New Releases

The three CDs presented here showcase the vocal talents of the great soprano Mirella Freni in her most successful stage roles. Pride of place naturally goes to Mimì (La Bohème), closely followed by Liù (Turandot), Micaëla (Carmen) and Violetta (La Traviata), but there are also parts like Butterfly, which she never sang on stage, and interesting recordings from the early years of her international career.

Even the normally reserved Herbert von Karajan grew ecstatic when Mirella Freni was the topic of conversation. His high opinion of her was surpassed, nevertheless, by the world elite of opera critics who spoke of the “golden rain” that her voice poured out over her listeners. Her unique voice and her consummate vocal technique put Mirella Freni in a class of her own among 20th century sopranos.

The debut album from South Korean pianist Jingsang Lee features little heard music - the Piano Sonata No 1 and Three Caprices - by Ferdinand Hiller (1811- 1885) alongside popular repertoire by Mendelssohn and Chopin. What makes this double CD especially unusual and attractive is that it pairs a studio recording of the programme performed on a modern Steinway grand piano with a live recital recording of all the same pieces played on three period Steinway pianos dating broadly from the years when the composers were active.

Jinsang Lee first performed this recital under the title ‘Music Making Among Friends’, an imaginary soirée involving three Romantic composers who had become very good friends.

The recording makes no pretence at historical authenticity - there’s no record of what the three young men may have played at their meetings in Paris and in Germany, and Hiller’s First Sonata was published in 1852, after the deaths of both Chopin and Mendelssohn - but it ponders on each composer performing their own music for each other’s enjoyment.

Born in 1981 in Seoul, Jingsang Lee was the first prize winner of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition in 2008, a triennial event organized by the Chopin Society of Hong Kong. Lee found Hiller’s music in the library of the Hochschule für Musik Köln where he was studying - the composer founded that august institution in 1850. Hiller’s compositions may be rarely performed nowadays but they are robust, musical and a delight to listen to.

The legendary recording is now back on the market in a splendid state of the Art re-mastering. The resultant sound is superb! A double CD.

Almost unknown until a few years ago, Berlin composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch has become more familiar since Notturna began recording a series of his Sonata da quadro on the ATMA label. Janitsch was very active as a composer and contraviolonist at the court of Prussia since 1736, and left over 40 quadro sonatas which display the composer’s complete mastery of counterpoint.

R. Murray Schafer’s quartets have featured prominently in the repertoire of the Molinari Quartet since its establishment in 1997. On numerous occasions the Molinari Quartet has played several quartets by Schafer in the same concert. Played this way, as if each individual quartet was actually a single movement of a very long mega quartet, the cyclic form of the overall work becomes eloquently clear.

David Griffiths is well known as an operatic/oratorio soloist and recitalist. He has performed in recital and oratorio in Great Britain and the USA. His extensive repertoire includes a significant amount of European artsong.

This release features a cycle of songs, which represents a spiritual journey and written at a time of happiness, newly married with a baby son.

Arapātiki was commissioned by Stephen de Pledge as one of a series of landscape preludes, receiving its first performance at the Wigmore Hall, London. The translation of this piece means ‘the path of the flounder’ which refers to the advance and retreat of the tide. The main work on this disc is Camelot, a setting of a sequence of poems by Glen Colquhoun featuring voice, piano and bassoon.

Composer Otto Ketting has to date composed six symphonies, and Attacca presents his Symphony No 6 and his Chamber Symphony on this new recording. Performed by the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and conducted by James Gaffigan, his music is reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, with echoes of his heroes, Bruckner and Schoenberg, a life-long inspiration for Ketting.

Entirely recorded live at the iconic Sydney Opera House, La Passion will allow music lovers to discover Gypsy supernatural violinist Roby Lakatos in an all new program including never previously recorded pieces such as Meadowlands (Songs of the Plains), the Flight of the Bumblebee, Valse Triste, Oblivion, Chiquilin, Those Were the Days, Du Schwarzer Zigeuner and many more gems new to Roby’s discography.

The second CD is devoted to the most famous bit of Roby’s repertoire with such beloved pieces as Two Guitars, Fire Dance, Black Eyes (Ochi Chornyje), Brahms Hungarian Dance No 5, Monti’s Csardas… This album also features a phenomenal L’Alouette (The Lark) lasting more than twelve minutes and catching Roby Lakatos in a jubilatory improvisation. This double Hybrid SACD Surround recording will furthermore allow many listeners to discover an all rejuvenated Ensemble featuring an amazing array of young Hungarian musicians aged from only 19 to 25!

La Passion captures the unique energy that emanates from Roby Lakatos’ live performances. This double album constitutes a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in a world marked by musical freedom, warmth, matchless virtuosity and surprising repertoire ideas with long forgotten melodies set in new versions.

On ‘Sound Waves’, Alexandra Silocea immerses herself in the aqueous sonorities of some of the great pianistic composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Schubert, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, plus a world-premiere recording of a work commissioned by young Norwegian composer Martin Romberg.

Alexandra Silocea made something of a splash with her debut recording on AVIE of the first five Piano Sonatas by Prokofiev (AV2183), which “I don't recall having heard being played better by anyone”, according to International Record Review. For her follow up she immerses herself in the aqueous sonorities of some of the great pianistic composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The rippling stream in Schubert’s ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ from the song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin is faithfully reproduced for solo keyboard by Liszt whose own, grander Jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este evokes a fountain in the gardens of a Tivoli villa. In Reflets dans l'eau Debussy subtly interplays watery reflections, both melodic and rhythmic, whilst Ravel, like Liszt, celebrates a fountain, this one in Versailles, in Jeux d'eau. These and other water-inspired works flow through Alexandra’s second recording, ‘Sound Waves’. She adds a distinctive stamp with a commission by the young Norwegian composer, Martin Romberg, Eärendil, meaning “lover of the sea” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s elven language of Quenya.