Coming Soon,
Jonas Kaufmann's Otello and other forthcoming highlights
Jonas Kaufmann scales the Everest of the Italian tenor repertoire as last year’s Covent Garden production (relayed live into cinemas around the world and subsequently broadcast on BBC4) appears on DVD and Blu-ray, whilst Osmo Vänskä and Ádám Fischer press on with their impressive cycles of Mahler symphonies, and Hervé Niquet revives an exotic operatic rarity by Fromental Halévy courtesy of the intrepid Palazetto Bru Zane. Elsewhere there are promising new albums from pianists Federico Colli, Stephen Hough and Peter Hill, and a celebration of Polish Independence from Tenebrae and Nigel Short.
The Shéhérazade here is not the song-cycle to poems by Tristan Klingsor, but an early ‘fairy overture’, composed when Ravel was in his early twenties and not published until 1975. Roth and his period band present it alongside two works for smaller orchestra: Ravel’s homage to the French baroque, and his own orchestration and expansion of the Mother Goose suite (originally for piano four hands) into a ballet for the Théâtre des Arts.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Now four instalments in, Fischer Senior’s Mahler series from Düsseldorf was recently described by Gramophone as ‘shaping up to be the most idiomatic and exciting cycle of Mahler symphonies since Kubelík and Bernstein’, and Team Presto are in complete agreement – Fischer's ‘lyrical, captivating’ account of the First Symphony was one of Katherine’s Editor’s Choices in March.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Late spring also brings the second volume of another hugely promising Mahler cycle: Vänskä’s recording of the Fifth Symphony was nominated for a Grammy last year, and also made the shortlist for our own Recordings of 2017. Minnesota's Star Tribune praised their live performance of the Sixth as ‘an object lesson in how to do Mahler without the histrionics…satisfyingly cathartic’.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Hill’s previous recordings of Bach for Delphian have been praised as ‘exquisitely poetic’ (BBC Music Magazine), 'unfailingly musicianly and entirely unegotistical’ (Gramophone) and ‘utterly logical… wonderfully natural’ (The Guardian). He performs the Variations at the Wigmore Hall in late May.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Italian pianist (whose accolades include first prizes at the Salzburg Mozart Competition and Leeds International Piano Competition) embarks on a journey through Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, recorded on a modern Steinway. Look out for his forthcoming interview with Katherine about the Neapolitan composer’s complex personality and conflicted relationship with the legacy of his father Alessandro.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following In the Night from 2014, the pianist-composer offers another nocturnally-themed recital of his own transcriptions and compositions, including music by Liszt, Sibelius, Chaminade, Albéniz, Eric Coates and Julius Isserlis (the grandfather of Hough’s friend and regular collaborator Steven).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
To celebrate the centenary of Polish independence (and the composer’s fiftieth birthday, which falls this September) Tenebrae explore Łukaszewski’s sacred and secular output, including the Responsoria Tenebrae, Shakespeare Sonnets, Lamentations, and the title-track (which sets text by the sixteenth-century Polish poet and composer Wacław z Szamotuł).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Halévy: La Reine de Chypre
Véronique Gens, Cyrille Dubois, Étienne Dupuy, Flemish Radio Choir. Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Hervé Niquet
Berlioz and Wagner were both hugely impressed by Halévy’s 1841 grand opera (to a libretto which was later set by Donizetti as Caterina Cornaro), though by the later nineteenth century it had all but disappeared from the repertoire and here receives its first commercial recording. Reviewing the live performance, BachTrack admired Gens’s ‘grace and good taste’ in the title-role and the ‘pomp and exotic colour’ of the score.
Available Formats: 2 CDs + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini (DVD)
John Osborn, Mariangela Sicilia, Maurizio Muraro; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder, Terry Gilliam
Filmed at the Dutch National Opera in 2016, Gilliam’s production of Berlioz’s ‘opera semiseria’ (based on the colourful memoirs of the eponymous sixteenth-century Florentine goldsmith) was described by the Financial Times as brimming with the ‘madcap creativity of a Monty Python alumnus’, whilst The Guardian declared that ‘the sheer energy and generous humour of the show are hard to resist’.
Available Format: 2 DVD Videos
Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini (Blu-ray)
John Osborn, Mariangela Sicilia, Maurizio Muraro; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder, Terry Gilliam
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.78:1
Available Format: Blu-ray
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
