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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Neapolitan Flute Concertos, Vol. 2
Carlo Ipata (flute) Auser Musici A second volume of flute concertos from eighteenth-century Naples from period band Auser Musici. Their first album of this repertoire was particularly praised for the impeccably stylish playing of flautist Carlo Ipata, and for the discovery of the music itself, which despite its obscurity is delightfully appealing. The works are placed in their historical context in the booklet note by Stefano Aresi, who writes: ‘To listen to the flute concertos of these composers is to be transported to the atmosphere of everyday music-making in Naples, that of the private concerts in the aristocratic palaces. They give a good idea of the extremely high average quality of the compositions habitually consumed by the cream of Neapolitan society, perfectly representing the taste of an era and the outstanding virtuosity of the performers who were regularly employed there’. “[Ipata's] virtuosity is, as always, exceptional, and there's fine playing from his own period band, Auser Musici. The close recording captures Ipata's occasionally heavy breathing and the sound of his fingers tapping his flute.” The Guardian, 9th May 2013 *** | 
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| |  | Charles Tomlinson Griffes: Piano Music
The American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes’s piano works represent a remarkable musical achievement. Griffes was active as a composer for little more than twelve years, and did not write prolifically, but nevertheless produced pieces of great maturity which are both concise and extraordinarily powerful, showing the contemporary European influences to which he was exposed but also demonstrating a highly individual compositional voice. His Roman Sketches Op 7 contains his most famous work, ‘The White Peacock’—an acknowledged Impressionist masterpiece—while the final movement, ‘Clouds’, clearly heralds the language of modernism. Almost all of Griffes’s piano music is present here, and the composer has never been better served on record than by his compatriot Garrick Ohlsson, who here applies the full force of his interpretive and technical prowess. “There are pieces here that combine the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel with the obsessive thematic working of Scriabin; others, a bit later, that suggest the primitivism of Stravinsky and Prokofiev...as Garrick Ohlsson's superb performances show, Griffes's piano writing is wonderfully fluent” The Guardian, 25th April 2013 **** “Hugely commanding and authoritative; a landmark in every way.” MusicWeb International, 15th May 2013 |
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| |  | Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 17 & 27
Angela Hewitt turns to two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular concertos for her latest album. Together with her frequent collaborators, the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova and brilliant Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, she presents these works in performances which are both elegantly stylish and profoundly felt. This release is completed by a personal reflection on the music by Hewitt herself in the accompanying booklet. “[the Presto of K453] is brilliantly done, anmd this is a brilliant performance all round.” International Record Review, May 2013 “The sound is wonderfully clean and focused, with an ideal balance between Hewitt’s customary Fazioli piano and the orchestra...a Mozart release to cherish.” The Telegraph, 10th May 2013 |
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| |  | York Bowen: The complete works for violin and piano
Young virtuoso Chloë Hanslip and York Bowen specialist Danny Driver present Bowen’s complete works for violin and piano. Many of these works have never been recorded or indeed published before, and have been excavated from the archives by Driver himself. This double album is therefore a valuable resource for admirers of a composer whom Hyperion has done so much to champion through recordings. This body of work includes juvenilia, miniatures (written with an eye to academic performance during Bowen’s years as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, but all impressive enough in quality to be concert works), his two Violin Sonatas, a Suite and a number of single-movement works. All show a superb composer of chamber music, a genuine original with a performer’s ear. “Violinist and pianist on this set do these minor pieces ideally, and full marks to Chloe Hanslip and Danny Drive for neither milking them sentimentally nor condescending to their simplicity by over-exaggeration.” International Record Review, May 2013 “[Hanslip's] playing reminds me of some of the finest and most individual players of the past. There is an elegance and gallantry to her phrasing that cannot be taught or practiced – it's just there...In her performing colleague Danny Driver she has the ideal co-creator of musical magic...this is a superlative pair of discs. Bowen might not be a genius, but if ever a pair of performers were going to persuade me otherwise, this would be the team.” MusicWeb International, 16th May 2013 |
