Today's new releases include scholastic Haydn from Giovanni Antonini and the Kammerorchester Basel, early Bach cantatas from Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances, Ravel from the Nash Ensemble, and previously unreleased recordings by the late Radu Lupu (who would have turned eighty on Sunday).
Haydn 2032, Vol. 18: Il maestro di scuola
Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini
This eighteenth instalment of Antonini's Haydn 2023 series opens with Symphony No. 56, which acquired the nickname 'The Schoolmaster' in the early nineteenth century; the programme also includes Symphony No. 29 (the final movement of which has been likened to 'a swarm of naughty children just escaped from a strict teacher' by dramaturg Christian Moritz-Bauer) and the final movement of a symphony by Franciszek Lessel, who studied with Haydn for a decade.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
JS Bach: Christ Lag in Todesbanden
Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastien Daucé
For their first recording of music by JS Bach, Daucé and his ensemble focus on the composer's first sacred cantatas: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit' (Actus tragicus), Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, and the 'Easter Cantata' Christ lag in Todesbanden (which John Eliot Gardiner has described as Bach's 'first-known attempt at painting narrative in music'). Daucé writes: 'At this period, many of the players Bach engaged were French, and appropriately enough we found the way Bach sets these cantata texts, their musical diction and contrapuntal style, to be well in line with our usual practice'.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Radu Lupu: The Unreleased Recordings
Decca Masters and Radio Tapes 1970-2002
Sanctioned by the late Romanian pianist's estate and released to mark what would have been his eightieth birthday, this collection of radio broadcast recordings and master-tapes from the Decca archives includes accounts of Bartók's Out of Doors and the Copland Piano Sonata from Aldeburgh, Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien ad Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition from the Concertgebouw, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 18 from Karlsruhe, and his two Piano Quartets with members of the Tel Aviv String Quartet.
Available formats: 6 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 44.1 kHz, 16 bit)
Ravel
Nash Ensemble
This recording is dedicated to the memory of the Nash Ensemble's founder Amelia Freedman, who died earlier this year after six decades at the helm of the group: Ravel's music was always particularly close to her heart, and this was her final project as the Nash Ensemble's artistic director. The programme features the Introduction & Allegro, Piano Trio, La valse (in the composer's own two-piano version from 1920), and the String Quartet.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
Jewish East
Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, Daniel Grossmann, Shachar Lavi
This sequel to Jewish Vienna (which was welcomed by Gramophone in June for its 'wholly engaging sense of newly minted discovery') features six of Mieczysław Weinberg's Jewish Songs alongside music by two less familiar composers: Ukrainian-born Joel Engel and Jozef Koffler, who was murdered by the Nazis after the liquidation of the Wieliczka Ghetto in 1944. Two chamber works by Koffler are given in new orchestrations by Nicholas Hersh: the Szkice ukraińskie ('Ukrainian Sketches', originally for string quartet) and String Trio Op. 10 (which Grossman argues 'shows how serial theory can also produce lyrical sounds that breathe naturally').
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Zoë Martlew: Album Z
Zoë Martlew, Ben Goldscheider (horn), Lucy Schaufer, Huw Watkins (piano), Mark Simpson (clarinet), Alessandro Fisher (tenor), Lana Bode, Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
This is the first full-length album to be devoted to the music of cellist and composer Zoë Martlew (b.1968), with all of the works here composed between 2018 and 2024. The programme comprises the 'cello distortion rock-up' G-lude (played by Martlew herself), the song cycles Musae and In The Park, Atma for clarinet and electronics, Niburu for horn and electronics, and Nick My Pearls You Cry (performed by its dedicatee Nicholas Daniel).
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 44.1 kHz, 16 bit)
Martin: In terra pax
Stéphane Degout (baritone), Laurent Naouri (bass-baritone), Véronique Gens (soprano), Nora Gubisch (mezzo), Léo Vermot-Desroches (tenor), Münchner Philharmoniker, Philharmonischer Chor München, Alain Altinoglu
In the summer of 1944, Radio Geneva commissioned Frank Martin to write 'a piece which would be broadcast immediately after the cessation of hostilities was proclaimed', and the Swiss composer's response was indeed premiered the day after the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht was signed. (Martin remarked that he 'never had any illusions about the nature of peace that would follow the war’s end', but nonetheless 'attempt[ed] to express the transition from deepest despair to hope for a shining future'). This live performance took place in Munich this spring, to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of the War.
Available format: Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Handel: Chandos Anthems Nos. 6 & 10
Musica Gloria, Nele Vertommen, Beniamino Paganini
This sixth release from the Belgian early music ensemble (founded as a professional group in 2016) was praised in The Times last week for the 'incisive, colourful music-making' on display, with reviewer Geoff Brown describing the album as 'a bracing experience'. The group worked on authentic eighteenth-century English pronunciation with linguistic historian Professor David Crystal, who writes: 'Using an accent that a composer would have recognised gives singers and listeners a greater sense of identity with the earlier period - a new intimacy. Handel would feel at home here.'
Available format: CD
Currently housed at the library of Lambeth Palace (where this recording was made), the Arundel (aka Lambeth) Choirbook celebrates its 500th anniversary this year, and is one of two surviving choirbooks dating from the reign of Henry VIII. The manuscript includes masses by Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford, as well as a host of pieces by lesser-known or unidentified composers; this album presents world premiere recordings of seven anonymous works, including two Magnificats and a Salve regina.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
Lorin Maazel: The Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin Recordings
The Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Lorin Maazel
Maazel succeeded Ferenc Fricsay as Chief Conductor of the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (now the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin) in 1964, and remained in the position until 1975. This set brings together their joint discography for the first time, and includes landmark recordings of the Pergolesi Stabat mater (with Evelyn Lear and Christa Ludwig), the complete Brandenburg Concertos, Falla's El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos, Mozart's 'Prague' and 'Jupiter' symphonies, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.
Available format: 14 CDs
Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann (Blu-ray)
Juan Diego Flórez (Hoffmann), Ermonela Jaho (Antonia), Alex Esposito (Lindorf/Coppélius/Miracle/Dapertutto), Julie Boulianne (Nicklausse), Olga Pudova (Olympia), Marina Costa-Jackson (Giulietta), Christine Rice (Muse); Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Antonello Manacorda, Damiano Michieletto
Damiano Michieletto's staging of Hoffmann was filmed at Covent Garden last winter, when The Guardian described it as 'full of warped wit and devilish touches' and noted allusions to Mary Poppins, Austin Powers and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. BachTrack, meanwhile, hailed the show as 'a visual feast and a riot of fantastical ideas [which] also achieves coherence around the narrative thread of Hoffmann’s character changes as he ages with each successive love affair' and deemed Jaho 'nothing short of sublime' as Antonia (here depicted as a ballerina rather than a singer).
Available format: Blu-ray
