Todays new releases include Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony and Maconchy's Nocturne from Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra on their own label, Baroque duets from Rachel Podger and Lucie Horsch on Channel Classics, Florent Schmitt from Peter Donohoe, the BBC Philharmonic and Yan Pascal Tortelier on Chandos, and Beethoven from the Chiaroscuro Quartet on BIS.
Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony & Maconchy: Nocturne for Orchestra
Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha (soprano), Will Liverman (baritone), London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano
Recorded at the Barbican this February, this account of A Sea Symphony was described by BachTrack's Chris Garlick as 'a performance to treasure, one of the greatest Vaughan Williams interpretations I have experienced in a concert hall' thanks to Pappano's 'red-blooded and passionate' approach to the score. The Guardian admired the 'laser-focused discipline and an impressive homogeneity of sound' from the London Symphony Chorus, and also relished the 'cinematic soundscape' of Maconchy's Nocturne (inspired by Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
Available formats: SACD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
Florent Schmitt: Orchestral Works
Peter Donohoe (piano), BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Yan Pascal Tortelier
The mainstay of this programme of symphonic works by the French composer (1870-1958) is the Symphonie Concertante for Orchestra & Piano, premiered by its dedicatees Serge Koussevitzky and his Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1932. It's followed by the Trois Danses (originally for solo piano, with each movement dedicated to a female pianist of the day), Stèle pour le Tombeau de Paul Dukas from 1936 and the ‘Suite in Two Parts' Çançunik, written for a French radio competition in the late 1920s.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Duologues
Rachel Podger (violin), Lucie Horsch (recorder), Jane Rogers, Alex Rolton
Podger joins forces with the young Dutch recorder-player Lucie Horsch for a selection of 'miniatures of musical conversation', including JS Bach's 15 Inventions BWV 772-786 and Duets BWV802-805, Telemann's Sonata for Flute and Violin TWV 40, CPE Bach's Duet for Flute and Violin Wq. 140, and the 'Aria affettuoso' from Boismortier's Sonata for Flute and Violin, Op. 51 No. 4. The album closes with an arrangement of the traditional Irish jig 'The Kid on the Mountain'.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
Beethoven: String Quartets, Op. 59 No. 3, Op. 95 & Op. 133
Chiaroscuro Quartet
Launched in 2021, the Chiaroscuro's Beethoven project has been described as 'dynamic, intelligent, agile and argumentative' (Gramophone), 'spruce, clean-sounding [and] finely articulated' (BBC Music Magazine), and 'innately idiomatic' (The Strad). This fifth volume opens with the last of the three works which Beethoven composed for Russian Imperial diplomat and amateur violinist Andrey Razumovsky, and closes with the formidable Grosse Fuge which was originally conceived as the final movement of String Quartet No. 13.
Available format: SACD
Prokofiev: Chout & Symphony No. 1 'Classical'
NDR Radiophilharmonie, Stanislav Kochanovsky
Released last March on Harmonia Mundi, Kochanovsky's debut recording of music by Tchaikovsky, Tcherepnin and Rimsky-Korsakov with the NDR Radiophilharmonie was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone, where Mark Pullinger hailed him as 'a seriously good conductor'. The mainstay of this second album is the complete score for Prokofiev's first ballet Chout ('The Tale of the Buffoon Who Outwits Seven Others'): based on a folk tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev, it was written for Sergei Diaghilev in 1915, but extensively reworked at the impresario's request for its eventual premiere with the Ballets Russes six years later.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 48 kHz, 24 bit)
Hans Winterberg: Symphony No. 2 · Piano Concerto No. 2
Jonathan Powell (piano), Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Roland Kluttig
Born in Prague in 1902, Hans Winterberg studied conducting with Alexander Zemlinsky and worked as a vocal coach in Brno before being transported to Theresienstadt in early 1945; upon his release, he relocated to Germany and focused his energies on composition after a spell working for Bavarian Radio and at the Richard Strauss Conservatory. Written in the late 1940s, his Symphony No. 2 blends Central European Impressionism with Second Viennese School influences; the Piano Concerto No. 2 (subtitled 'Fünf Phantasien und phantastische Fuge über ein eigenes Thema') was composed several years later and receives its first commercial recording here.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 48 kHz, 24 bit)
Patkop & Say
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Fazıl Say (piano)
Three years on from their album of music by Janáček, Brahms and Bartók ('as personal and imaginative as any recital could be' - Fanfare), Kopatchinskaja and Say reunite for Szymanowski's Mythes, Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1, and the world premiere recordings of two works by the artists themselves: Say's Lost Screams Sonata and Kopatchinskaja's Unisolo. The Moldovan violinist writes: 'Composing opens up your ears and dispels any sense of awe. I feel freer, and regard my works as living beings whom I’ve been conversing with for my whole life'.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
The Complete Alkan Organ Works, Vol. 2
Joseph Nolan (organ)
The first instalment of Nolan's Alkan odyssey received five stars in The Guardian for his 'death-defying virtuosity', while the recording quality was 'guaranteed to put the swankiest of speaker systems through its paces.' For this second volume, he returns to the restored Stahlhuth–Jann organ of St Martin’s Church, Dudelange for the 13 Prières Op. 64, the first six of the 12 Études pour les pieds seulement, and the Benedictus, Op. 54.