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| |  | Haydn: Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 4 & 11
Marc-André Hamelin has proved himself—in three lauded volumes of Haydn’s piano sonatas—to be a formidable Haydn pianist, combining style, exuberance and dazzling technique with a palpable sense of joy in the music. Now he has recorded the composer’s three most popular concertos. This release is the fruit of a partnership with the award-winning Canadian chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy and their director Bernard Labadie, whose previous recordings for Virgin Classics and other labels have received the highest critical acclaim. “Hamelin and Les Violons du Roy play that gypsy finale [of the D major Concerto] with irresistable verve...If there's an incongruity between the sound of Hamelin's modern piano and that of the period-band that accompanies him, it's one that's easy to get used to...it's hard not to enjoy Hamelin's showmanship and the eloquence of his slow movements is an added bonus.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2013 **** “Hamelin’s songful legato in the F major’s largo cantabile and bravura in the presto finales make the strongest possible cases for these works, and I don’t know a more exhilarating account of the D major — but it ought to be the disc’s climax.” Sunday Times, 21st April 2013 “ Hamelin could probably hum these concertos into a battered plastic kazoo and they’d still sound great. Everything works. There’s the requisite dynamism and energy, coupled with a superhuman lightness of touch...Hyperion’s sound is beyond reproach. Another entry in my provisional "Best of 2013" list.” The Arts Desk, 27th April 2013 “[in the F major] Hamelin weaves an enchanting spell, approaching an almost Mozartian pathos...[in the finale of the D major] he pushes forward without dropping the tempo, heightening the delirium of this whirling gypsy dance. Add to that some unmarked col legno earlier in the same movement for an authentic touch of Hungarian paprika and the result cannot fail to raise a smile.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013 |
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| |  | The Romantic Piano Concerto 59 - Zarzycki & Zelenski
This 59th volume of the Romantic Piano Concerto series features Jonathan Plowright, whose brilliant and utterly idiomatic performances of Romantic Polish piano music have confirmed him as a master of this repertoire. Here he collaborates with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Lukasz Borowicz to perform three very obscure but fascinating works. The music of Zelenski has already been championed by Plowright in a disc of Polish chamber music; now he performs his Piano Concerto in E flat major, which was written in 1903 and dedicated to the young Ignacy Friedman, who gave the premiere the following year. A Piano Concerto in A flat major by Aleksander Zarzycki is also included, plus his barnstorming Grande Polonaise, an outrageous masterpiece which is unknown even in specialist piano circles. “Zelenski's lyrically emotional concerto shows the influence of Tchaikovsky, Franck and Grieg and offers Plowright plenty of opportunities to display his formidable talent...Zarzycki raises traditional dance forms to virtuosic level in his engaging concerto” The Observer, 7th April 2013 “[the Zelenski] is an imposing piece: its technical challenges are exhilaratingly dispatched by Jonathan Plowright, while no detail of its dark Slavonic colouring escapes the attention of the conductor Lukasz Borowicz” BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 **** “[Plowright] has that rare ability to turn second-rate music into masterpieces...[Borowicz] catches spot-on every tricky twist and turn and inspires the BBC Scottish players in their cracking accompaniment. We'll be hearing a lot more of him.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2013 |
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| |  | R. Strauss: Don Quixote & Till Eulenspiegel
Strauss’s ‘Fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character’, as Don Quixote is subtitled, is one of the composer’s most popular tone poems, principally because of the beautifully drawn central characters of the Don (performed by a solo cellist) and Sancho Panza (viola). These roles are luxuriously cast in this new recording, being taken by Hyperion artists Alban Gerhardt and Lawrence Power. The merry tale of Till Eulenspiegel completes this release. The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, the very orchestra which gave the premieres of both works in the 1890s, is conducted by Markus Stenz, who has held the position of Principal Conductor since 2003. He visited China with the orchestra in early 2008 and conducted their first ever BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in