Korngold: Glück, das mir verbleib 'Marietta's Lied' (from Die Tote Stadt)

Best-selling Scottish virtuoso Nicola Benedetti moves dramatically from the 18th-century world of Italia to the 20th-century world of cinema.

As a long-time champion of the lush Violin Concerto by the great stage and screen composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Nicola Benedetti has chosen to build a programme around his late Romantic concerto masterpiece.

This unique collection of violin classics, written specifically for the movies, includes the poignant lament from Schindler’s List.

Dmitri Shostakovich, recognised as the Soviet Union’s greatest film composer, is represented by the beloved Gadfly Romance, as well as the similarly lyrical Andante from the film The Counterplan

The contemporary British cinema is represented by the haunting main theme and specially-composed Fantasy for Violin & Orchestra from the 2004 hit Ladies in Lavender

The Art of Renée Fleming brings together 18 defining tracks spanning Renée’s finest Decca recordings, including favorite arias by Puccini, Handel and Gershwin and duets with Bryn Terfel and Plácido Domingo. Four special bonus tracks reflect Renée’s prominence beyond classical repertoire with two Broadway classics, Amazing Grace - which she memorably sang at the site of the World Trade Centre and a brand new version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

An innovative debut recording from EMI’s new signing, Tine Thing Helseth, in which Tine takes on the mantle of story teller through her interpretation and repertoire curation.

This collection of songs transcribed for trumpet includes music by Strauss, Sibelius, Ravel, Canteloube and Weill, and is anchored by Grieg’s Haugtussa song-cycle. The recording is with orchestra and piano accompaniment.

Tine is 23 with a refreshingly focused and straightforward approach to making music. She is a unique artist with several facets - classical soloist, ensemble leader and jazz musician – and equally at home with each.

Tine Thing Helseth, born in 1987, started to play trumpet at the age of 7, and is already one of the leading trumpet soloists of her generation. Already in her solo career, Helseth has appeared with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, all the major Norwegian orchestras and further afield with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

Klaus Florian Vogt is Bayreuth´s leading tenor – he has a unique voice, perfect technique and last but not least the perfect look for a leading man in the works of Wagner.

He had a triumphant breakthrough success as "Lohengrin" at the world famous Bayreuth Wagner festival in the Summer of 2011. Major media acclaimed his singing as "the third wonder of Bayreuth" and the "...best Lohengrin ever".

Klaus Florian Vogt sings in all major opera houses of the world. In 2012, he will star in new productions in Tokyo (Lohengrin), Munich (Valkyrie) and Barcelona (Florentine Tragedy). He will also feature in roles at Bayreuth.

Helden ("Heroes") is Vogt´s first album for Sony Classical, where he is exclusively signed, and is his first recital recording. The CD shows major pieces linked with him, of course Wagner and the famous "Grahlserzählung" in Lohengrin, but there are also beautiful arias by Weber, Flotow, Korngold and Lortzing – and last not least also by Mozart.

Famed for its divine decadence, explosive politics, rampant inflation and feverish creativity. Germany’s Weimar Republic – born in the wake of World War I – ended in 1933 with Hitler’s seizure of power.

Nothing is more evocative of this tumultuous ear than Kurt Weill’s piquant, jazzy score setting the iconoclastic texts of Bertolt Brecht. Putting them graphically in context are works by other musical luminaries of the era: lust Korngold, purposeful Hindemith, sensitive Berg and revolutionary Schoenberg.

The glamorous soprano Kiri Te Kanawa was born in 1944 in Gisborne, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. After winning a number of major vocal competitions in Australia, she came to London in 1966 to study singing at the London Opera Centre, where she trained for three years. Then in 1970 she was accepted by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden as a junior member of the company. Her big break came in 1971, when she was chosen to sing the Countess in a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.. It was something of a gamble for the Covent Garden management to cast an inexperienced singer in such an important role, but on the opening night Kiri’s performance stole the show.

After the Covent Garden Nozze di Figaro, an international career was assured. With a carefully chosen repertoire that included the principal soprano roles of Mozart, as well as a number of Verdi, Puccini and Richard Strauss heroines, Kiri went on to triumph in the major opera houses of the world. She first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1979 and became a regular and much-loved performer at Glyndebourne, a venue for which she has a particularly strong affection, and in 1981 Kiri was chosen to sing at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral, an event seen by a world-wide television audience estimated at more than 600 million people

Not surprisingly, her vibrant but creamy voice, together with her attractive stage presence, made her an ideal interpreter of the main Richard Strauss roles, and it was not long before she was singing the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, a part with which she scored a particular success. After a number of popular Italian and French arias, Kiriis heard in this programme in the Marschallin's Act I monologue, 'Da geht er hin', as well as in arias from several other German operas, including Wagner's Tannhäuser, Der Freischutz by Weber and Korngold's unjustly neglected romantic masterpiece Die tote Stadt. As a brief reminder of Kiri's achievements on the concert stage, the first CD closes with three orchestral songs by the French composers Ravel and Duparc, all of which show off the lustrous beauty of her voice to full advantage.

