You can listen to a selection of tracks from the most recent Team Choices in the playlist below.
Presto Team Choices | Updated Monthly
Curated by David Smith
Tracks from the recordings featured in the most recent Team Choices from the Presto Classical team. 2 hours 26 minutes
Welsh Music For Strings
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Owain Arwel Hughes
'I didn’t really know what to expect from this album but I can safely say that Grace Williams’s Elegy for Cynddylan absolutely grabbed me from its first bars. I think in music-theoretical terms it’s primarily octatonic, but as a listener it’s luscious, sweeping, and completely enchanting. Arwel Hughes’s vigorous Divertimento on the hymn-tune Ebenezer has strong echoes of Holst’s The Dargason, while Christopher Wood’s elegy for the victims of the Aberfan disaster is deeply moving in its transparent simplicity. Even Paul Mealor, who I’ve honestly always been a little hesitant about, provides a beautiful contribution – his gorgeous, expansive O Sacred Heart is by a long way the best thing I’ve ever heard from his pen.' (David Smith)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Alma: Ibero-American Songs
Julieth Lozano Rolong (soprano), João Araújo (piano)
'Bursting with character, vitality and wit, this debut recital from the Colombian light lyric soprano is packed with little-known gems by composers including Carlos Guastavino, Ernani Braga, María Grever, Waldemar Henrique and Fernando Obradors. Packing an agile but richly-coloured light lyric soprano, Lozano Rolong has sensuality and sassiness to burn, especially in the numerous tongue-twisty patter-songs - but there's pathos aplenty too, particularly in the lullabies by Modesta Bor and Luis Carlos Figueroa.' (Katherine Cooper)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 44.1 kHz, 16 bit)
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie
Yuja Wang (piano), Cécile Lartigau (ondes martenot), Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
'Although this recording has existed as a digital download since last December, I'm counting this as a July release as it is now available on CD as well. It's an exuberant performance, characterised by moments of ecstatic joy (especially in Joie du sang des étoiles and Final), contrasting with a languorous account of Jardin du sommeil d'amour (featuring some mesmerising playing from Cécile Lartigau on the ondes martenot). However, the real star of the show is pianist Yuja Wang, who as well as providing the most delicate contributions where required is magnificent in the fiendish writing prevalent throughout (notably her mightily impressive cadenza in the seventh movement).' (James Longstaffe)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Visiting Rachmaninoff: Chopin Variations - Romances
Julia Lezhneva (soprano), Alexander Melnikov (piano)
'We are lucky to have comprehensive recorded evidence of Rachmaninoff's own playing, and his avoidance of the laboured sentimentality that popular myth often places upon his music. Melnikov is always proportionate, and uses all the colours of the composer's piano to explore the light and shadow of the music without losing sight of its essence, in a gripping account of the Chopin variations. He is also a sensitive partner to Lezhneva, who balances the clean control she brings from her baroque experience, with a beauty of sound and expressivity that finds the true heart of these songs.' (Matthew Ash)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Silvestrov: Symphony No. 8 & Violin Concerto
Janusz Wawrowski (violin), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Lyndon-Gee
'I’m skeptical about contemporary framing of Sylvestrov as the prophetic voice of a nation. His violin concerto from 2016 is certainly a dark work – with echoes almost of Shostakovich at his more lyrical – but its overall trajectory is from grittier material towards more lyrical writing, culminating in a gentle concluding Serenade with piano obligato. It would be nice to believe that this work is, indeed, prophetic. The symphony (2012-13) is more angular and more dissonant. Conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee connects it in hindsight with ‘the suffering and anguish of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel’ that followed 2022’s invasion, but I think it’s more accurate to see it as rich, lugubrious music that stands on its own merits. Sometimes ominous, yes, but just as often nostalgic, optimistic and sentimental.' (David Smith)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
A Dark Flaring
Signum Quartett
'There's so much variety on offer across this anthology of works for string quartet by six South African composers, written over the course of the last eighty-five years. The earlier works include Priaulx Rainier's dark, imposing String Quartet from 1939 (which summons a near-orchestral sound from the Signum) and Arnold van Wyk's Shostakovich-esque Five Elegies from the following year, but it was the more recent pieces which stuck with me - particularly Matthijs van Dijk's spare and searing (rage) rage against the (written in response to his mother's death) and his father Péter's Dowland-haunted Iinyembezi.' (Katherine Cooper)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
'Sony Classical honours the 93-year-old composer's extraordinary body of work with three boxes bringing together his vast array of film scores from across six decades. This first collection runs from the 1969 Steve McQueen movie, The Reivers (the score that made a young Steven Spielberg want to work with him on his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express in 1974), to his Christmas-themed score from 1990’s Home Alone. Other treasures taken in along the way include celebrated classics such as Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Superman, plus rarer gems like Dracula, The Accidental Tourist, The Cowboys, The Fury, and The Towering Inferno.' (James Longstaffe)
Available format: 22 CDs
The Music Never Ends
Vasari Singers, Gareth Giles (piano), Gareth Huw Davies (double bass), Jeremy Backhouse
'I was drawn to this by the inclusion of George Shearing's wonderful Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, having played the Rutter SSA arrangements of three of them with the excellent chamber choir at my first placement as a trainee teacher. The Vasari Singers offer a varied programme of close-harmony arrangements, drawing on a range of traditions, including the work of Ward Swingle alongside traditional song and the music of Lennon & McCartney, Ellington, Legrand and Sondheim. The singing and playing is superb throughout, with nicely balanced voices and plenty of character.' (Matthew Ash)
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
