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Presto News - 4th October 2010Gramophone Awards announced last Friday |
 This year’s Gramophone Awards took place last Friday at London’s Dorchester Hotel. As usual Gramophone put on an excellent show, and there were memorable live performances from Mark Padmore and Joyce DiDonato (the latter accompanied on the piano by Antonio Pappano). All three had winning discs this year and DiDonato also picked up a richly deserved Artist of the Year award - the result of an international, online poll. Another highlight of the day for me was to see pianist Alfred Brendel (who retired from the concert platform last year) there picking up a lifetime achievement award. It is a testimony to the reverence in which the Gramophone Awards are still held that someone who has achieved as much as he has in his lifetime was still clearly quite moved to be collecting such an award. You can read full details of this year’s winners on our awards page, but I’d just like to take the opportunity to mention a few things here in a little more detail.  The Cardinall’s Musick Firstly the big one - Record of the Year - this went to The Cardinall's Musick and Andrew Carwood for their thirteenth and final volume in their Complete Byrd Edition on Hyperion. Recording the compete works of one of England’s greatest composers, William Byrd (c.1540–1623), is a truly monumental achievement, and I think the Record of the Year Award really reflects the success and musical expertise of the whole series rather than just this final volume. This volume though contains some of the composer’s most sublime and original music (drawn in the main from the 1591 Cantiones Sacrae collection), and if you haven’t sampled any of the previous volumes I would strongly suggest starting with this one and working backwards. In fact you don’t currently have much choice in which direction to work through this series as Universal (who own the rights for the first nine volumes) have deleted the first four of them, and don’t currently feel there is enough demand to justify re-pressing them. Hopefully this award will make them reconsider and they’ll become available again before long. After picking up a Gramophone Award for their recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius last year, the Hallé Orchestra under their principal conductor Sir Mark Elder have gone one better by picking up two awards this year: one for the Elgar Violin Concerto with soloist Thomas Zehetmair, and another for a superb performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung - another example of a successful opera recording derived from live concert performances which is increasingly becoming the norm for recording opera. We’ve got a special offer on the Hallé’s recordings at the moment so it is an excellent time to look at these as well as the other things on the label. I’m told that there is a recording of Elgar’s ‘The Kingdom’ due very shortly which promises to be fantastic, and will let you know about that in this weekly newsletter when it appears. Finally I’d just like to mention this year’s Label of the Year, the Scotland-based Linn Records. The second of their two volumes of Mozart Symphonies with the late great Sir Charles Mackerras was just pipped to the orchestral award by one of Sir Charles’ other recordings, Dvorak’s Symphonic Poems on Supraphon. With recent recordings from groups like the Dunedin Consort, the Avison Ensemble and viol group Phantasm (also a runner up this year), soloists like tenor James Gilchrist (new disc out today - see the New Releases section below), and pianist Artur Pizarro, there is much to enjoy on the label and also a particularly good time to browse through their many delights as we’re currently offering 25% off everything on the label.