In addition to opera and so-called serious music however, Kiri is also a great enthusiast for the lighter repertoire, including folk music and the songs of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. When performing this material, she uses the warm, lower part of her rich voice to give idiomatic performances of songs by some of America's greatest composers of popular music, such as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Also heard here are Franz Gruber's familiar Christmas carol 'Silent Night' and a number of traditional British folk songs. These are followed by two Maori songs, in which Kiri is joined by a group of Maori singers and a number of specialist musicians who together capture the authentic style of these fascinating pieces.

In Werke für Violine und Klavier, the interplay between grotesque humour and instant melodic upswings the piece demonstrates the amazing plasticity of the young Korngold’s inventiveness. Korngold draws on the classical forms in Streichsextett D-Dur, but realizes them individually; the tonal harmonies are sometimes stretched to their limits, without touching their significant function; though the six voices are conceived polyphonically, they can resound orchestrally – all this is part of the trade of the ingenious adolescent.

Korngold’s ballet ‘The Snowman’ (Der Schneemann) was one of his early major achievements written at the age of eleven. Shortly afterwards he composed Wichtelmännchen’ and the ‘Caprice fantastique’ from the ‘Fairy Tale Pictures’ Op. 3 for piano. Two hits from the successful opera ‘Die Tote Stadt’ follow: ‘Glück, das mir verblieb’ andthe ‘Tanzlied des Pierrot’ are essentially waltzes, highly eloquent in the versions for violin. The Sextet stems from 1914/15, just after the completion of ‘Violanta’; the première being given in 1917 by an ensemble directed by Arnold Rosé, the famous concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. Korngold draws on classical forms, but touches with the gifts of an ingenious adolescent, evoking comparison with passages of the Schoenberg sextet ‘Verklärte Nacht’ of 1899.

Kate Royal’s second recording for EMI Classics is Midsummer Night, an atmospheric recital collection focusing on female characters in 20th century opera and operetta, reflecting their pain and ecstasy in love. The programme ranges from well known turn-of-the-century works by Dvorák (Song to the Moon from Rusalka) and Lehár (Vilja from The Merry Widow) to Midsummer Night, from the English composer William Alwyn’s opera Miss Julie. Edward Gardner conducts the English National Opera Orchestra with guest appearances by Thomas Allen, Andrew Staples and the Crouch End Festival Chorus.

"[My] Inspiration for this album began with Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw and the Governess - my first major role in a 20th century opera,” said Kate Royal. “The music got under my skin in a way I had not experienced before. Britten's vocal writing is immediate and naturally dramatic. His harmonic world seeps into the subconscious underpinning the character as a fully formed human being rather than a romantic stereotype. So, with the Governess’s Tower Scene as a starting point, I went in search of other arias that shared this combination of intensity and abandon. These are worlds in which the heroines are laid bare, vulnerable in their journey towards emotional fulfilment … women lost in love [or] trapped in a deeper trance-like state as they wrestle with their unsated desires. … Alongside some of the century's seminal works I [was] also delighted to discover what I believe to be some hidden gems for the soprano voice."

Stephen Johns, Vice President of A&R, EMI Classics, has also commented on the choice of repertoire, "The selection of songs for this recital is illuminated by their composers’ reactions to the changing musical scenes of the 20th century. All the arias were written after 1900, but each composer has found a different and unique way of coping with the transition into the century. Some are still firmly rooted in the lush harmonies of the 19th century like Dvorák and Korngold; some even clinging onto the innocence of the past world, such as Léhar. Others are experimenting with newer harmonies - the exoticism of early Stravinsky, and the aching beauty of Walton and Alwyn's music. Still others find new life in the old harmonic structures - Britten and Floyd. What binds them together, in a programme that coincidentally emphasises the nocturnal, the close of the day, is a desire to allow the soprano voice fully to express beauty in melody ….”

Among the lesser known arias on Kate Royal’s CD are those from operas by the English composer William Alwyn and American composers Bernard Herrmann and Carlisle Floyd: William Alwyn (1905-1985) based his only major opera, Miss Julie, on August Strindberg’s tense and intimate drama of class and sexual relations from 1888. Composed between 1973 and 1976, Miss Julie was premiered on BBC Radio in 1977, but has had only one semi-professional stage production, in Copenhagen in 1991; Bernard Herrmann’s many film scores, notably his collaborations with Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho) and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), have diverted attention from his other musical achievements. He was particularly proud of Wuthering Heights, his major opera to a libretto by Lucille Fletcher (his first wife), based on Emily Brontë’s novel. Herrmann (1911-1975) composed it between 1943 and 1951, but the opera was not staged until 1982, seven years after his death; The American composer Carlisle Floyd (b 1926), whose own version of Wuthering Heights was premiered in 1958, has produced a steady stream of operas over a period of fifty years, a couple of which have become staples of the American repertoire. His greatest success has been Susannah, based on the story in the Apocrypha of Susannah and the Elders translated to a contemporary Bible-belt setting. First staged at Florida University in 1955, the opera has been performed predominantly by American companies, notably the Metropolitan Opera in 1999.

"She is a natural communicator, has all the ingredients for an important career – musicality, a lyric soprano of rare loveliness, a poised and dignified manner and looks gorgeous too" The Sunday Times