New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 15th November 2024
Rózsa: Violin Concerto - Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2
Roman Simovic (violin), London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle (Rózsa), Kevin John Edusei (Bartók)
The LSO's leader takes the spotlight on this pairing of two twentieth-century concertos by Hungarian composers: Miklós Rózsa wrote his sole work in the genre for Jascha Heifetz in 1953 (reusing some of the material for Billy Wilder's film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), whilst Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2 from the late 1930s was simply known as his 'Violin Concerto' throughout his life (No. 1 was only published posthumously). Reviewing a live performance of the Rózsa in late 2021, The Strad enthused that 'Simovic proved a passionate advocate for the concerto', describing him as 'super-prepared and able to make light of the part’s difficulties'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Two years on from their celebrated accounts of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas (described by Gramophone as 'a recording that’ll blow open the windows of this music and scour away your preconceptions'), Weilerstein and Barnatan team up again for the two sonatas which Brahms composed over twenty years apart; the album is completed by their own arrangement of the Violin Sonata in G major (written in 1879, between the cello sonatas).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Drawing on inspirations including Sanskrit mantras, interstellar cosmology, sub-atomic physics, starling murmurations and groove, American composer and violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama's Flow receives its world premiere recording here as part of the Takács's fiftieth birthday celebrations: the quartet's leader Edward Dusinberre describes the piece as characterised by 'a sometimes defiant spirit of playfulness and wonder’.
Please note short playing-time of 21 minutes.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This survey of Schumann's early career comprises four works which he composed in his twenties: the Abegg Variations and Papillons (his first two published compositions), the Six Intermezzi Op. 4, and Carnaval. Owen writes: 'his youthful energy, creativity and sheer exuberance positively leap from the page, drawing listeners into a vividly imaginative realm': read Matthew Ash's interview with him about this project.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Strauss: Don Quixote & Ibert: Le chevalier errant
Amihai Grosz (viola), Jian Wang (cello), Orchestre National de Lyon, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
The Orchestre National de Lyon and its new musical director launch a new series on Channel Classics, which will couple touchstones of the repertoire with lesser-known treatments of the same subject-matter: this first instalment pairs Strauss's great 1897 tone-poem on Cervantes with the 'suite symphonique' from Ibert's 1935 ballet depicting the 'knight of the doleful countenance'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The Dutch pianist's 'recital program dedicated to the opposing themes of heaven and hell, spiritual and corporal, saints and sinners' includes Bach's French Suite No. 5, Liszt's Mephisto-Waltz No. 1 ('The Dance at the Village Inn'), Edward MacDowell's 'Witches' Dance', and excerpts from Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila, & Fauré's Requiem.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Subtitled 'Music for Clarinet and Piano by 12 Female Composers', this programme includes Ivy Priaulx Rainier's Suite for Clarinet and Piano, Grażyna Bacewicz's Kaprys Polski, Grace Oforka's Olorun Mi, Ida Gotkovsky's Images de Norvège, Francine Aubin's Una fioretti di Francesco and Un soir à Montfort-L'Amaury, Germaine Tailleferre's Arabesque, and Theresa Martin's Solstice.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo
Sandrine Piau, Axelle Fanyo (sopranos), Karine Deshayes, Isabelle Druet (mezzos), Laurent Naouri (baritone) et al; Orchestre Victor Hugo, Chœur de l'Opéra de Dijon, Jean-François Verdier
Born in 1830, Victor Hugo's fifth child Adèle displayed a passion for music from a young age, but her potential as a composer was hampered by serious mental illness (she spent the last forty years of her life in an institution just outside Paris). Following the recent rediscovery of her manuscripts, composer Richard Dubugnon has reconstructed and realised a set of fourteen of her songs on poems by her father and excerpts from his masterpiece Les Misérables.
A new biography of Adèle Hugo by Mark Bostridge (brother of the tenor Ian) was published in June .
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Donizetti: Grand Seigneur
Nicola Alaimo (baritone), Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Giacomo Sagripanti
Hot on the heels of his contribution to Opera Rara's Donizetti Song Project, the Italian baritone presents a programme of scenes and arias from the composer's lesser-known operas, including Gemma di Vergy, Alahor in Granata, Parisina d’Este, Marin Faliero, Maria di Rohan, Torquato Tasso and Dom Sébastien. Alaimo recently recorded the role of Mureno in L’esule di Roma for Opera Rara, with BBC Music Magazine praising his 'nuanced and sympathetic portrait' of the conflicted senator and Diapason enthusing that 'his dramatic commitment is flawless'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The Orlando of the title is not the troubled Ariosto hero who inspired composers including Handel, Vivaldi, Lully and Haydn, but Orlando de Lasso, whose life was scarcely less eventful than that of his namesake: as a talented boy singer, he several kidnapping attempts masterminded by princes set on obtaining him as a court musician. This album grew out of Bestion's soundtrack for a documentary on the composer, and adds ahistorical drums and saxophones into the mix: Bestion's rationale is that 'the performer was free to choose whichever [instrument] or ornamentation he wanted' in Lasso's era.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Blu-ray)
Asmik Grigorian (Cio-Cio San), Joshua Guerrero (Pinkerton), Lauri Vasar (Sharpless), Hongni Wu (Suzuki), Ya-Chung Huang (Goro), Jeremy White (The Bonze); Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Kevin John Edusei, Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier
Filmed at Covent Garden in March, this revival of Leiser & Caurier's 2003 production received five stars in The Times, with reviewer Neil Fisher observing that Grigorian 'builds the pathos to almost unbearable heights' in her 'cliché-free portrayal of Butterfly'; The Stage's George Hall was similarly enthusiastic, describing the Lithuanian soprano's performance as 'one of the most finely realised interpretations of this relentlessly demanding role that one could ever hope to witness.'
Available Format: Blu-ray
Massenet: Werther
Matthew Polenzani (Werther), Isabel Leonard (Charlotte), Sean Michael Plumb (Albert), Jasmine Habersham (Sophie), Patrick Carfizzi (Le Bailli); Houston Grand Opera, Robert Spano
Made last January, this live recording captures Houston Grand Opera's first staging of Massenet's Goethe-inspired tragedy in over forty years (when Neil Shicoff and Frederica von Stade took the central roles). Houston Press deemed their successors 'ideal interpreters of this unique French style of lyric opera', applauding Polenzani's combination of 'heft and control' as the eponymous anti-hero and Leonard's 'startling phrasing, radiance and plummy sound' as his beloved (but unobtainable) Charlotte.
Available Format: 2 CDs
Mozart: Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots
Gwendoline Blondeel (Gerechtigkeit), Jordan Mouaissia (Ein lauer und hinnach eifriger Christ), Adèle Charvet (Barmherzigkeit), Artavazd Sargsyan (Christgeist); Ensemble Il Caravaggio, Camille Delaforge
Mozart was just eleven years old when he composed Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots ('The Duty of the First Commandment') in 1767: back in Salzburg after a celebrated European tour with his father and sister, he worked on Part One of the 'geistliches Singspiel' under the direction of his teachers Michael Haydn and Anton Cajetan Adlgasser (who are thought to have written the other two, lost Parts).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Released in anticipation of the American-French conductor and harpsichordist's eightieth birthday this December, this anthology of his work for Erato includes his landmark recordings of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, Les fêtes d'Hébé and Zoroastre, Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte, Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers and Médée, and Handel's Alcina, Orlando, Serse and Theodora.
Available Format: 61 CDs
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