Read David Smith's interview with Joseph Nolan about the project.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Éternité
Grégoire Gerstmans (piano)
This second album from Belgian pianist-composer Grégoire Gerstmans (b.1985) explores the passage of time, drawing on influences including John Cage, Steve Reich, Aphex Twin and visual artist Yves Klein; the centrepiece Ceux qui restent was inspired by the composer's last conversation with a friend who recently died. In a five-star review earlier this week, Vinyl Report enthused that 'the album stands as a work of quiet depth, not through its scale, but through the precision with which it transforms the almost-nothing into a profound and immersive listening experience'.
Available format: Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Vivantes
Katok Ensemble
This album from the French chamber ensemble features the world premiere recording of Belgian composer Patrick Leterme's quintet Racines, Ailes, Brises, which draws inspiration from the natural world and from texts by George Sand, Romain Gary and Vinciane Despret. The programme also includes Ravel's String Quartet and the Adagio sostenuto from Guillaume Lekeu's String Quartet No. 3 in G.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Bella Furia
Shira Patchornik (soprano), CHAARTS Chamber Artists, David Castro-Balbi
The Israeli soprano collected an Opus Klassik Award in Berlin this weekend for this album of rarely-performed eighteenth-century opera arias, including 'Al desio' (written for the Vienna revival of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in 1789), 'Ah ceffaccio d'assassino' and 'Dove sono i bei momenti' from Piccinni's La serva onorata, 'Ah sia già' from Salieri's La scuola de' gelosi, 'Stizzoso, mio stizzoso' from Paisiello's La serva padrona, and 'Non s'innalza' from Haydn's La vera costanza.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Galuppi: L'uomo femina
Eva Zaïcik, Lucile Richardot, Victoire Bunel, Victor Sicard, François Rougier, Anas Séguin, Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre
Premiered at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice in 1762, Galuppi's dramma giocoso centres on two Italians who are shipwrecked on a remote island where women reign supreme and the Princess Cretidea stakes her claim to any man who enters her domain; the story revisits ideas which Galuppi had already explored twelve years earlier in Il mondo alla rovescia. The score was discovered in near-perfect condition in a Lisbon library in 2006; this performance was recorded at Versailles in December 2024, when OperaWire praised French mezzo Eva Zaïcik’s 'warm and captivating tone' as Cretidea and Dumestre's 'evident enthusiasm' for Galuppi's writing.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Hans Werner Henze Edition: Orchestra
Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese, Tonino Battista, Daniele Roccato, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oliver Knussen, Anssi Karttunen et al
Released to mark the centenary of Henze's birth, this set brings together almost all of the recordings of his orchestral music which were made for the WERGO label, some of which were produced under his supervision. The repertoire includes Das Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber - Exercise mit Strawinsky, the Sinfonische Zwischenspiele from the 1952 opera Boulevard Solitude, the Drei sinfonische Etüden, the orchestral fantasia Los Caprichos, Heliogabalus Imperator, and the Concerto for Double Bass (commissioned by Gary Karr in 1966).
Available formats: 4 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 44.1 kHz, 24 bit)
