Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord/clavichord), Carolyn Sampson (soprano)
This is the fourth instalment of Esfahani's Bach series for Hyperion, and includes music by CPE & JC Bach, Johann Adolf Hasse, Christian Petzold and François Couperin as well as JS Bach himself; Esfahani is joined by Carolyn Sampson for a handful of vocal items from the Notebook, including the much-loved 'Bist du bei mir' by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (previously attributed to Bach). Esfahani writes: 'Each of these works is a precious artefact surviving from a woman of whom so little is known that we lack even a representation of her very physical likeness.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This is the third instalment of the Canadian orchestra's Sibelius cycle with Nézet-Séguin, who has been their Artistic Director since 2000 and signed a lifelong contract with them in 2019; this series began that same year with Symphony No. 1, and the next instalment (Symphony No. 5) was recorded live in Montreal just a few weeks ago. Reviewing the performance, BachTrack declared that 'their passionate rendition leapt off the page...with minimal retakes, the OM will have a laudable recording of this chestnut'.
Available Format: CD
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3
Anna Fedorova (piano). Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Modestas Pitrenas
The Ukrainian pianist and activist completes her Rachmaninoff concertos project with a work which she notes 'has incredible compelling power and demands mobilization of all the physical, creative and emotional abilities from both soloist and orchestra'; it's followed here by the single movement of the Youth Symphony which Rachmaninoff completed in 1891, and Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's The Messenger for solo piano.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Bacewicz: Concertos for 1 & 2 Pianos, Overture & Music for Strings, Trumpets & Percussion
Peter Jablonski and Elisabeth Brauß (piano), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
Bacewicz composed her sole piano concerto in 1949, and it was awarded Second Prize at the Chopin Composition Competition that year; the Concerto for Two Pianos was written towards the end of her life, and receives its first-ever digital recording here. Also included are the exuberant Overture from 1943 and the Music for strings, trumpets and percussion, conceived in part as an homage to Bartók's Music for strings, percussion and celesta from twenty years earlier.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
After two recordings devoted to the Savoyard composer's 1746 Pièces pour clavecin, Rousset explores orchestral suites from Pancrace Royer's ballets and operas, including Le pouvoir de l'amour, La Zaïde, reine de Grenade and Almasis (all of which receive their world premiere recordings here). Born in Turin in 1703, Royer spent most of his career in Paris, where he tutored the children of Louis XV and had numerous works premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique and Versailles, eventually becoming music director of the chambre du roi two years before his death.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Englishman in question here is Nicola Matteis the Younger, born in London to an Italian father (also a violinist and composer) and English mother in the 1670s and described as 'stupendious' [sic] by the celebrated diarist John Evelyn; the programme includes his Violin Concerto in B flat, as well as music by Henry Purcell (in which he was immersed as a young boy), Vivaldi (whom Matteis met whilst working at the court of Emperor Charles VI in Vienna), Caldara, Telemann, and Brescianello.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Focusing on themes of loss, grief and healing, the British baritone's second recording for BIS is dedicated to the memory of his sister Laura (who died in 2015): the centrepiece is Finzi's Shakespeare cycle Let us Garlands Bring, part of which Newby sang at his sister's funeral. The programme also includes Arthur Somervell's A Shropshire Lad, and songs by George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Purves sang with the Choir of King’s College Cambridge as both a treble and a bass choral scholar (where his contemporaries included Mark Padmore and Gerald Finley); this recital on the college's own label features the first movement of Bach's Ich habe genug, excerpts from Hanns Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch and Kurt Weill's Das Berliner Requiem, and Lieder by Strauss, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Pfitzner and Mahler.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
