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Special offer. Michael Tippett: New Year
Rhian Lois (Jo Ann), Ross Ramgobin (Donny), Susan Bickley (Nan), Roland Wood (Merlin), Robert Murray (Pelegrin), Rachel Nicholls (Regan), Alan Oke (The Presenter)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
Awards:
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Gramophone Magazine, May 2025, Editor's Choice
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Presto Recordings of the Year, Winner 2025, World Premiere Recording (Rediscovery)
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Gramophone Awards, 2025 Finalists, Opera
the tautness of the score more than makes up for the loose weave of the narrative. Fostered teenager Donny’s identity crisis is represented by syncopated lines and a guitar part influenced by...
Special offer. Michael Tippett: New Year
Rhian Lois (Jo Ann), Ross Ramgobin (Donny), Susan Bickley (Nan), Roland Wood (Merlin), Robert Murray (Pelegrin), Rachel Nicholls (Regan), Alan Oke (The Presenter)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Gramophone Magazine, May 2025, Editor's Choice
-
Presto Recordings of the Year, Winner 2025, World Premiere Recording (Rediscovery)
-
Gramophone Awards, 2025 Finalists, Opera
the tautness of the score more than makes up for the loose weave of the narrative. Fostered teenager Donny’s identity crisis is represented by syncopated lines and a guitar part influenced by...
About
This is the first commercial recording of Michael Tippett's opera New Year, featuring a stellar cast, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. This major 2-disc release was recorded in Glasgow in April 2024 ahead of the live performance given with stage director Victoria Newlyn.
Described by Tippett's acclaimed biographer, Oliver Soden, as the recording that fills a gaping hole in the history of British opera, providing the missing link between Benjamin Britten and Mark-Anthony Turnage, New Year is a space-aged fairytale opera that moves between two worlds of 'Somewhere and Today' and 'Nowhere and Tomorrow'.
Two worlds collide in Tippett's New Year as a visitor from the future ('Nowhere Tomorrow') helps the central reclusive character escape from their personal fears and fantasies and embrace the frightening urban realities of 'Somewhere Today'. The cast features: soprano Rhian Lois as Jo Ann, a trainee children's doctor, baritone Ross Ramgobin as Donny, her young brother; mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley as Nan, their foster mother; baritone Roland Wood as Merlin, the computer wizard; tenor Robert Murray as Pelegrin, the space pilot; soprano Rachel Nicholls as Regan, their boss; and tenor Alan Oke as the Presenter.
Contents and tracklist
Spotlight on this release
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Contemporary Music Round-Up - Spring 2025
11th Jun 2025
In this round-up of contemporary releases from the first months of 2025, we look at the keyboard through new eyes, take to the stage for twenty-first-century opera suites, encounter exciting piano concertos for the first time, and hear the viola in a whole new light.
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Martyn Brabbins on Michael Tippett's New Year
12th Mar 2025
The conductor discusses the world premiere recording of Tippett's final opera, a 'space-aged fairytale' from 1989 which centres on a troubled child psychologist's transformative encounter with time-travellers from the future.
Awards and reviews
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Gramophone MagazineMay 2025Editor's Choice
April 2025
the tautness of the score more than makes up for the loose weave of the narrative. Fostered teenager Donny’s identity crisis is represented by syncopated lines and a guitar part influenced by contemporary ska. Baritone Ross Ramgobin handles the purposeful pastiche well; as the Presenter, Alan Oke’s tenor is the glue that holds everything together.
12th March 2025
Electric guitars and saxophones add piquancy to an eclectic score, in which opera embraces jazz and rock. Magical interludes, sometimes involving otherworldly electronics, conjure changes of time and space. This fine recording captures all of that with clarity and features a fine cast...a previously unrecorded Tippett opera is an important event. NMC has risen superbly to the occasion.
May 2025
With such a kaleidoscopic score to capture – in instrumental, vocal and electronic terms – the very feat of recording all its multifarious layers so transparently is triumphantly achieved by producer Andrew Keener and engineer Dave Rowell...If I had stars to award, I would give all five in glowing gold!
Martyn Brabbins’ Hyperion series of Tippett symphonies was stunning and a worthy successor to the Hickox records. Here in this first recording of New Year, he has delivered another document to enhance the legacy of the great man. The notes in this issue contain one of the best essays of its type I have ever read.
12th March 2025
Jazz, ska, blues, quaint electronica, vocal flights suggesting strangulated Monteverdi: anything goes. But the conductor, Martyn Brabbins, still maintains an impressively firm grip, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra vividly highlight the imaginative orchestral textures encountered en route...Flaws and all, this is an important recording of a significant work. I’m glad it exists.