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 Byrd Edition Volume 13 - Infelix egoGramophone Awards 2010 - Record of the YearThe Cardinall's Musick, Andrew Carwood |
Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk |
New Releases4th October 2010 |
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. |
 Magdalena Kozená: Lettere AmoroseMagdalena Kozená (mezzo soprano), Private Musicke, Pierre PitzlMagdalena Kožená explores the early Italian Baroque music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries with rewarding results. Inspired by the improvisational nature of much of this music, Kožená reveals yet another aspect of her musical personality. Teamed with the six string-instrumentalists and percussion of the acclaimed consort group Private Musicke, Magdalena Kožená delivers an album in a fascinatingly different setting from any of her previous Baroque recordings. |
 James Gilchrist sings Leighton & BrittenJames Gilchrist (tenor) & Anna Tilbrook (piano)Tenor James Gilchrist adds to his widely acclaimed series of albums celebrating British song with this programme by Kenneth Leighton and Benjamin Britten. Alongside pianist Anna Tilbrook, Gilchrist excels in a programme that includes the first modern recording of Leighton’s Earth, Sweet Earth and Britten’s popular and touching song cycle Winter Words. |
 Ravel: Piano Concertos and MiroirsPierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre BoulezRecorded live in Cleveland in February 2010, the Plain Dealer (Cleveland) states after the concerts: “The other incontrovertible star this weekend is pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, soloist in Ravel's two piano concertos. Like Boulez, the peerless nature of his performances, which are being recorded by Deutsche Grammophon, is no surprise”. This release is Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s first concerto album on Deutsche Grammophon. In the opinion of The Independent, “It is hard to imagine a pianist better qualified to play works by Ravel . . . than Pierre-Laurent Aimard.” |
 Franck, Grieg and Janacek - Violin SonatasVadim Repin (violin) & Nikolai Lugansky (piano)Vadim Repin and his pianist partner Nikolai Lugansky have just recorded a compilation of three magnificent but utterly different Romantic violin sonatas. The overtly emotional Franck sonata is the new album’s centrepiece, and also the work that the two artists have played together most often. By contrast, says Vadim Repin, the “Janáček is the most intimate and emotional music you could imagine. Then the Grieg is another substance again. It’s somehow like 19th-century Mozart – very truthful, natural writing. His emotions are really direct reflections.” And about the recording as a whole, Repin exclaims: ”This is a documentary of two people who perform together and love this music.” |
 Erkki-Sven Tüür: StrataNordic Symphony Orchestra, Anu TaliThe album Strata presents large-scale music for orchestral forces from highly regarded Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür – his Sixth Symphony and Concerto for violin and clarinet. It is Tüür’s fifth ECM New Series album with compositions that are, in his words, “abstract dramas in sound, with individual characters and an extremely dynamic chain of events; unfolding in a space that is constantly shifting, expanding and contracting.” |
 Simone Kermes: Colori d'AmoreSimone Kermes, Le Musiche Nove, Claudio OseleSimone Kermes, crowned “The Queen of Baroque” by Opera News, presents her eagerly awaited follow-up album to her multi-award-winning album Lava, which was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine. Colori d'Amore (The Colours Of Love) is a selection of virtuosic baroque arias bound together by the theme of love, almost all of which are world premiere recordings, having been unjustly neglected for centuries. |
 Buxtehude - Chamber Music 1 (Opera Omnia XII)Members of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Ton Koopman (director)Opera Omnia Xll is the latest release in the acclaimed cycle of the complete works of Dieterich Buxtehude featuring the award winning combination of renowned early music specialist Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. It is the first volume to be devoted to the composer’s lesser-known but highly-rewarding chamber music and concentrates on sonatas from manuscript sources. |
 The Italian TenorVittorio Grigolo (tenor)Sony Classical announces the release of the debut recording on the label by the highly-acclaimed young tenor Vittorio Grigolo. Vittorio Grigolo is acknowledged by critics and public alike as the finest exponent of the Italian tenor tradition in a generation, so this album is one of the most eagerly-awaited releases of 2010. |
 BBC Radio 3 CD ReviewSaturday 2nd October 2010 |
Building a Library - Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov |
 First ChoiceRuggero Raimondi (Boris Godunov), Paul Plishka (Pimen), Kenneth Riegel (Shuisky), Nicolai Gedda (Simpleton), Galina Vishneyevskaya (Marina), Catherine Dubosc (Xenia), Matthew Adam Fish (Feodor), Mira Zakai (Nurse), Vyacheslav Poloznov (Grigory), Misha Raitzin (Missail), Lajos Miller (Shchelkalov), Nikita Storozhev (Rangoni) & Romuald Tesarowicz (Varlaam) Oratorio Society of Washington, Choral Arts Society of Washington & National Symphony Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich |
Disc of the Week |
 Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, K620Daniel Behle (Tamino), Marlis Petersen (Pamina), Daniel Schmutzhard (Papageno), Sunhae Im (Papagena), Anna-Kristiina Kaappola (Königin der Nacht), Marcos Fink (Sarastro), RIAS Kammerchor & Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, René Jacobs |
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