New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-up - 30th March 2018
Today's highlights include the final instalment of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien's series of Mozart's violin sonatas, Messiaen's complete Catalogue d'oiseaux from Pierre-Laurent Aimard (in his first recording for Pentatone), a debut recording of English motets from The Gesualdo Six, and the first release in a new Haydn series from pianist Paul Lewis.
Following his towering accounts of the complete Beethoven sonatas and concertos and Schubert’s major piano works, Lewis embarks on a comprehensive survey of Haydn’s keyboard sonatas – works which he’s been exploring alongside Brahms in recital over the past year or so and has described as ‘some of the most startlingly original and irresistibly absurd piano writing in the entire repertoire’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Messiaen has always loomed large in Aimard’s repertoire (his discography includes a Vingt Regards which was described as ‘superb, even awe-inspiring’ by the New York Times, and landmark interpretations of Quatuor pour le fin du temps and Turangalîla); here he begins his exclusive relationship with Pentatone with a work which he describes as ‘a musical refuge that resonates with an audience ever more concerned' with the relationship between man and the natural world.
Available Formats: 3 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The young Russian pianist was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award for his last solo recording, a selection of Chopin Mazurkas; for his second recital on Hyperion, he steps back two centuries to explore the keyboard music of Louis Couperin in this collection of allemandes, gigues, sarabandes, courantes and more from one of the most influential anthologies of seventeenth-century French harpsichord music.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Grieg & Delius: Piano Concertos
Mark Bebbington (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Jan Latham-Koenig
Bebbington has become something of a specialist in twentieth-century English music, and here he presents Delius’s score (unperformed with orchestra during his lifetime) alongside the work which inspired it: his friend Edvard Grieg’s hugely popular concerto of 1868. He also includes the sketches for Grieg’s projected Second Concerto, which he began in the 1880s but never completed.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Much scholarly ink has been spilled over the Masonic overtones of Die Zauberflöte, but this album focuses on the music which Mozart wrote for Masonic gatherings, from the short song ‘O heiliges Band der Freundschaft’ (composed almost ten years before he was admitted to a Lodge) to the Kleine Freimaurerkantate (‘Little Masonic Cantata’) which was written in the final year of his life.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The inaugural recording from this Cambridge-born vocal sextet (formed in March 2014 and directed by Owain Park, who already has an impressive discography as a composer and organist) includes music by Byrd, Cornysh, Gibbons, Morley, Sheppard, Tallis and Taverner.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The first volume of The Sixteen’s survey of the music which Monteverdi wrote during his time as director of music at St Mark’s in Venice was described by the Sunday Times as ‘ideal consort singing’; its successor includes the Nisi dominus, Lauda Jerusalem, and the Messa a quattro voci as well as short works by Cavalli and Piccinini.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The final volume of an enthralling series which has won accolades galore for Ibragimova and Tiberghien’s ‘exquisite playing’ (The Observer), ‘charm and character’ (Gramophone) and ‘intelligence of interpretation’ (MusicWeb International). We can't wait to see where this match made in heaven will go next...
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
Erich Kunz, Irmgard Seefried, Paul Schöffler, Lisa Della Casa, Sena Jurinac; Wiener Philharmoniker, Karl Böhm
Recorded live at a staged performance at the Royal Festival Hall in September 1954 with a cast largely imported from the Vienna State Opera, this Figaro was described by Opera Magazine at the time as ‘sheer delight’; it appears on record for the first time thanks to the archives of Richard Itter, who founded the Lyrita label just five years after this recording was made.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
This 4-CD Beecham anthology also comes courtesy of Itter’s extensive collection – though the conductor recorded most of the works here in the studio, only two of these live performance (Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 and Liszt’s Faust Symphony) are thought to have been released before. Also includes symphonies by Mozart, Boccherini, Beethoven and Brahms, and the overtures to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Flying Dutchman.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Rimsky Korsakov: Le Coq d'Or (DVD)
Pavlo Hunka, Alexey Dolgov, Venera Gimadieva; La Monnaie, Alain Altinoglu, Laurent Pelly
Filmed at La Monnaie in December 2016, Laurent Pelly’s production of Rimsky Korsakov’s satirical fairy-tale was described by BachTrack as ‘darkly humorous but colourfully performed’ by BachTrack and praised by Le Figaro for its ‘coherent presentation of a complex work’. The title-role is cast as a two-hander here, portrayed by a soprano and a dancer in full avian regalia!
Available Format: DVD Video
Rimsky Korsakov: Le Coq d'Or (Blu-ray)
Pavlo Hunka, Alexey Dolgov, Venera Gimadieva; La Monnaie, Alain Altinoglu, Laurent Pelly
Subtitles: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese Region: All Regions Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.78:1
Available Format: Blu-ray
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
