Stand-out releases for late summer include Tchaikovsky's The Seasons from Van Cliburn Competition-winner Yunchan Lim on Decca, Purcell's Dido & Aeneas from Il Pomo d'Oro and Maxim Emelyanychev (with Joyce DiDonato and Michael Spyres in the title-roles), Jonas Kaufmann's multi-media Lieder project Doppelgänger, and a hyper-complete recording of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady from John Wilson and Sinfonia of London, starring Scarlatt Strallen as Eliza, Jamie Parker as Higgins, and a trio of veteran British actors in supporting roles.
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Following his Decca debut recording of Chopin's Études (which swept the board at last year's Gramophone Awards), the South Korean pianist devotes his second solo album on the label to Tchaikovsky's set of twelve character pieces depicting the months of the year. Lim's live performance of the work in France earlier this year prompted Diapason to declare that '[his] beauty and mastery over the piano contains something almost unreal ...one would never have believed that The Seasons could produce such an effect on the audience'.
Released 22nd August.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
Purcell: Dido & Aeneas
Joyce DiDonato (Dido), Michael Spyres (Aeneas), Fatma Said (Belinda), Beth Taylor (Sorceress), Hugh Cutting (Spirit); Il Pomod'Oro, Maxim Emelyanychev
Eight years on from their outstanding interpretations of Didon and Énée on the late John Nelson's multi-award-winning account of Berlioz's Les Troyens, DiDonato and Spyres are reunited as the star-crossed lovers in Purcell's taut setting from almost two centuries earlier, recorded in Essen last February. Reviewing a performance at the Barbican the following week, The Guardian's Tim Ashley praised the 'immaculately balanced and focused' choral singing and DiDonato's 'magnificent' portrayal of the Queen of Carthage.
Released 22nd August.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Doppelgänger
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Helmut Deutsch (piano), Jan Philip Schulze (piano)
Kaufmann's new Lieder album takes its title from Claus Guth's stage adaptation of Schubert’s Schwanengesang, which was performed at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in September 2023 and is included here on DVD. The idea of the Doppelgänger also plays out in the audio material: alongside a complete 2024 account of Dichterliebe with Deutsch, Kaufmann includes previously-unreleased excerpts from the cycle which he recorded with Jan Philip Schulze whilst still a student back in 1994. Schumann's Kerner-Lieder completes the programme.
Released 5th September - a digital version of the album excluding the DVD material will also be available to stream and download.
Available format: CD + DVD Video
Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady
Scarlett Strallen (Eliza Doolittle), Jamie Parker (Henry Higgins), Alun Armstrong (Alfred P. Doolittle), Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Pickering), Laurence Kilsby (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Julia McKenzie (Mrs Pearce), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Higgins); Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
As with his celebrated accounts of Carousel and Oklahoma!, Wilson includes every last bit of 'connective tissue' on this complete recording of the beloved 1956 musical - most notably the ballet-sequence 'Dressing Eliza', Higgins's original showstopper 'Come to the Ball' and Eliza's 'Say a prayer for me tonight' (later repurposed in Gigi), all of which were absent in the 1964 film with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
Released 26th September.
Available formats: 2 SACDs, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Mozart: Idomeneo
Andrew Staples (Idomeneo), Magdalena Kožená (Idamante), Sabine Devieilhe (Ilia), Elsa Dreisig (Elettra), Linard Vrielink (Arbace), Allan Clayton (High Priest of Neptune), Tareq Nazmi (Voice of the Oracle); Symphonieorchester und Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Sir Simon Rattle
Idomeneo has long occupied a special place in Rattle's affections: preparing to conduct the opera at Glyndebourne back in 2003, he described it to The Guardian as 'the work in which Mozart shows he can do anything he wants...It is a kind of dark night of the soul.' This recording was made from concert-performances in Munich in December 2023, shortly after he took up the position of Chief Conductor.
Released 5th September.
