New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 30th June 2023
Vaughan Williams: Job, Old King Cole & The Running Set
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze
As a postscript to their much-celebrated cycle of Vaughan Williams's complete symphonies, Manze and the Liverpool Philharmonic present a live recording of the Blake-inspired 'Masque for Dancing', which was produced for the Vic-Wells Ballet (subsequently The Royal Ballet) in 1931. It's followed by the earlier ballet Old King Cole (written for the 1923 Festival of British Music), and the folk-dance-inspired The Running Set from 1934 - described as 'a miniature rite of a very English spring' by The Spectator in a review of the concert last October.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Rachmaninoff: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 and Isle of the Dead
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphians complete their survey of the Rachmaninoff symphonies to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth; the previous instalment was widely praised two years ago, with Gramophone's Edward Seckerson hailing their interpretation of Symphony No. 1 as 'as surprising and as thrilling as any I have heard since the much-lauded Ormandy account'. The orchestra has a special connection with two of the works here, having premiered Symphony No. 3 under Stokowski in 1936 and made the first recording of Isle of the Dead (conducted by the composer) in 1929.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
To mark the centenary of Saint-Saëns's death, Bolton and his Swiss orchestra present the composer's four symphonic poems: the relative rarities Phaéton, La jeunesse d'Hercule and Le Rouet d'Omphale, plus the perennially-popular Danse macabre. The Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila acts as a curtain-raiser, and all works here receive their world premiere recordings in the new Bärenreiter critical edition by Hugh Macdonald.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Joe Hisaishi: A Symphonic Celebration
Grace Davidson, Avi Avital, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bach Choir, Stephen Morris
New orchestral arrangements by the composer of some of the best-loved music from his long and fruitful collaboration with Studio Ghibli: a new spin on the overwhelmingly popular 'Merry-Go-Round of Life' from Howl's Moving Castle that gives a pleasingly prominent role to the trumpet as a melody instrument; the atmospheric 'One Summer's Day' that sets the melancholic tone for 'Spirited Away'; a rousing choral rendition of the infectiously catchy title song from My Neighbour Totoro; and many more subtly reworked favourites. Pride of place surely goes to the twelve-minute set of variations on 'Merry-Go-Round' and 'Cave of Mind'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded live at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna a couple of weeks ago, this year's Sommernachtskonzert included Bizet's Carmen Suite No. 1, Berlioz's Le Corsaire Overture, Lili Boulanger's D'un matin de printemps, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, Ravel's Boléro and Johann Strauss II's 'Wiener Blut' waltz. Garanča joins for the Habanera from Carmen, 'Ô ma lyre immortelle' from Gounod's Sapho, and from 'Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix' from Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila.
The DVD and Blu-ray of the concert will be released on 14th July.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Taking its title from Joey Roukens's String Quartet No. 4 (which opens the programme and was written for the Dudoks in 2020), the Amsterdam-based quartet's wide-ranging third album on Rubicon explores the ideas of 'time, travel and locomotion', and also includes Steve Reich's Different Trains. Shorter works by Pérotin, Machaut, Gesualdo and Messiaen complete a programme which was recently described as 'finely judged and excellently delivered' by The Guardian.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This previously-unreleased recording was made at Cavelight Studio in 1994, after Jarrett 'heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was room for a piano version'. Jarrett's discography on ECM also includes JS Bach's Goldberg Variations and French Suites, as well as a recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine: 'This is poetic playing, but poetic in a wholly 18th-century sense: no dripping and drooling, but precisely formed slivers of thought and slices of argument rendered at their purest.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French gamba-player concludes his series of Marais's five books of viol music with this collection from 1725, composed shortly after he had retired from his long-term position as 'ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole' at Versailles and retired to Faubourg Saint-Marcel to focus his remaining energies on teaching and tending his garden. Gramophone described Vol. 2 of the cycle as 'unpredictably fun and grippingly presented', whilst Fanfare hailed Joubert-Caillet as 'a master of his instrument' when reviewing its successor.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded to mark her seventieth birthday last year, this collection of Kaija Saariaho's choral works now stands as a memorial to the Finnish composer, who died earlier this month. The title-work (composed in 2020) is a twenty-five-minute 'science-fiction madrigal’ for mixed choir, double bass and percussion; the programme also includes the 2001 Hölderlin cycle Tag des Jahrs, the Ovid-inspired Écho! (described by Saarisho as a 'tribute to Messiaen'), and two versions of Nuits, adieux - a lullaby for an elderly person, dedicated to the memory of the composer's grandmother.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Released in anticipation of next year's Bruckner bicentenary, this collection of the motets is an Editor's Choice in the July issue of Gramophone, with reviewer Malcolm Riley noting that 'Lucas’s three dozen singers are on impressive form, combining tonal beauty with sheer stamina...This splendid new release will take some supplanting.' The choir are joined by trombonists Joe Arnold, Rory Cartmell, Matthew Lewis and Becky Smith for 'Afferentur regi', ' Inveni David' and 'Ecce sacerdos magnus'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
The Linos's own arrangement of the Pavane pour une infante défunte sits at the heart of this programme, and the nod to Proust in the title of the album references the fact that the work was played at his funeral in 1922; it's followed by their transcription of Le Tombeau de Couperin, composed during World War I as a sequence of memorials to Ravel's friends who had died in the conflict. The Piano Trio from 1914 opens the album (which is performed on period instruments throughout).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wagner: Götterdämmerung
Birgit Nilsson (Brünnhilde), Wolfgang Windgassen (Siegfried), Gottlob Frick (Hagen), Gustav Neidlinger (Alberich), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Gunther), Claire Watson (Gutrune), Christa Ludwig (Waltraute); Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti
This is the final instalment of Decca's all-new transfer of Solti's now-legendary Ring Cycle, which was described by Gramophone in 1965 as 'the greatest achievement in gramophone history yet'; the recordings have been remastered in HD sound at 24bit / 192kHz from the original two-track stereo mastertapes, and are supplemented by full texts and translations, rare session-photographs and facsimiles, and technical notes on the remastering process.
(Look out for our in-depth interview with recording-engineer Philip Siney and producer Dominic Fyfe next month...)
Also available on vinyl.
Available Formats: 4 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Released on DVD/Blu-ray to coincide with the German violinist's sixtieth birthday, this documentary by Sigrid Faltin is structured around a series of conversations between Mutter and the people who have inspired her - including her late husband André Previn, John Williams, Daniel Barenboim, Jörg Widmann and (perhaps more unexpectedly) Roger Federer and magician Steve Cohen.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
