Coming Soon,
Parsifal from Pablo Heras-Casado and other forthcoming highlights
Highlights for the summer include a live recording of Wagner's from the 2023 Bayreuth Festival (starring Andreas Schager in the title-role, Elīna Garanča as Kundry and Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz), a programme of music by the Mendelssohn siblings from Isata Kanneh-Mason, a second volume of African Pianism from Rebeca Omordia, the world premiere recording of George Benjamin's new opera Picture a day like this, and a Kurt Weill triptych from Joana Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin.
Wagner: Parsifal
Andreas Schager (Parsifal), Elīna Garanča (Kundry), Georg Zeppenfeld (Gurnemanz), Derek Welton (Amfortas), Jordan Shanahan (Klingsor), Tobias Kehrer (Titurel); Bayreuther Festspielorchester, Bayreuther Festspielchor, Pablo Heras-Casado
Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival last year, this Parsifal was praised in The New York Times for Schager's 'tirelessly passionate and convincingly boyish' hero and Heras-Casado's 'vibrant, even-keeled and well-paced' approach to the score; although distinctly unimpressed with the augmented reality production, the Financial Times described the Spanish conductor as 'the good shepherd, clearly on top of Bayreuth’s famously tricky acoustic challenges in his debut performance there'.
Released 28th June and also available on Blu-ray.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The main event on this album is the world premiere recording of the new urtext edition of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata, which was lost for 150 years and initially attributed to her brother. The programme also includes Felix's Piano Concerto No. 1, two of his Songs Without Words, and transcriptions of movements from the incidental music from A Midsummer Night's Dream by Rachmaninoff and Moskowski.
Released 9th August.
Available Format: CD
The mainstay of this fourth volume in Wilson's Coates series is The Four Centuries Suite: taking in the hornpipe, pavane, waltz and dance-band music of the 1940s, it was dedicated to Coates's wife and their mutual love of dancing. The album also includes the autobiographical From Meadow to Mayfair, the Three Bears Phantasy which Coates composed for his young son Austin, and the 'Rediffusion March' (commissioned by Britain’s first independent TV and radio service in 1948).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Released in early 2022, African Pianism Vol. 1 was applauded in Gramophone for Omordia's 'musical curiosity and imagination, bolstered by an admirably versatile technique' and in Fanfare for her 'suave sense of melodic line, and her timbral sensitivity'; this sequel includes Salim Dada's Miniatures Algériennes, Florence Price's Fantasie Nègre, Fela Sowande's Two Preludes on Yoruba Sacred Folk Melodies, and works by Girma Yifrashewa and Nabil Benabdeljalil.
Released 19th July.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Past & I: 100 Years of Thomas Hardy
Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo), James Girling (guitar), Ligeti Quartet
Conceived during a residency at The Red House in Aldeburgh in 2019, this collection of new compositions and arrangements by Arthur Keegan includes his Elegies for Emma (scored for voice & guitar and setting poems which Hardy wrote after his first wife's death) and the String Quartet No. 1 'Elegies for Tom'. The programme also features arrangements of songs by Finzi, Imogen Holst, Muriel Herbert, Derek Holman, and Gurney.
Released 19th July.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
George Benjamin: Picture a day like this
Marianne Crebassa (Woman), Beate Mordal (Lover 1/Composer), Cameron Shahbazi (Lover 2/Composer's Assistant), John Brancy (Artisan/Collector), Anna Prohaska (Zabelle); Mahler Chamber Orchestra, George Benjamin
Recorded during the first performances at Aix-en-Provence last summer, this is the world premiere of Benjamin's opera about a bereaved mother in search of a miracle; The Telegraph hailed the work as 'an exquisitely crafted little masterpiece', whilst BachTrack's's David Karlin enthused that 'its 75 minutes were the most inspiring I have ever spent in an opera house'.
Sir George spoke to us about the work's genesis shortly after the premiere.
Released 6th September.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
