New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 25th August 2023
The Eighth Symphony was the first of Bruckner's works to be performed by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, back in 1905; Järvi describes it as the composer's 'most unusual' symphony, and views it as the 'pinnacle' of his symphonic output. Reviewing their recording of Symphony No. 7 in January, The Guardian declared that 'the orchestral sound is detailed and expansive, woodwind expressive, brass white-hot'; No. 9 will be released next year to coincide with the composer's bicentenary.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nielsen: The Concertos
Bomsori (violin), Ulla Miilmann (flute), Johnny Teyssier (clarinet), Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Fabio Luisi
Initially released as individual digital albums (and now available as a CD set), Luisi's recordings of the Nielsen symphonies were praised by The Guardian for their 'zest, wit and restless freedom', whilst Gramophone's Edward Seckerson declared that 'this cycle is spiritually and sonically the best we’ve yet had on record'. On this download-only postscript, two of the orchestra's woodwind principals step into the spotlight for the Flute Concerto and Clarinet Concerto, with Deutsche Grammophon artist Bomsori joining for the Violin Concerto.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the fourth instalment of the Washington orchestra's set of Walker's complete sinfonias, which launched last year to mark the composer's centenary. Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, No. 2 was composed in 1990 (six years before Walker became the first Black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music), and received its premiere three years later from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Neeme Järvi. The complete cycle will be issued on SACD at the end of next month.
Read our in-depth interview with Walker's son Gregory and Gianandrea Noseda here.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Taking its title from a torch-song by Emile Carrara and Léon Agel, this album interweaves cabaret songs from the Années folles with music by Monteverdi, Vierdanck, Cavalli and Marais. The project was inspired in part by the conductor's ancestor Gaston Dumestre, a librettist and chansonnier who often accompanied himself on a theorbo when performing at the avant-garde Montmartre nightclub Le Chat Noir!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Alfano: Complete String Quartets
Elmira Darvarova (violin), Mary Ann Mumm (violin), Craig Mumm (viola), Samuel Magill (cello)
Perhaps best-known today for his completion of Puccini's Turandot in 1926, Franco Alfano enjoyed considerable success in his own right with his operas Risurrezione and Cyrano de Bergerac. He also composed a substantial body of chamber music, including three string quartets; No. 1 was composed during World War One and makes use of the habanera rhythm, No. 2 dates from the mid-1920s and draws on Russian and Eastern European music, whilst No. 3 (completed in 1945) opens with an elegy for his late wife.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Stravinsky, Poulenc & Debussy: Works For Cello and Piano
Amalie Stalheim (cello), Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)
Two years on from her debut recording on LAWO (with Lasse Thoresen's virtuosic Symphonic Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra), the Norwegian cellist teams up with former BBC New Generation Artist Christian Ihle Hadland for three works from the first half of the twentieth century: Stravinsky's Suite italienne (based on themes from the ballet Pulcinella and compiled with the help of Gregor Piatigorsky), and the cello sonatas by Poulenc and Debussy.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Galanterie: The Autumn of the Viola da Gamba
André Lislevand (bass viola da gamba), Emil Duncumb (fortepiano), Jadran Duncumb (theorbo/baroque lute)
Early Music Review described the Norwegian-Italian gambist as 'absolutely on top of his game and not afraid to explore the extremes of his instrument’s aesthetic world' when his debut recording Forqueray Unchained was released in April 2021. This second solo album focuses on German repertoire from the middle of the eighteenth century, featuring works by Telemann, Carl Friedrich Abel, and JS & CPE Bach.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the first full-length recording to focus on the music of French guitarist and theorbist Henry Grenerin (c.1625-c.1700), who began his career as a chorister in the court of Louis XIII and went on to revolutionise guitar technique; Helstroffer describes his music as full of 'freedom, mystery and ardour', and here presents four suites which were published in 1680, interspersed with chansons by Boesset and Cambefort.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Campra: Messe de Requiem
Emmanuelle Ifrah, Marie Perbost (sopranos), Samuel Boden, Zachary Wilder (tenors), Victor Sicard (baritone); Le Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm
Recorded in the Chapelle Royale at Versailles, this triptych of French Baroque sacred works opens with André Campra’s Requiem of 1695 (composed whilst he was music director at Notre-Dame, and commissioned in memory of the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur François de Harlay). The programme also includes grand motets from the 1750s: Rameau's In Convertendo and Mondonville's In exitu Israel.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Écho et Narcisse
Adriana González (Écho), Cyrille Dubois (Narcisse), Myriam Leblanc (Amour); Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé NiquetLe Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet
Premiered at the Paris Opéra in 1779, Gluck's final opera takes its cue from an episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses: vying with the hunter Narcisse for the love of the nymph Écho, Apollo bewitches his rival so that he falls in love with his own reflection. The work was not a success at its premiere, as the pastoral tradition was no longer in vogue in Paris by the late 1770s: Niquet reflects that its cool initial reception 'was simply a question of fashion and its immediacy', and describes the piece as 'a sumptuous tribute to France and to what [Gluck] loves about this nation'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Janáček: Káťa Kabanová (Blu-ray)
Corinne Winters (Kát’a), Evelyn Herlitzius (Kabanicha), David Butt Philip (Boris), Jaroslav Březina (Tichon), Jarmila Balážová (Varvara), Benjamin Hulett (Váňa), Jens Larsen (Dikój); Wiener Philharmoniker, Wiener Staatsopernchor, Jakub Hrůša, Barrie Kosky
Kosky's minimalist production of Janáček's 1921 opera took place at the Felsenreitschule during last year's Salzburg Festival, and met with glowing reviews; The New York Times noted that 'Winters has a child’s volatile presence, and her live-wire voice conveys Kat’a’s wonder and vulnerability', whilst The Opera Critic declared that Hrůša 'testified to his affinity with his compatriot's oeuvre, in a poetic yet vital reading commensurate with the stellar showing on stage'.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream (DVD)
James Bowman (Oberon), Ileana Cotrubas (Tytania), Felicity Lott (Helena), Cynthia Buchan (Hermia), Ryland Davies (Lysander), Dale Duesing (Demetrius), Curt Applegren (Bottom) London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Bernard Haitink, Peter Hall
As the 2023 revival (one of many!) draws to a close, Opus Arte reissue the premiere of Peter Hall's landmark 1981 staging of Britten's opera from Glyndebourne, starring the late, great James Bowman as Oberon. Harper's Bazaar recently described the production as 'the definitive portrayal of this most accessible of the twentieth-century English composer's operas, and one of the company's greatest achievements'.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
