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Presto News - 11th May 2009A&R and Kate Royal's Midsummer Night |
 One of the things which I’ve enjoyed discovering since I joined Presto Classical nearly eight years ago is how the record industry works behind the scenes. A lot of it is pretty much as you would imagine with record labels employing different people for things like marketing, press and sales, but one division that I was previously hardly even aware of was the A&R (Artists and Repertoire) division. A&R is a hugely important part of a record label as it is the people who work in that division who find and sign new artists, and are also responsible for working with the artists to decide what repertoire to record and what to put together on their CD releases. At the major labels this might be a small team of people, while at the medium to small labels one or more of the senior staff at the label would more typically do it along with their other roles. It strikes me that making up a good programme for a CD is either quite easy or incredibly difficult. Some works are long enough to take up a whole CD, while others are substantial enough to require only a small ‘filler’. A lot of works are shorter but have a fairly obvious pairing (for example the Mendelssohn and Bruch Violin Concertos, which are often put together).  Hilary Hahn But move outside the main repertoire and it suddenly gets a lot harder. I wonder what went through the mind of Hilary Hahn’s A&R manager when she announced that she wanted to record the rarely performed Schoenberg Violin Concerto. I suspect composers like Berg and Stravinsky were considered first, but would a fairly contemporary programme like that appeal to all Hilary Hahn’s more mainstream fans? In the end they opted for the Sibelius Concerto I suspect mainly on the commercial grounds of it being the most popular concerto that she hadn’t already recorded. Sometimes a disc can be delayed for years by the label trying to think of an appropriate programme. EMI for example recorded the Thomas Adès Violin Concerto nearly two years ago, but they haven’t found anything to put with it yet so it still hasn’t been released on CD.  Kate Royal (stuck in a tree) Finding good selections of songs and arias for singers to record must be a lot of fun, but also very difficult. Unless you are going for a single composer disc or a real popular aria selection you need to come up with a concept to connect the programme together. Kate Royal’s new album ‘Midsummer Night’ for example features songs from operas and operettas about love (both the enjoyment and suffering of), all written since 1900. They have different compositional styles and indeed are in different languages, but they all have the same sort of pensive, emotional and beautiful qualities. Another nice idea with this programme is the mixing of a few well-known arias with some quite rare ones. The Korngold aria from Die tote Stadt is just as beautiful as Dvorak’s Song to the Moon but you don’t hear it very often, while the lovely romance from William Alwyn’s Miss Julie I’ve never heard before. The whole disc is superbly performed by Kate Royal whose beautifully lush voice has the same richness and fullness of tone right through her range. She is brilliantly supported by the Orchestra of the English National Opera under Edward Gardner whose familiarity and understanding of the operatic genre is so vital to accurately portray the characterisation which so many of the composers write into the orchestral parts. It is hugely enjoyable and one of those discs which is very hard to put down. It therefore comes as my recommendation of the week.
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 Schoenberg and Sibelius Violin ConcertosHilary Hahn (violin) |
 Kate Royal – Midsummer NightKate Royal (soprano), Orchestra of the English National Opera & Crouch End Festival Chorus, Edward Gardner |
Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk |
Watch a short preview videoNew Releases11th May 2009 |
This is just the pick of the recent releases. The New Releases and Future Releases pages are always available for browsing all the new and forthcoming releases. |
 Vivaldi: La Fida NinfaLorenzo Regazzo, Veronica Cangemi, Philippe Jaroussky, Sandrine Piau, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Topi Lehtipuu & Sara Mingardo, Ensemble Matheus, Jean-Christophe SpinosiAfter nearly six months without proper UK distribution Naïve have finallly signed a new contract and so the latest Vivaldi offering is now generally available. This new release from Naive is the ninth opera to be featured in the label’s ongoing Vivaldi Edition, a project launched in 2000 with the aim of recording the massive collection of Vivaldi autograph manuscripts preserved today in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria in Turin. |
 Bach, J S: Mass in B minor, BWV232Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Marc MinkowskiLast year, the esteemed conductor Marc Minkowski joined Naïve for a long-term collaboration during which period he will be recording the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart, among others. This new recording of the B minor mass features a stellar line-up of soloists and is likely to quickly establish itself as one of the all time great recordings of the work. |
 Fasch - Concerti and OuvertureZefiroZefiro is one of the most outstanding baroque orchestras, founded in Italy in 1989 by the oboists Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo Grazzi, and the bassoonist Alberto Grazzi, who are still active members of The English Concert, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Il Giardino Armonico. ZEFIRO specialises in repertoire of the 18th and 19th Centuries in which wind instruments are in the foreground, and here have recorded beautiful concertos by German composer Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758). |
 Schubert - Four ImpromptusAndreas Staier (fortepiano Christopher Clarke)Four Impromptus that look towards the sonata model, a sonata entitled 'Fantasie': it would appear that, in the works recorded here, Schubert was trying out all the possibilities of cyclic construction. These opened out before him new formal perspectives that would extend the conventional limits - just two years before his death. Andreas Staier is renowned worldwide for his interpretation of classical and post-classical music on the historical fortepiano. |
 Sonatas & EtudesYuga Wang (piano)Gifted Chinese pianist Yuja Wang debuts on DG’s roster with an album featuring compositions by Chopin, Ligeti, Liszt, and Scriabin. Yuja Wang chooses pieces that, in her judgment, are refreshingly atypical of the customary musical perspectives of these composers. Exceptional artistry, technical perfection, and a rare ability to evoke an uncommonly vivid palette of rich colors from the instrument characterize Yuja Wang’s pianism. |
 Erato Re-issuesAnother batch of bargain re-issuesAnother selection of Erato back catalogue items re-issued at super budget price. Includes recordings from Marie-Claire Alain, Jean Martinon and I Solisti Veneti under Claudio Scimone. They may be old, but there are a few gems in here. |
 BBC Legends5 more important re-issuesAmongst the latest batch of BBC Legends reissues is the great Constantin Silvestri conducting Tchaikovsky 3, Josef Suk playing the Dvorak Violin Concerto, Adrian Boult conducting Vaughan Williams, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert, and Shura Cherkassky playing Schumann's Carneval. |
 Pablo Casals – The Complete Published EMI Recordings 1926-1955Pablo Casals (cello)A 9 CD set including all the legendary cellists recordings for EMI. Not to be missed. |
 BBC Radio 3 CD ReviewSaturday 9th May 2009 |
Building a Library - Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat major, Op. 20 |
 First Choice(coupled with the Piano Sextet)The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center |
Disc of the Week |
 Mendelssohn - Piano Concertos 1 and 2Murray Perahia (piano), Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner (conductor) |
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