Future Releases

A Grand Romance celebrates the intimacy of the relationship between pianist and public, with a sampling of finely honed pieces of the Romantic era. Penned by composers who were highly accomplished keyboardists themselves, it represents a genre of pianism unashamed of sentiment, frill and facility, and luxuriating in the expressive sophistication of the instrument and the wooing of the crowd.

This album is a musical path through Baroque music in Northern Italy. It is amazing to discover how much of the landscape and of the territory is present in these pieces; the same landscape and the same territory represented by Guercino and all the painters around him. The music recalls the art and viceversa creating a strong connection between the sound and the sight that in this album is able to let us relive an era. Again, featuring Alena Dantcheva: listen to the Monteverdi…

This project is a collaboration between the two organists Margherita Gianola and Silvio Celeghin with Francesco Fanna, conductor and director at the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, in which large part of Vivaldi’s manuscripts and scores are archived. The CD is a collection of Concertos where the organ is the absolute protagonist as soloist and in an interesting interaction with string instruments. The title of the release is inspired by the two organs of the XVIII century in the Basilica dei Frari in Venice which are exceptionally appropriate for playing Vivaldi’s music. The Callido (1795) is very versatile and enhances the whole sound, while the Piaggia (1732), the only organ in Venice made while Vivaldi was still alive, is elegant, light and full of verve.

A homage to Julian Bream for his 80th birthday and to the music that was created for him. The CD collects some of the most important pieces for guitar of the 20th century performed by Stefano Grondona, who plays three legendary guitars (one of which belonged to Julian Bream himself) made by Jose Romanillos, who has also turned 80. All the compositions have been important milestones in Stefano Grondona’s career and he shows this in his astonishing interpretations. This album contains one of the best versions of Benjamin Britten’s 'Nocturnal' ever recorded. Benjamin Britten was born 100 years ago and 'Nocturnal after John Dowland' was written 50 years ago: this CD is a perpetual celebration.

Recorded at the Martinek Studio, Prague, on November 26, 27, 29 and 30, and December 17–19, 2012. The sixth part of the Bedřich Smetana complete piano works series presents pieces composed in the 1840s, the time of the composer’s intensive studies and the outset of his independent artistic career. Dedicated to various persons (including Kateřina Kolařova, Smetana’s great love and future wife) are the Stammbuchblatter, lovely commemorative album leaves. Some of the pieces (Romance in B flat major, Woodland Feelings and Impressions) were published immediately; others were revised by Smetana and published later. Also dating from this period are the composer’s first larger virtuoso pieces (Allegro capriccioso, Caprice in G minor) and major work, the cycle Six morceaux caracteristiques, Op. 1. Smetana sent the autograph to Franz Liszt, who accepted the dedication with pleasure. The nimble hands of the pianist Jitka Čechova make ring the sheer virtuosity and engrossing poetics of the young Smetana’s piano works.

To mark Libor Pešek’s eightieth birthday, Supraphon presents a representative selection of large orchestral recordings he made from 1981 to 1989. Compositions by Josef Suk, who has occupied a privileged position in Pešek’s career, are featured alongside paramount Impressionist pieces – Debussy’s La mer and Ravel’s Suites from the ballet Daphnis et Chloé. Pešek’s recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and Suk’s lesser-known suite Under the Apple Tree are being released on CD for the very first time.

The album also includes recordings of two concertos – Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with Michaela Fukačová, and Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, with Garrick Ohlsson. Within the illustrious career of Libor Pešek, a great and groundbreaking figure among Czech conductors, the period documented on this CD represents one of his peaks, the time of his most intensive collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, preceding his assuming the post of music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. These digitally remastered recordings bear witness to Pešek’s remarkably nuanced work with the orchestral sound and sense for the great lines of Romantic orchestral scores. A living portrait of a major Czech conductor.

The soprano Martina Janková, a Zurich Opera soloist since 1998, has been a frequent guest of the Salzburg Festival and worked with conductors of such renown as Gardiner, Harnoncourt, Fedoseyev, Herreweghe, Rattle, etc. She also participated in Gardiner’s acclaimed Bach Cantatas project.

On this recording, Janková returns to the Bach repertoire alongside the distinguished Czech Baroque ensemble Collegium 1704, conducted by Václav Luks. Their different purposes (the first being a wedding cantata, the other two sacred works) notwithstanding, the three cantatas featured on the album have something in common: each of them in a way treats one of the possible forms of joy. Bach’s musical world is close to Martina Janková’s sensibility and voice – both in virtuoso coloratura passages (Jauchzet Gott) and fine expressive nuances (Ich habe genug). The live recording further augments the immediate experience with encountering Bach’s beautiful and inimitable music.

André Caplet. Why is he treated differently from certain composers? Why are some entitled to ‘their’ disc, whereas others have to share one?

So it is for Caplet. Quite rare are the discs devoted entirely to him: his Quintet is often paired with Magnard’s, his Suite persane with other dixtuors, his Two Pieces sometimes included in flute-piano recitals, not to mention the quite unknown Légende with saxophone.

Timpani and Initium here present a disc devoted to Caplet’s music, bringing together the works for winds with all their sumptuous colours. For its third disc (following a complete Onslow recording, then Koechlin), the Ensemble Initium is complete here, joined by top-flight collaborators: Laurent Wagschal and the young newcomers, the Ardeo Quartet.

This programme will delight lovers of French music and all those who enjoy discovering new colours performed by an eminent ensemble.

The Czech-born composer Anton Reicha (1770–1836) was an exact contemporary of Beethoven – and his close friend from their mid-teens. The music of each man shows an awareness of what the other was doing: they showed each other their compositions-in-progress. But although Reicha was closely associated with one of the best-known names in western culture, his own music has been grievously neglected: only his woodwind quintets have achieved any currency. Of his vast cycle of almost forty string quartets just one has been recorded before – an omission this ambitious project intends to put right, thereby revealing one of the most inventive and engaging spirits in classical music.

Recorded on 18 and 19 August 2012 in the Auditorio Leon de Greiff of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá.

Luis Carlos Figueroa, born in 1923, is one of the senior figures in Colombian music, much esteemed as composer, pianist and teacher. His works marry spontaneous lyrical charm – perhaps with a French twist from his student days in Paris – with vibrant South American folk influences, thus siting him downstream from Canteloube and Villa-Lobos. His 1986 Piano Concerto, for example, combines rhythms from the Caribbean and the Valle del Cauca around his hometown of Medellin with classical forms and structures, creating a work full of passion and energy. The String Quartet is a first recording; the other works have not been released outside Colombia before.