August 2008. In September 2010 he returned to China with the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Opera of Cologne to conduct the first ever production of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ in Shanghai. Among other posts he is Chief Guest Conductor of the Hallé. “the playing here is first-rate, and Alban Gerhardt and Lawrence Power are vivid soloists.” Sunday Times, 7th April 2013 “Stenz gets the proportions exactly right. He plunges us into the delirium of the melancholy hero's addled brain with a clarity pointing forward to Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony...Adventurous Alban Gerhardt is vivid as Quixote takes several tumbles...The peerless viola player Laurence Power is luxury casting as an equally human Sancho Panza. No stars needed to be drafted in for one of the best Till Eulenspiegels on disc...an irrepressible performance.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2013 ***** “Gerhardt and Power convey the complex nature of the relationship between the two...Stenz's conducting is all about the cumulative impact of small gestures rather than grand statements. We're conscious throughout of the classical form at the work's heart, though Stenz is also marvellous when it comes to those astonishing moments when the Don's fantasies assume a transcendent reality greater than anything on earth. It's nigh-on perfect.” The Guardian, 11th April 2013 ***** “[Power and Gerhardt are] both magnificent, and neither distorts the work's shape with excessive ego displays. This is a sublime, idiomatically phrased performance, given by the very orchestra which premiered the work. So you’d expect something special. The moments of quiet rapture are divine...The high points are too numerous to list” The Arts Desk, 13th April 2013 “an excellent account of Don Quixote. The catalogue isn’t exactly short of fine recordings but this one competes with the best. Gerhardt and Power are marvellous principals but they manage to project their characters splendidly while giving us a sense also that they are primus inter pares, as Strauss intended.” MusicWeb International, 22nd April 2013 “pictorial points are in general well made; the scenes are colourfully set; and both Gerhardt and Power are such fine, sensitive and expressive musicians that they encapsulate the varied moods of their protagonists poignantly and purposefully. Markus Stenz attacks Till Eulenspiegel with vigour” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013  BBC Music Magazine
Disc of the month - May 2013 |
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| |  | Palestrina: Missa Ad coenam Agni & Eastertide motets
The Brabant Ensemble, better known for uncovering works by forgotten composers such as Dominique de Phinot, turns to a giant of the Renaissance—perhaps the most celebrated name of the period. Yet within Palestrina’s huge output there are many hidden gems, lacking both recordings and modern performing editions, and it is from among these that the ensemble’s director Stephen Rice has chosen the repertoire for this album. A Mass—Missa Ad coenam Agni, from Palestrina’s first book of Mass-settings—is included, plus antiphons, motets and five Eastertide Offertories. Each work is, as Stephen Rice states in his typically informative booklet notes, ‘a finely crafted addition to the liturgy’. The Brabant Ensemble brings a matchless blend of musicianship, scholarship and sensitive singing to this glorious music. “[in the Regina coeli] the singers enliven the texture with their nuanced renderings of the marvellous contrapuntal connections, and the recording make the most of the double-choir effects in the final section.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2013 **** “The Brabants seem very much at home here” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013 “This disc might be renamed 100 Ways to Sing Alleluia, such is the celebratory nature of this collection of Eastertide offertories, antiphons and motets...The spirited Surrexit pastor bonus, its accompanying antiphon Regina caeli and the gradual Haec dies are sung with a full-voiced, beefy intensity that lifts the music away from mere polite polyphony and gives it a really exciting energy” The Observer, 31st March 2013 |
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‘Layton has directed this annual St John Passion for several seasons now. His readings, which are becoming ever more dramatic and daring, have a raw intensity. It was easy to see why these concerts have become one of the highlights in London’s musical calendar’ (The Guardian) Polyphony and Stephen Layton present their celebrated performance of Bach’s most dramatic masterpiece. Accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a starry team of soloists, Layton directs a vivid account, the excitement of the narrative drama contrasting with heartbreaking moments of reflection. In Ian Bostridge, we have the most iconic Evangelist of the last twenty years; an artist who is an incomparable communicator, a singer of technical brilliance, and