The Hungarian conductor embarks on a Mozart opera trilogy with the Budapest Festival Orchestra on Channel Classics, with other highlights for late summer including a song recital exploring the idea of the femme fatale from mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina and Sir Antonio Pappano on Decca, Frank Loesser's Guys & Dolls from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson (starring Nathaniel Hackmann as Skye Masterston, Sierra Boggess as Sarah Brown and Sir Thomas Allen making a treasurable cameo appearance as her grandfather) on Chandos, and a classy nocturnal concept-album from South Korean pianist Bruce Liu on Deutsche Grammophon.
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Andrè Schuen (Don Giovanni), Luca Pisaroni (Leporello), Miah Persson (Donna Elvira), Maria Bengtsson (Donna Anna), Bernard Richter (Don Ottavio), Samantha Gaul (Zerlina), Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer
Recorded live at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza last October, this is the first of a planned Mozart trilogy from the Hungarian conductor, with Die Zauberflöte and Le nozze di Figaro to follow in the next few years. Reviewing a performance by the same cast in Budapest the previous month, BachTrack praised the 'sizzling chemistry and symbiotic sleaziness' of Schuen and Pisaroni as well as Fischer's 'light-footed, buoyant reading of the score'.
Released 28th August.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Taking its title from a new work by Elena Roussanova (written especially for Akhmetshina and recorded for the first time here), this 'portrait of a woman' explores the concept of the femme fatale through the lens of songs by composers including Balakirev, Montsalvatge, Guastavino, Bizet, Britten, Tchaikovsky, Bernstein and Weill. Opera's great femme fatales Carmen and Dalila have become central to Akhmetshina's repertoire, with The Guardian describing her Covent Garden debut in the latter role as 'irresistible...switching from sweetness and light to dangerous, covered fury'.
Released 21st August.
Available Format: CD
Frank Loesser: Guys and Dolls
Sierra Boggess (Sarah Brown), Nathaniel Hackmann (Sky Masterson), Louise Dearman (Miss Adelaide), David Seadon Young (Nathan Detroit), Sir Thomas Allen (Arvide Abernathy), Damian Humbley (Nicely-Nicely Johnson) Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
Following the runaway success of their hyper-complete accounts of Oklahoma!, Carousel and My Fair Lady, Wilson and Sinfonia of London turn to Loesser's Damon Runyan-inspired musical about an inveterate gambler who falls in love with a Salvation Army sergeant in 1950s New York. Following the original Broadway score, the recording omits Nathan Detroit's 'Adelaide' (written for the 1955 film to showcase an under-used Frank Sinatra) but includes five songs which were cut from the movie - most notably Arvide Abernathy's 'More I Cannot Wish You', for which Sir Thomas Allen was coaxed out of retirement.
Released 18th September.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
For his fourth full-length album on Deutsche Grammophon, the winner of the 2021 International Chopin Competition explores the idea of moonlight through a programme which includes Beethoven's eponymous sonata (as well as the 'Waldstein'), Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 4 and John Cage's Dream, plus shorter pieces by Debussy, Mompou, Hahn, Schoenberg and Ligeti.
Released 7th August.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Although he wrote little for the instrument, Rameau was a fine violinist who earned his living with touring ensembles before channelling his energies into composition, and this 'imaginary concert' from Langlois de Swarte and Christie reworks popular excerpts from his operas for violin and harpsichord; the programme also includes music by his contemporaries Jacques Aubert, Jean-Baptiste Cupis, Toussaint Bourdet, and Théodore-Jean Tarade.
Released 28th August.
Available Format: CD
Released in anticipation of the bicentenary of Beethoven's death next year, this thrillingly red-blooded album sets Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 and 7 alongside works by three Italian contemporaries whom Beethoven admired for either their artistic vision or (in the latter case) sheer commercial acumen: Cherubini (Symphony in D and Overture to Médée), Spontini (Overture to Olimpie), and Rossini (Overture to Guillaume Tell).
Released 28th August.
Available Format: 3 CDs
Emilie Mayer: Piano Concerto, Symphony No. 1 & Overtures
Alexander Melnikov (piano), Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin, Bernhard Forck
This is the first instalment of a projected series showcasing the orchestral works of German composer Emilie Mayer (1812-83), who studied with Carl Loewe and was dubbed the 'female Beethoven' during her lifetime. Her sole piano concerto was written in the 1850s (when she was still writing in a broadly Classical style), whilst the Symphony No. 1 dates from a few years earlier and prompted one contemporary critic to observe that 'until now it has been a rare case for a lady to write full-length musical works' and that the work met with 'great applause' at its premiere.
Released 18th September.
Available Format: CD
GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Conspirare presents the world premiere of Talbot's new cantata setting Octavio Paz's 1957 epic poem inspired by the Aztec sunstone; Talbot writes that he was instantly captivated by 'the hugeness of the poet’s vision, the cosmic immensity of the imagery [and] its febrile surrealistic intensity', and previously used a section of the text in the score for his 2022 ballet Like Water for Chocolate. Look out for Ben's interview with him about the piece next month...
Released 21st August.
Available Format: CD
Mark Adamo: Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess
Odyssey Opera, Gil Rose, Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Premiered by Houston Grand Opera in 2005, Adamo's third opera was described by Variety as 'a compendium of accessible mid-twentieth century styles with echoes of Webern, Gershwin, Milhaud and Bernard Herrmann as well as jazz, Latin-American and Broadway elements'. Although the piece takes its cue from Aristophanes's comedy about a group of women who impose sexual sanctions in a bid to end the Peloponnesian War, Adamo writes 'The Nude Goddess is not your mother's Lysistrata. It's not even the one by Aristophanes.'
Released 7th August.
Available Format: 2 SACDs
A year on from their all-Mozart programme recorded on the composer's domestic clavichord, Nigl and Gergelyfi present a new perspective on Die schöne Müllerin with the help of a 'Tafelklavier' (square piano) built around 1810 by Carl Withum: Nigl reflects that the instrument's unique sonorities have 'renewed his experience of singing the Lied', and has also chosen to intersperse the songs with recitations of poems from Wilhelm Müller's cycle which Schubert did not set.
Released 14th August.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Georg Zeppenfeld (Sachs), Michael Spyres (Walther), Christina Nilsson (Eva), Michael Nagy (Beckmesser), Jongmin Park (Pogner), Matthias Stier (David), Christa Mayer (Magdalene), Bayreuther Festspiele, Daniele Gatti, Matthias Davids
Filmed at Bayreuth last summer, Matthias Davids's new staging of Meistersinger leans heavily into the comic elements of the work, in stark contrast for Barrie Kosky's dark metatheatrical production a few years ago; Opera Today noted the 'myriad sight-gags' in evidence and described the overall effect as a 'grandiose crescendo of spectacular scenic and staging prerogatives', whilst praising Spyres and Nilsson for delivering 'total performances in glorious voice'.
Released 4th September.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Donizetti: Maria Stuarda
Lisette Oropesa (Maria), Kate Lindsey (Elisabetta), Bekhzod Davronov (Leicester), Aleksei Kulagin (Talbot), Thomas Lehman (Cecil); Wiener Philharmoniker, Antonello Manacorda, Ulrich Rasche
Hot on the heels of the DVD/Blu-ray issue of the same opera with Oropesa and Aigul Akhmetshina as the rival queens (in a production by David McVicar), C Major presents Ulrich Rasche's rather more radical staging from last year's Salzburg Festival, which makes liberal use of video and of performers from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance.
Released 4th September.
Available Format: Blu-ray
