New Releases

Not only violinists are eternally grateful to Antonio Vivaldi for the sheer abundance of concert works he bequeathed. The instrument he wrote for with the second greatest frequency is the bassoon (!), for which he created about forty concertos. Two of the most celebrated bookend Václav Vonášek’s debut recording and are supplemented by pieces by other 18th-century masters, J. S. Bach, C. P. E. Bach and G. F. Handel. Vonášek has primarily arranged for the bassoon compositions intended for the flute, as was customary in the Baroque period. They demonstrate the soloist’s exceptional qualities, for which he has garnered a number of accolades – first prizes at the International Double Reed Society competition (Melbourne, 2004) and the Prague Spring international competition (2009), third prize at the ARD Competition in Munich (2008). Václav Vonášek, accompanied by the distinguished young ensemble Barocco sempre giovane, makes the bassoon sing, unleashes a tempest and conjures up the dreamy atmosphere of the night...

The bassoon in the hands of a true master – virtuosic, colourful, enchanting.

The “Earth Requiem” is a gigantic work performed and recorded in Beijing in May 2011 in remembrance of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

This is the first Chinese Requiem ever composed

This massive work by renowned Chinese composer Guan Xia is scored for 100 instrumentalists, a choir of 150 singers, an organ and 4 vocal soloists.

The well-established China National Symphony Orchestra invited the legendary French conductor Michel Plasson, who has long had a close association with EMI Classics, to work on the project. This partnership between West and East gives the recording a universal breadth as well as an overarching theme: the Earth. The emotional strength of the work is empowered by its gargantuan scale.

A concert and press conference will be held in May 2013 in Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts to mark the 5th anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquake.

Vincent Peirani and François Salque, coming from two very different environments and musical traditions, have gradually developed languages and pathways of their own, involving written and improvised music as well as experimentations, from one concert to another. Their first disc, Est, was devoted to the traditional music of central Europe. This time their guiding thread is the music of South America, and more especially the universe of Astor Piazzolla. Their two sonorities, as magnificent as they are different, intertwine and interlace amid the melodic and rhythmic undulations of the pieces, sometimes adapted, sometimes created by Vincent Peirani, Jocelyn Mienniel, and Tomás Gubitsch.

This recording of Busoni’s Arlecchino features performances from Gester, Malbin, Wallace, Evans, Ollendorf, Dickie and is taken from a Glyndebourne concert from 12th June 1954, conducted by Sir John Pritchard.

Recorded live on 4th December 1960

Trio Hochelaga has become interested in the Swiss composer and conductor Ernest Alder (1853-1904). Now a forgotten figure in the history of music, Alder was once considered “a distinguished musician, known especially for his many clever arrangements for string quartets”. He wrote graceful musique de salon for piano, as well as choral and orchestral works, but it is as an arranger – especially of Romantic operas –that he is being rediscovered today. The trio arrangements on this disc are of arias from classic 19th-century French operas.

“A whole lot of beauty in a compact form”: such was the verdict of Theodor Billroth, the dedicatee of the first two quartets by Johannes Brahms. The members of the Gürzenich Quartet accomplish the artistic feat of conveying this beauty in sound without obliging the public – as Billroth had recommended – to prepare for the listening experience with the score and at the piano.

Late in the 1840s, Schumann entered a chamber music phase. It was, it is said, motivated partly by financial reasons – creating a body of chamber works that could be played by talented amateurs in their own homes. Many of the works on this disc date from 1849. Significantly, for collectors, one of these – the Andante and Variations – receives its first release on CD and marks Vladimir Ashkenazy’s first recording of chamber music for Decca. The same sessions also included duo piano recordings with Malcolm Frager, from which the Study in Canon Form emanates. Other notable duo collaborations on this disc include Rostropovich and Britten (Fünf Stücke im Volkston), Holliger and Brendel (Drei Romanzen, Abendlied) and Ashkenazy with Tuckwell in the 1974 (Adagio and Allegro) and with Franklin Cohen in 1990 (Fantasiestücke).

Eloquences exhumes a rare – and the only recording – by the Boskovsky Quartet, that of Dvorák’s String Quartet, Op. 51. Both performances on this disc are led by the Vienna Philharmonic concertmaster Willi Boskovsky. The Op. 51 is one of Dvorak’s most masterly essays in the quartet genre while the Op. 81 Quintet (in a classic recording with pianist Sir Clifford Curzon)brims over with melodic inspiration. This is the first release on CD of the Op. 51 Quartet. The extensive documentation by Tully Potter outlines not only the history of the music but also the evolution of the Boskovksy and Vienna Philharmonic Quartets.