New Releases

The great Elisabeth Grümmer ranks as one of the most outstanding German sopranos of the 20th century, an artist whose romantic sensitivity was often lauded. The “Great Singers Live” series presents this artist as a fascinating Mozart interpreter accompanied by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester. The CD was previously only available as part of the “Great Singers Live” box, and it is now being released as a single CD.

For the first time as a single CD with recordings by Elisabeth Grümmer.

Recordings from the years 1956, 1960 and 1962.

In celebration of Ursula Mamlok’s 90th Birthday, this release is in cooperation with Deutschlandrundfunk.

The featured music on this recording is the first recorded performance of the Ives’s ‘Concord Sonata’ (the John Kirkpatrick final edition).

In 2012, David Lang spent so much time racking up awards — from Carnegie Hall’s 2013-14 Debs Composer’s Chair to Musical America’s Composer of the Year — that it’s a wonder he was able to wrangle a project of the size and scope of death speaks. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Stanford Lively Arts to go on a program with his piece the little match girl passion, death speaks draws its initial inspiration from the work of Schubert — specifically the song “Death and the Maiden.”

As Lang describes it, “I went alphabetically in the German through every single Schubert song text (thank you, internet!) and compiled every instance of when the dead sent a message to the living. All told, I have used excerpts from 32 songs, translating them very roughly and trimming them in the same way that I adjusted the Bach texts in the little match girl passion.”

For the next step in the process, Lang sought to recruit an ensemble of successful indie composer/performers who had training in classical music, and invite them back into the fold. “I asked rock musicians Bryce Dessner (The National), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) to join me, and we added Nico Muhly. He’s not someone who left classical music, but he’s known and welcome in many musical environments. All these musicians are composers, they can write all the music they need themselves, and it is a tremendous honor for me to ask them to spend some of their talent on my music.”

As a companion to the five-part “death speaks,” Lang also composed “depart,” the second piece on the CD. Featuring four solo vocalists with Maya Beiser on cello, the music offers a life-affirming meditative ambience intended to help family members deal with the death of a loved one. The piece currently plays as part of a permanent installation at a hospital morgue in France (for more information, visit: radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/jan/29/salle-des-departs).

This is an exciting new release featuring one of the most highly regarded lyrical tenors of today’s opera world. Vargas’s interpretations of Mozart, Bellini and Donizetti are celebrated throughout the world. He rose to considerable fame deputising for Pavarotti in a New York Metropolitan production of Lucia di Lammermoor.

In recent years Vargas has turned to French repertoire (Gounod, Massenet) and has also devoted himself to Puccini and Verdi operas. Some of these arias he has recorded here for the first time.

Toyohiko Satoh, one of the most important and influential lute players of the last century, plays on this recording the largely unknown late works of French baroque composer and lutenist Robert De Visée, guitar teacher to the King Luis XIV.

Toyohiko Satoh plays on an original lute made by Laurentius Greiff in 1610, which gives this recording a very distinct sound and atmosphere.

DE VISÈE is a tribute to an old lute master of the Baroque by an old lute master of today, played on one of the most precious, rare and soulful instruments available for this repertoire.

The Japanese violinist Keiko Yamaguchi plays on her debut solo album a selection of sonatas for violin and guitar from the “Centone di Sonate per Violino e Chitarra” of Niccolò Paganini.

Accompanied by guitarist Rosario Conte on a 19th C. romantic guitar, she gives Paganini’s music a special and intimate touch. This music was not intented to be performed on big stages but rather for private amusement and relaxation. As Rosario Conte puts in in the liner notes: “It is Paganini’s chamber music which shows us his glowing, enthusiastic, and yet humble soul. It relates to us the close relationship between folk music and the Italian belcanto tradition, and it tells us of the tiny world into which Paganini was born, of his city, Genoa, with its narrow streets and alleys branching out between the mountains and the sea.“