an impassioned, experienced interpreter of Bach’s music. “[Bostridge is] a magnificent Evangelist though one aspect of his approach may not be to all tastes. He is highly expressive at all times and there are several occasions where some may feel he overdoes the expressiveness..Polyphony show vividly just what can be achieved in Bach singing by a fairly small professional choir, especially in terms of such things as flexibility, attack and agility...This desirable new recording deserves a place in the front rank.” MusicWeb International, February 2013 “Layton has honed his preferred version, but only aficionados will notice or mind. Concentrate instead on the purity of sound, the emotionally expressive yet restrained performance by all and the impeccable attention to text of the soloists. Ian Bostridge (Evangelist) lives every word of the narration but never over dramatises. Countertenor Iestyn Davies's almost disembodied account of Es ist vollbracht! (It is finished!) is unforgettable.” The Observer, 3rd March 2013 “the choral singing is wonderfully pure, buoyant and transparent...Ian Bostridge’s Evangelist, mannered and occasionally stretched but full of “narrative” character, dominates Layton’s performance” Financial Times, 9th March 2013 *** “when Bach’s goal is mellifluous comfort, as in the final chorus, Ruht wohl, Polyphony wins hands down.” The Times, 15th March 2013 **** “this new recording's credentials border on the unassailable...Layton's pacing is compelling - there's no mistaking the gambling fever as the soldiers cast lots for Christ's garment...[Neal Davies] reserves a melting tenderness for the utterances from the cross. It's crowned by Iestyn Davies's sublime account of 'Es ist vollbracht'...Both Carolyn Sampson's arias are priceless.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 **** “this St John Passion brings to the fore the traits of style and taste that are distinguished hallmarks of Layton and the forces he gathers around him...Bostridge is the tenor Evangelist, eloquent, pure of tone, fluent and strong in communicating the import of the German narrative...The choir sings with a well-rounded sound, firm accents and with diction that brings the text crisply to life” The Telegraph, 22nd March 2013 ***** “about as state-of-the-art a Bach Passion recording as you'll hear...Take as read the urgency, clarity, balance and delamatory unanimity of the chorus...Layton's reality is about cultivating the focus of each sentiment with supreme corporate executancy...Bostridge is the master story-teller who surveys all about him.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013 |
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| |  | Mendelssohn: The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 1
Howard Shelley is acclaimed as the living master of early Romantic piano music. So much of this music was ignored throughout the twentieth century that there is still a sense of discovery at each new recording. Shelley here presents the first instalment of a six-volume set of Mendelssohn’s complete solo piano music—perhaps the least well-known part of the composer’s repertoire. Mendelssohn composed or began nearly two hundred works for piano. Nevertheless, he saw only about seventy through the press, released in seventeen opera from the Capriccio Op 5 (1825) to the sixth volume of the Lieder ohne Worte Op 67 (1845). Some twenty-five additional pieces appeared posthumously in eleven additional opera. The remainder, whether fully drafted or fragmentary, were left to his musical estate or have disappeared. Volume 1 includes Opp 5, 6, and 7, the first three piano compositions Mendelssohn published between 1825 and 1827, as well as Op 19b, the first volume of his Lieder ohne Worte, released in 1832. “it's good to see Howard Shelley embarking on a six-volume reappraisal of these works, so often seen as lacking the depth of Chopin and the fire of Liszt. Fans of fireworks won't be disappointed though...With playing of this quality this is going to be a series to treasure.” The Observer, 24th February 2013 “Technically, this is a tremendous disc. All the evidence tells us that Mendelssohn was something of a speed merchant and when...he asks for Presto, Shelley takes him at his word, with a fleetness and control that command admiration, not to mention envy...I particularly like the sparsity of his pedalling, leaving the composer's lines to do their own work” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 *** “A reassessment of what has hitherto been one of the most undervalued areas of the composer’s output” Financial Times, 30th March 2013 “Here, once more, is that immaculate, lightly pedalled brilliance, unfaltering stylistic assurance, warmth and flexibility. Few pianists could do more for music that too often suggests a composer going through predictable paces...Hyperion's sound and presentation complement Shelley's admirable performances.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2013 |
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Gramophone Magazine