New Releases

This release is a landmark in the recording history of Denmark’s leading classical label, Danacord Records, as it is their first Super Audio CD (SACD). This fine orchestral recording features the most prominent flautist in Denmark, Thomas Jensen, together with the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra. It is a magnificent recording filled with interesting repertoire from charismatic composers, played with style, class and elegance.

Leading tenor, Rolando Villazon, has personally selected 34 great Verdi tracks, sung by the great names of the present and past, both to celebrate Verdi at 200 and to inspire a new generation with the composer’s great arias, powerful choruses and popular tunes.

The tracklist is framed by two stirring overtures, it includes famous numbers by all the leading singers on DG and Decca (as well as a couple from EMI), including Roberto Alagna, Carlo Bergonzi, Grace Bumbry, Joseph Calleja, José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Luciano Pavorotti, Katia Ricciarelli, Joan Sutherland and BrynTerfel. There are rousing choruses and several extracts from the Requiem too. It’s a splendid 150-minute collection.

The striking cover includes one of Rolando’s inimitable Verdi sketches, and will include a sticker incorporating a photo of the artist. The all-colour booklet has an article by journalist Richard Lawrence which also takes in some quotes from the artist in a recent interview for this release.

Villazón is confident that every excerpt on these discs will make the listener want to hear the complete work. “No other composer creates such an immediate link with the audience. Go to see La traviata: you hear those rhythms, those melodies, that dramatic force, and you are drawn into his world. It doesn’t matter whether you love opera or know nothing about it: it just captures you, it grabs you.” Listening to the numbers from La traviata here, you have to agree.

Neatly enveloped in an O-card, the package contains an enchanting CD (complete with notes) from the halcyon days of The English Concert and Trevor Pinnock: “A Grand Concert of Music” – a rich English Baroque programme including a violin “concerto” (by Geminiani) and a keyboard concerto by Arne, featuring respectively Simon Standage and Trevor Pinnock himself.

Lavish 96-page separate Archiv Catalogue (Compactothèque) – nearly 400 items! – with intro and illustrated with photos of some of the great musicians whose scholarship and interpretative skills made Archiv unique; plus covers of the entire Archiv range.

Items no longer available physically but still obtainable as downloads are specially indicated.

This 10 CD set gathers together recordings that feature the Canadian tenor Leopold Simenau. His appearances at Festivals in Glyndebourne, Aix-en- Provence and Salzburg, and opera houses from Paris to New York, all proved his mastery of the art of song. Leopold died on August 24, 2006.

The celebrated lyric tenor Leopold Simoneau was born near Quebec in Canada, where he later set to work to establish an opera company. He served for a short time as the first Artistic Director of the new Opéra du Québec before moving with his wife Pierette Alarie to teach singing in California. Happily married for over 60 years, the love that united the two singers Alarie and Simoneau found its artistic documentation in many shared recordings, and most of them are to be found on the CDs in this set.

The recordings presented in this 10CD set feature the great British conductor Sir Adrian Boult and come from the period between 1945 and 1956. The orchestras are the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the Philharmonic Promenade, the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia, and the artists include legendary soloists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Friedrich Gulda, Pablo Casals, Annie Fischer and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Much of the music is of British origin with major works by Elgar, Vaughan-Williams, and Holst, but the set also features Boult conducting music by Busoni, Mozart, Paganini, Schumann, and Chopin.

In 1930 the eminent British conductor Sir Adrian Boult was asked by the BBC to form a new orchestra. Under his direction, the BBC Symphony Orchestra soon rose to prominence, and in 1942 Boult was asked to assume responsibility for the BBC Promenade Concerts. He presided over the Proms until 1950.