New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 13th September 2019
Today’s new releases include two contrasting recordings from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with their Music Director Robin Ticciati, a John Adams album from Kent Nagano and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas from Igor Levit, and Mozart piano trios from Barenboim père et fils and their cellist friend Kian Soltani.
Beethoven & Sibelius: Violin Concertos
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati
This first collaboration between Ticciati and Tetzlaff on disc is Gramophone's October Recording of the Month, with Rob Cowan observing that 'both performances sidestep interpretative convention without either offending or displacing their finest rivals'. Tetzlaff has recorded the Beethoven twice before, with Michael Gielen and David Zinman; the latter account prompted The New York Times to describe him as ‘one of the most brilliant and inquisitive artists of the new generation’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
It’s six years since the Russian-German pianist made his solo recording debut with astonishing accounts of the late sonatas, prompting BBC Music Magazine to observe that ‘revelatory experiences like this don’t come often in a lifetime’; in advance of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth next year, he completes the project with a set of recordings which he describes as ‘a conclusion of my past fifteen years’.
Available Formats: 9 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Beethoven: Complete Piano Concertos
Jan Lisiecki (piano/director), Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Following on from the success of his conductorless recording of the Mendelssohn concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra earlier this year, the young Canadian pianist directs the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from the keyboard in anticipation of next year’s Beethoven anniversary; reviewing his recent performance of the cycle in Berlin, Der Tagesspiel described his interpretations as ‘refreshingly spontaneous…yet intellectually perfectly formed’.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Debussy: Nocturnes and Duruflé: Requiem
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Robin Ticciati
Following their accounts of La mer and music by Ravel and Duparc, Ticciati and his Berlin orchestra continue their explorations of French repertoire; Kožená (who was the soloist on their recordings of Ariettes oubliées and Duparc melodies) returns for the Duruflé, which marks the Rundfunkchor Berlin’s first foray into French music under their British conductor.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nagano has championed Adams's music throughout his long career, with a discography including acclaimed recordings of El Niño, The Death of Klinghoffer, Harmonium and the Violin Concerto; these performances of Common Tones in Simple Time, Harmonielehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine were recorded in Montreal in 2017.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Concerto funebre is the centrepiece of Kopatchinskaja’s first album with Camerata Bern, of which she became artistic director last year; the programme also includes Frank Martin’s Polyptique (written for Yehudi Menuhin in 1973), John Zorn’s Kol Nidre, and an arrangement of the Kyrie from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame for violin and strings.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Virtuosismo - Paganini & Vieuxtemps
Ning Feng (violin), Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, Rossen Milanov
Following his ‘technically immaculate and deeply considered’ (BBC Music Magazine) accounts of the Elgar and Finzi concertos on Channel last year, the Chinese violinist pairs Paganini’s Concerto No. 1 with Vieuxtemps’s Fourth Concerto, which he describes as containing ‘one of the most beautiful melodies created during the Romantic period’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Barenboim’s recording of the Mozart Piano Quartets with his son Michael and protégé Soltani (previously principal cellist of Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra) was a Recommended Recording on Radio 3's Building A Library earlier this summer, as well as a Presto Editor’s Choice last August; now they join forces for the complete Piano Trios, recorded live at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin in February.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Song Of Love
William Vann (piano), Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone)
This programme of solo songs and duets features the Rossetti cycle The House of Life (almost always recorded by male voices but sung here by Whately in deference to the piece’s first performer Edith Clegg) as well as fifteen world premiere recordings, including French and German songs and settings of texts by the Irish poet Seumas O'Sullivan.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The third release in the Evensong Live series features canticles by Byrd, Stanford, Parry, Rubbra, Wood and Mathias, and anthems including Finzi’s Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice, Nicholas Maw’s One foot in Eden still, I stand, Judith Weir’s Ascending Into Heaven and Patrick Hadley’s My beloved spake.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Canadian contralto performs a triptych of late nineteenth-century works inspired by the sea: Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Chausson’s Poème de l'amour et de la mer, and the world premiere recording of Victorin Joncières’s ‘ode symphonique’ La mer on four poems by Édouard Guinand, whose work was also set by Chaminade and Debussy.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Rossini: Ricciardo e Zoraide (DVD)
Pretty Yende, Juan Diego Florez, Sergey Romanovsky, Victoria Yarovaya, Nicola Ulivieri, Xabier Anduaga; Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Giacomo Sagripanti, Marshall Pynkoski
Despite its considerable success during the composer’s lifetime, Rossini’s 1818 opera fell off the radar for almost 150 years until the Pesaro Festival revived it in 1990, and last year they mounted a new production to mark the work’s bicentenary and the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death; the Financial Times hailed the ‘radiant and richly expressive’ singing of Yende and the ‘laser-like precision’ of Flórez in the title-roles, and observed that the young Italian conductor Sagripanti ‘extract[s] maximum detail and electricity from Rossini’s novel score’.
Available Format: 2 DVD Videos
Rossini: Ricciardo e Zoraide (Blu-ray)
Pretty Yende, Juan Diego Florez, Sergey Romanovsky, Victoria Yarovaya, Nicola Ulivieri, Xabier Anduaga; Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Giacomo Sagripanti, Marshall Pynkoski
Picture Format: 1080i 16:9
Sound Formats: PCM Stereo
DTS-HD MA 5.1
Available Format: Blu-ray
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
