New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 1st March 2024
The Czech Philharmonic and their Music Director take a break from their cycle of Mahler symphonies to mark Smetana's bicentenary with this recording of his most popular work: a set of six symphonic poems composed in the 1870s, and including Vyšehrad, Vltava and Z českých luhů a hájů ('From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields'). Reviewing a live-streamed performance from these forces in 2020, The Arts Desk declared: 'I doubt if any other orchestra in the world could play this so naturally and so movingly'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wagner: Parsifal
Jonas Kaufmann (Parsifal), Ludovic Tézier (Amfortas), Elina Garanča (Kundry), Georg Zeppenfeld (Gurnemanz), Wolfgang Koch (Klingsor), Stefan Cerny (Titurel); Wiener Staatsoper, Philippe Jordan
This live recording was made during Kirill Serebrennikov's new production in Vienna in April 2021, and captures Garanča's debut as Kundry (her first complete Wagner role). Although Serebrennikov's contemporary staging polarised critical opinion, the performances themselves were warmly received, with BachTrack's Mark Valencia observing that 'On a purely musical level this is a luminous Parsifal at the Wiener Staatsoper, fabulously cast from the A-list and conducted superbly by a proven Wagnerian'.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Chinese pianist is joined by Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester for the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, and teams up with his wife Gina Alice for Le carnaval des animaux and Debussy's Petite Suite; the album also includes Émile Naoumoff's transcriptions of 'In Paradisum' from Fauré's Requiem and the Flower Duet from Delibes's Lakmé, and pieces by Charlotte Sohy, Mel Bonis, Lili Boulanger, Louise Farrenc and Germaine Tailleferre.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Donizetti: L'esule di Roma
Nicola Alaimo (Murena), Albina Shagimuratova (Argelia), Sergey Romanovsky (Settimio), Lluís Calvet i Pey (Publio), André Henriques (Lucio/Flavio), Kezia Bienek (Leontina); Britten Sinfonia, Carlo Rizzi
To mark the 225th anniversary of Donizetti's birth, Opera Rara presents a new edition of his two-act opera L'esule di Roma, premiered in Naples in 1828 and centring on the forbidden love between a exiled tribune and the daughter of a Roman senator. Reviewing the concert-staging which took place just after the recording-sessions, The Times's Neil Fisher observed that 'Opera Rara’s concert performance under the conductor Carlo Rizzi caught the score’s volatile energy and even flares of psychological intensity'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This live recording was made in Munich last September, at one of Rattle's first concerts as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Having previously recorded the symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the British conductor writes: 'Of course it does convey a harrowing message. But it's like a lot of great works: there are always different ways of reading them. I've been conducting the Sixth for forty years now, and over time I’ve come to realise that it also contains hope.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Italian violinist commemorates the centenary of Busoni's death with this recording of his 1897 Violin Concerto, which draws inspiration from the Beethoven and Brahms concertos and was premiered in Berlin by Dutchman Henri Petri (a pupil of Joseph Joachim, who was the dedicatee of the Brahms concerto). Dego plays Busoni's cadenza for the Brahms, a work which she first performed at just fifteen and describes as 'a dream for every violinist, and particularly for me'; this is the first recording of the conductor with a female soloist and conductor.
Listen to David's new podcast with Francesca about the recording.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Written less than twenty-five years apart, these two works date from opposite ends of their composers' careers: Korngold was still in his teens when his sextet was premiered in Vienna by the Rosé Quartet and two distinguished guests, whilst Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence received its first public performance only a year before his death. Though Tchaikovsky struggled with what he described as 'the novelty of the form' and lamented to his brother that the sextet 'has proved that I’m starting to go downhill', it has become one of his most popular chamber works.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This third album from the conductorless string orchestra sets Strauss's Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings alongside three more recent works: Edmund Finnis's Hymn (after Byrd) (a reworking of a movement from his first string quartet, ‘Aloysius’), Claude Vivier's Zipangu from 1980, and Oliver Leith's Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare (a new arrangement of an aria from his opera Last Days, which is based on Gus Van Sant's film about the end of Kurt Cobain's life and was described as 'bleak and beautiful' by The Guardian).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Al-Bunduqiyya: The Lost Concerto
Giovanni Sollima (cello), Federico Guglielmo (violin), Il Pomo d'Oro
Taking its title from the Arabic name for Venice, this programme explores the musical connections between 'La Serenissima' and the eastern Mediterranean & Asia. The 'lost concerto' in question is a new work by Sollima, based on the orchestral viola part which is all that survives of Vivaldi's cello concerto 'Per Teresa', currently held at the Venice Conservatory; the programme also includes Vivaldi's double concerto 'Proteo o sia il mondo al rovescio', Tartini's 'Aria del Tasso e gondoliera', solo improvisations by Sollima, and traditional Cypriot and Albanian music.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recorded on the Christoph Treutmann organ of the Stiftskirche St Georg in Grauhof (one of the most important surviving instruments from Bach’s lifetime), this fifth instalment of Suzuki's Bach survey focuses on music from the Orgel-Büchlein - a collection of 45 short chorale preludes on melodies from the Lutheran hymn book. Previous volumes in the series have been acclaimed for Suzuki's 'inimitable artistry' (Fanfare), 'flair and imagination' (BBC Music Magazine) and 'deep-seated understanding, colour and vitality' (Gramophone).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Franco Alfano: Liriche
Alexandra Flood (soprano), Nina Tarandek (mezzo), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (mezzo), Klaus Simon (piano)
Perhaps best-known for his completion of Puccini's Turandot in 1926, Alfano composed a substantial body of songs between 1896 and 1954 which are brought together for the first time on this recording; highlights include several cycles setting texts by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (in Italian translation). The supporting documentation includes two 80-page booklets in Italian, English and German, an extensive interview with the artists and several autograph-pages.
Available Format: 3 CDs
Duruflé: Requiem & Poulenc: Lenten Motets
Harrison Cole (organ), The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Stephen Layton
Duruflé's Requiem is given here in the composer's own 1948 arrangement for choir and organ; the recording was made at the church of Saint-Eustache, Paris (which boasts one of the largest organs in France). Reviewing the album earlier this month, The Guardian noted that 'dynamics are precisely observed by this expertly drilled choir' in both works, and observed that former Trinity organ scholar Harrison Cole 'deftly exploits the rich colours of the Parisian organ' in the Requiem.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Spanish composer's eighteen settings of texts for Holy Week are all composed for four voices, and are performed here by soloists at the original (lower) pitch envisaged by the composer; on the CD version of the album, the music is interspersed with nine poems from Christopher Reid’s 2009 collection A Scattering, reflecting on the illness and death of his wife and described by The Guardian as 'a lucid, cogent panorama of grief and loss'. Reviewing I Fagiolini's 2021 performance of the Responses for Holy Saturday, Opera Today remarked that 'the vocal quartet sang with dignified expression, the flowing melismas sombre but sweet.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists - The Decca Recordings
New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein, Vienna Flute Trio
This collection of recordings by Viennese chamber music ensembles includes the Wiener Blaserensemble's debut album of works by Hindemith, Janáček and Ligeti, Schoenberg's Wind Quintet from the same forces, a 'superbly poised and polished' (Stereo Review) account of the Schubert Octet from 1976/77 (receiving its first CD release here), a 1980 recording of Mozart's Gran Partita, and the Wiener Blaserensemble's final recording from 1992 - comprising Beethoven's rarely-recorded Octet and Sextet.
Available Format: 18 CDs
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
