Hi-Res Highlights,
Hi-Res Highlights - March 2018
This month’s Hi-Res highlights include two outstanding albums of Renaissance polyphony (Victoria from Stile Antico and Byrd from The Choir of King’s College Cambridge), an all-guns-blazing collection of nearly fifty British fanfares from Onyx Brass and John Wilson, and a recent Presto Recording of the Week which really springs to life in HD: the two suites which survive from Florent Schmitt’s intensely cinematic score for André Gide’s translation of Antoine et Cléopâtre, recorded by BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo and released on Chandos at the beginning of March.
Definitely one to experience in HD - recorded in the cavernous acoustic of St Jude's Hampstead, this collection includes nearly fifty fanfares (some of them barely a minute long!) by British composers from the past 150 years, including Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss, Eric Coates, Imogen Holst, Albert Ketèlbey and Michael Tippett.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nézet-Séguin presides over massed forces (including stage and pit orchestras, a rock band, a marching-band, and a boys’ choir armed with kazoos!) for one of Bernstein’s least-recorded major works, recorded live during staged performances in Philadelphia in spring 2015.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Volume One of Manze’s Mendelssohn cycle (the First and ‘Scottish’ symphonies) was recently awarded a Schallplattenkritik Prize, and described as ‘close to ideal’ by Gramophone, and this second instalment of the ‘Italian’ and ‘Reformation’ symphonies is every bit as vital and energetic.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Florent Schmitt: Suites from 'Antoine et Cléopâtre' & Symphony No. 2
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo
Schmitt’s ‘evocative and sumptuous’ incidental music for André Gide’s Antoine et Cléopâtre (as my colleague James described it in his recent review) comes across as even more atmospheric and Hollywoodesque in high definition; look out, too, for Katherine’s interview with Sakari Oramo about the piece next week…
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Founded just two years ago, this vibrant British vocal ensemble is made up of fuller-bodied voices than most of their more established rivals; the results are spine-tingling in this programme of Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir and a selection of motets by James MacMillan including Cecilia Virgo, O Radiant Dawn (from The Strathclyde Motets), and the Miserere.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Byrd’s richly-coloured motets and the acoustic of King’s College Chapel are showcased to perfection in HD on what is likely to be one of the final recordings conducted by outgoing Director of Music Stephen Cleobury, who retires from his post next September after almost four decades at the helm of King’s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Though this is their first album dedicated to his music, the conductorless British early music vocal ensemble have form with Victoria, who featured on their Song of Songs and Passion and Resurrection recordings; The Telegraph described their 400th anniversary tribute to him at the Wigmore Hall in 2011 as ‘a concert that captured all the joy and grave dignity of this wonderful composer’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Massenet: La Navarraise
Lucia Popp (Anita), Alain Vanzo (Araquil), Vincenzo Sardinero (Garrido); London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio de Almeida
One of only two studio recordings to date of Massenet’s 1894 opera (which was often performed alongside Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana in the early twentieth century), this 1975 set was praised by Gramophone shortly after its original release for Popp’s ‘urgent and intense’ singing in the title-role which rendered the tragic denouement ‘as powerful as the close of Tosca’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Walter Berry (baritone), New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano), Leonard Bernstein (piano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone)
Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry (who were husband and wife at the time of recording) share the honours in the Wunderhorn songs with the New York Philharmonic, whilst Bernstein moves from podium to piano-stool to join Fischer-Dieskau in the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, recorded in 1968 in New York.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Recorded in 1961, this recital from the eloquent French baritone is surely one of the most idiomatic collections of Debussy songs on record, and includes the first set of Fêtes galantes, the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, and excerpts from the Ariettes oubliées (more usually associated with female voices).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
David Smith - Head of Digital