Available formats: 3 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 48 kHz, 24 bit)
River of Music
The Kanneh-Masons
All seven Kanneh-Mason siblings come together for this album, which pianist Konya describes as 'a story about our family and the sources of our music'. The mainstay of the programme is Schubert’s Trout Quintet, with other highlights including arrangements of the Welsh folksong ‘Ar Lan Y Môr’, Isata Kanneh-Mason's ‘Hiraeth’ (both reflecting the family's Welsh heritage), Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's ‘Deep River’, and the Song to the Moon from Dvořák's Rusalka.
Released 12th September.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Serenata a Napoli
Pene Pati (tenor), Il Pomo d'Oro, Giulio d'Alessio
The ebullient Samoan tenor is poised for a busy summer (including The Pearl Fishers at Aix-en-Provence next week, Mitridate in Salzburg and Rigoletto at Verona) and recently won an Opus Klassik Award for his second album on Warner, Nessun dorma. This sequel is devoted to Neapolitan song, including Tosti's 'Marechiaro', 'A vucchella' and 'Inquietudine', Denza's 'Funiculì-Funiculà', and of course Capua's 'O sole mio'.
Released 26th September.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Nielsen: Symphony No. 5 and other works
Alessandro Carbonare (clarinet), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner
This third instalment of Gardner's Nielsen series from Bergen comprises Helios (written on a trip to Greece whilst the composer's sculptor wife Anne Marie was sketching the treasures of the Acropolis), the Clarinet Concerto which Nielsen wrote for his friend Aage Oxenvad in 1928, and the two-movement Fifth Symphony from the early 1920s. Previous volumes have been welcomed for their 'inner clarity and exemplary balance' (Gramophone on Symphony No. 4) and 'thrilling bursts of drama' (BBC Music Magazine on Pan and Syrinx).
Released 5th September.
Available formats: SACD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
The World Feels Dusty
Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo), Joseph Middleton (piano)
This recital is named for one of the twelve poems by Emily Dickinson which Copland set in 1950, two of which feature here; the programme also includes Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis, Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer, Barber's three songs on poems by James Joyce, and the world premiere recording of Errollyn Wallen's Night Thoughts - commissioned by Leeds Lieder and dedicated to Middleton and Connolly, the cycle was inspired by a Howard Hodgkins painting and sets text by Shakespeare, Dickinson and Wallen herself.
Released 12th September.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Blu-ray)
Christophe Dumaux (Cesare), Julie Fuchs (Cleopatra), Cecilia Molinari (Sesto), Teresa Iervolino (Cornelia), Cameron Shahbazi (Tolomeo), Frederik Bergman (Achilla); Le Concert d’Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm, Calixto Bieito
The Catalan director's contemporary staging of Giulio Cesare was filmed at Dutch National Opera in February 2022; OperaWire deemed Fuchs 'the star of the show' thanks to her 'strong stage presence and vocal brilliance', whilst BachTrack (who concurred on Fuchs's start power) opined that Bieito's production 'will surely provide food for thought for many for a long time to come.'
Released 12th September.
Available format: DVD Video
Gilbert & Sullivan: The Gondoliers (Blu-ray)
William Morgan (Marco), Mark Nathan (Giuseppe), Ellie Laugharne (Gianetta), Sioned Gwen Davies (Tessa), Yvonne Howard (Duchess), Richard Suart (Duke), Ben McAteer (Don Alhambra), Catriona Hewitson (Casilda), Dan Shelvey (Luiz); Scottish Opera, Derek Clark, Stuart Maunder
Following a sparkling account of Gilbert & Sullivan's penultimate collaboration Utopia, Limited last month (featuring many of the same singers), Opus Arte presents Scottish Opera's 2022 production of the duo's previous operetta, centring on a pair of Venetian brothers, their brides, and a Spanish ducal family fallen on hard times. The show was hailed as 'G&S con amore' by The Arts Desk, whilst BachTrack described it as 'truly sumptuous'.
Released 22nd August.
Available format: Blu-ray
