Today's new releases include Enescu's String Octet and Piano Quintet from the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective on Chandos, late Brahms from Anna Fedorova on Channel Classics, Verdi from Lise Davidsen, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner on Decca, and a French Baroque programme from Mishka Rushdie Momen on Hyperion.
Enescu: String Octet, Piano Quintet
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
The Romanian composer, violinist and conductor George Enescu was just nineteen when he completed his String Octet in 1900, noting that he 'wore himself out' labouring over the score for eighteen months; the piece had to wait almost a decade for its premiere, after French impresario Édouard Colonne deemed it 'too risky' to programme as planned due to the complexity of the writing. The Piano Quintet is an even earlier work, dating from Enescu's student days in Paris (where Colonne was one of his most ardent champions).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brahms: Intermezzi, Op. 117 - Klavierstücke, Opp. 118 & 119
Anna Fedorova (piano)
The Ukrainian pianist's survey of Brahms's late keyboard works is the Instrumental Choice in next month's edition of BBC Music Magazine, where Jessica Duchen writes: 'She has a rich and beautiful sound, for a start, and a wonderful way with voicing, often allowing inner lines to sing through as if Brahms is writing for an invisible choir.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Verdi
Lise Davidsen (soprano), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner
Released to coincide with her appearances in Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera, the Norwegian soprano's sixth solo album on Decca includes Lady Macbeth's 'Vieni, t'affretta', 'La luce langue' and 'Una macchia', followed by excerpts from Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Aida, and Don Carlo. Elisabetta in the latter opera was Davidsen's first major Verdi assignment: reviewing her role debut at Covent Garden in 2023, The Guardian described her closing aria as 'a tour de force of glorious singing', whilst BachTrack enthused that 'her dark soprano is simply outstanding, the attack on the notes so clean, rock solid, seemingly effortless'.
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Hall of Mirrors
Mishka Rushdie Momen (piano)
Two years on from her debut album Reformation (which focused on English keyboard music from the Tudor period), the British pianist crosses the Channel to explore the music of Versailles around the time of Louis XIV. Her programme features works by three composers who were closely associated with the court of the 'Sun King': François Couperin, Rameau, and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (who came to the monarch's notice when she performed at Versailles aged five, and was educated at the French court).
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'
Karen Cargill (mezzo), Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano), Orchestre National de France, Chœur de Radio France, Cristian Măcelaru
This account of the 'Resurrection' Symphony was recorded in Paris across two evenings in October 2024, almost seventy years since Leonard Bernstein dazzled Parisian audiences with the same work and orchestra: Măcelaru consciously offered a very different perspective on the piece, emphasising the 'chamber-like delicacy and pastoral warmth' of the score.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ceremony
Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Dresdner Philharmonie, Jonathan Stockhammer
The title-work here is a five-part flute concerto by Toshio Hosokawa which was written for and premiered by Pahud (with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich and Paavo Järvi) in 2022 - BachTrack deemed the piece 'as enigmatic as it is demanding.' It's preceded here by Prokofiev's 1943 Flute Sonata (orchestrated by Pahud's Berliner Philharmoniker colleague Stephan Koncz) and the Flute Concerto which Christopher Rouse composed in 1994 as an elegy for the murderer Liverpool toddler James Bulger.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
'Beethoven Extended': Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7
Insula Orchestra, Insula Camerata, Laurence Equilbey
The young musicians of Insula Camerata (founded by Equilbey last year) join their parent orchestra for a Beethoven project with a difference: Equilbey recounts that the composer himself sanctioned the doubling of orchestral forces for the more dramatic passages in his symphonies when the works were to be performed in large concert-halls, reflecting that 'the chamber music passages gain in refinement and contrast, while the great orchestral waves of sound acquire the gripping intensity and monumentality we so appreciate in his symphonic music.'
Please note that this double album is CD-only: Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 7 are available as separate digital releases.
Available Format: CD
Je chante la nuit
Agathe Peyrat (soprano/ukelele), Pierre Cussac (accordion/voice)
The unconventional French duo casts its net far and wide on this programme of 'night music': the repertoire includes their own arrangements of opera arias (with Peyrat taking on Puccini's Cavaradossi, Wagner's Wolfram and Bizet's Nadir as well as Mozart's Queen of the Night!), Saint-Saëns's 'Danse macabre', and songs by Purcell, Debussy, Maurice Yvain, Charles Trenet and Alain Clavier.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Tristan Generation
Juliette Journaux (piano)
Described by the French pianist as 'a declaration of love for German post-Romanticism', Journaux's second album for Alpha includes Zemlinsky's Fantasien über Gedichte von Richard Dehmel and the 'Cantique d'amour' from Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, plus her own transcriptions of the Potion Scene and Brangäne's Warning from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Pierrot’s Tanzlied from Korngold's Die tote Stadt, and the Preludes to Schreker's Die Gezeichneten and Braunfels's Die Vögel.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Manchicourt: Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus
Gli Angeli Genève, Stephan Macleod
Born in the northern French town of Béthune around 1510, Pierre de Manchicourt held positions at the cathedrals of Tours and Tournai before spending the last years of his life as master of Philip II's Flemish chapel; his contemporary admirers included François Rabelais. Of uncertain date, Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus was discovered in a choir book in Montserrat, apparently in the composer's own writing; it's interwoven here with a selection of motets including O Virgo virginum, O Thoma Didyme, and Maria Magdalene.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Dvořák: Rusalka
Johanni van Oostrum (Rusalka), Pavel Černoch (Prince), Raehann Bryce-Davis (Ježibaba), Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev (Vodník), Annette Dasch (Foreign Princess), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chorus of Dutch National Opera, Philipp Stölzl, Philipp M. Krenn, Joana Mallwitz
Filmed in Amsterdam in the summer of 2023, Philipp Stölzl and Philipp M. Krenn's staging transports Dvořák's fairytale to 1950s America, with Rusalka as a vulnerable young woman struggling with heroin addiction who dreams of conquering Hollywood and marrying a movie-star. Although the production itself divided opinion the musical aspects were widely praised, with BachTrack noting the 'mesmerising presence' of Mallwitz in the pit and British Theatre Guide applauding van Oostrum's 'pure beauty of line' in the 'Song to the Moon'.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Mozart: The Complete Violin Sonatas
Alina Ibragimova (violin), Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Recorded between 2014 and 2016, Ibragimova and Tiberghien's survey of Mozart's sonatas for violin and keyboard won near-universal acclaim, with Gramophone praising the 'immense charm and character' of their playing, and BBC Music Magazine declaring that 'their combined musical imagination feels so intertwined that it emerges seemingly as the natural extension of a single interpretative personality'.
Available Formats: 10 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
