New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 26th April 2024
Gluck: Orfeo & Euridice
Jakub Józef Orliński (Orfeo), Elsa Dreisig (Euridice), Fatma Said (Amore), Il Giardino d’Amore, Stefan Plewniak
Having dreamed of singing Orfeo since he was a student, the Polish countertenor has recently performed the role to great acclaim at San Francisco Opera, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and on tour with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble; reviewing the former, the San Francisco Chronicle enthused that 'his singing is a shimmering, crystalline fountain of sound, at once tonally pure and exquisitely precise'. The recording was made in Warsaw last January, with Orliński acting as artistic director and producer.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This fifteenth volume of Antonini's outstanding Haydn cycle opens with Symphony No. 85, nicknamed 'La Reine' because of Marie Antoinette's enthusiasm for the work. It's followed here by Symphonies Nos. 50 and 62, both of which have connections with her mother Maria Theresa: the empress was reportedly delighted when she heard the former work on a visit to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy at his 'Hungarian Versailles' in 1773, and the latter was composed in the year of her death.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
John Williams: Violin Concerto No. 1 & Bernstein: Serenade
James Ehnes (violin), Saint Louis Symphony, Stéphane Denève
Williams composed his Violin Concerto No. 1 in the mid-1970s in memory of his first wife Barbara Ruick, whose screen credits included the role of Carrie Pipperidge in the 1956 film of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel; the work was premiered by the Saint Louis Symphony in 1981 and was subsequently championed by Gil Shaham (who recorded it in 1999, with the composer conducting). Ehnes felt the Serenade made for an apposite coupling, reflecting that Bernstein is 'probably the only other American composer whose music has reached a similarly wide and varied audience.'
Presto's James Longstaffe spoke to James Ehnes earlier this week about this project.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kevin Puts: The Hours
Renée Fleming (Clarissa Vaughan), Joyce DiDonato (Virginia Woolf), Kelli O'Hara (Laura Brown), Sean Panikkar (Leonard Woolf), Kyle Ketelsen (Richard), Denyce Graves (Sally); Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Based on Stephen Daldry's 2002 film and the original novel by Michael Cunningham (which in turn takes inspiration from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway), The Hours was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022 and charts a single day in the lives of three women: Virginia Woolf, literary editor Clarissa Vaughan, and housewife & mother Laura Brown. The work was described as 'a stunning triumph' by Variety, whilst The Telegraph's Nicholas Kenyon declared that 'Joyce DiDonato has surely done nothing finer than her tortured Virginia Woolf'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Poulenc: Les oeuvres de sa jeunesse
Soraya Mafi (soprano), Lawrence Zazzo (countertenor), Julien van Mellaerts (baritone), Manchester Camerata, John Andrews
The most substantial piece on this collection of early works by Poulenc is the complete incidental music which he wrote for Jean Cocteau & Raymond Radiguet's 1920 play Le Gendarme incompris; the programme also includes the song-cycles Le Bestiaire, Quatre poèmes de Max Jacob and Cocardes, the Trois mouvements perpétuels and the Suite Française d’après Claude Gervaise.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Hong Kong-born conductor (who has been at the helm in Antwerp since 2019) makes her debut on Alpha with a programme of music inspired by ballet, including excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet and Suite No. 2 from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé. The album takes its title from a 2017 work by American composer Elizabeth Ogonek (b.1989), subtitled 'Three Little Dances For Orchestra' and praised by the Chicago Tribune at its premiere for the 'acutely wrought instrumental detail' of the score.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As well as the overtures to L'Ambassadrice, La Part du Diable (based on the life of Farinelli), Haydée, ou Le Secret and Le Premier jour de bonheur, this sixth volume of Salvi's Auber series features orchestral excerpts from La fiancée du Roi de Garbe, Le Dieu et la Bayadère and Don Juan. Previous instalments have been described as 'stylish, spirited, and affectionate' (Fanfare) and 'played with considerable polish' (Gramophone).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
During a crisis of confidence in the 1960s, Arvo Pärt turned to Bach as a source of rather masochistic inspiration, later remarking that 'I wanted to prove to myself how beautiful Bach's music was, and how hateful mine was'. The result was the Collage über B-A-C-H, which sits at the heart of this album exploring the connections between the two composers; the programme also includes Bach's Concerto in C minor for Oboe and Violin (in the version for two violins) & the Sinfonia for Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, and Pärt's Tabula rasa & Silouan's Song.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
A former prize-winner at the Tertis International Viola Competition, the Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak makes his first appearance on Delphian with a recital centring on two substantial twentieth-century works: Arnold Bax's Viola Sonata from 1922 (which was inspired by Tertis's playing) and Britten's Lachrymae (written for William Primrose). The programme also includes Augusta Read Thomas’s Song without Words and two pieces for solo viola: Jonathan Harvey's Chant and Bright Sheng's The Stream Flows.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following on from her BBC Music Magazine Award-winning Caprices (which featured a host of Paganini-inspired miniatures which she commissioned in lockdown), Humphreys presents an album which 'grew out of a longing to keep performing music that I was gifted, arranged or first discovered during the spring of 2020' - including her own arrangement of Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor, new works by Michael Small, Bethan Morgan-Williams and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, and pieces by Caroline Shaw, Jessie Montgomery, George Walker and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The British bass initially trained as a trumpet-player, then held a full-time position with the BBC Singers for many years before embarking on a solo operatic career which has seen him triumph in roles such as Sarastro, Baron Ochs, Gurnemanz and Claggart; his debut recital recording includes Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, Schubert's 'Fahrt zum Hades' and 'Der Tod und das Mädchen', and songs by Ireland, Head, Warlock, Gurney and Finzi.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Wagner: Das Rheingold (Blu-ray)
Michael Volle (Wotan), Rolando Villazón (Loge), Johannes Martin Kränzle (Alberich), Claudia Mahnke (Fricka), Vida Miknevičiūtė (Freia), Mika Kares (Fasolt), Peter Rose (Fafner); Staatskapelle Berlin, Christian Thielemann, Dmitri Tcherniakov
Filmed at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in 2022, the first instalment of Tcherniakov's new Ring Cycle was described as 'funny and aching, ironic and horrifying' by The New York Times, whilst Der Welt hailed the production as 'a magnificent work in every respect, perhaps even a new benchmark'.
Die Walküre will be released on 24th May, with Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde, Vida Miknevičiūtė as Sieglinde, and Robert Watson as Siegmund.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
