New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-up - 20th April 2018
Today’s highlights include Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet from Piotr Anderszewski and the Belceas, settings of French Symbolist poetry by Britten, Debussy and Fauré from tenor Nicholas Phan, Bartok, Walton and Dvořák concertos from viola-player David Aaron Carpenter, and Michel Lambert’s austere Leçons de ténèbres from French ‘basse-taille’ Marc Mauillon.
For their first recording of Shostakovich, the Belcea Quartet are joined by Polish pianist Anderszewski, with whom they’ve performed regularly over the past fifteen years or so: reviewing their account of the Piano Quintet at Wigmore Hall in 2002, The Telegraph admired their joint ability to move between ‘bleak dignity and fragile tenderness’ and ‘a violence on the edge of incoherence’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For her first solo album for Alpha, the French soprano presents a programme based around the idea of dreams and visions, including songs by Schumann, Wolf, Debussy, Poulenc and Samuel Barber, and settings of Emily Dickinson by André Previn and Robert Baksa.
Available Formats: CD + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The all-male Italian vocal ensemble explore the sacred polyphonic works which Monteverdi composed for St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, including the Mass for Four Voices (published posthumously in 1650), the ‘Pianto della Madonna’, which Monteverdi adapted from the operatic ‘Lamento d’Arianna’, one of his best-known secular compositions.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Illuminations
Nicholas Phan (tenor), Myra Huang (piano), Telegraph Quartet, The Knights Chamber Orchestra
Phan’s luminous programme centres around settings of the French Symbolist poets (and ill-fated lovers) Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud: Britten’s Les illuminations, Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson, and Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées, more usually the province of female voices.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Inspired by Frederica von Stade's recordings of Cole Porter, the Czech mezzo takes a step outside her usual comfort-zone for the inaugural release on her own label Brnofon, which includes 'Night and Day', 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy', 'Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye', and 'Miss Otis Regrets'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Michel Lambert: Leçons de ténèbres
Marc Mauillon, Myriam Rignol, Thibaut Roussel, Marouan Mankar-Bennis
The first set of Tenebrae Responsories by Louis XIV’s court composer (scored for a single voice and continuo) receive their world premiere recording here thanks to the French musicologist and baritenor Marc Mauillon, who is accompanied by a theorbo (Lambert's own instrument), positive organ and bass viol.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Martinů: Double Concertos for Violin and Piano
Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Lawrence Foster
Martinů had a special fondness for concertos for multiple instruments, and this album features two such works composed towards the end of his life (the Double Violin Concerto from 1950 and the Double Piano Concerto from 1943) alongside the Rhapsody Concerto for Viola and Orchestra from 1952.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ravel & Gershwin: Piano Concertos
Denis Kozhukhin (piano) Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Kazuki Yamada
The Russian pianist (who took third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, and will perform the Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Proms this summer) presents three concertos with jazz elements; reviewing his Wigmore Hall performance of the solo version of Rhapsody in Blue last month, BachTrack praised the ‘heady exhilaration’ of his playing.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Motherland
David Aaron Carpenter (viola), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Kazushi Ono, Vladimir Jurowski and David Parry
The American violist presents the concertos of Bartók and Walton and a transcription of Dvořák's Cello Concerto (three works suffused with what he describes as ‘a longing for the homeland and a reverence for native musical folk tunes and language’), plus three new compositions by Alexey Shor (b.1970).
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Composed over a 45-year period, Pärt’s four symphonies (which range from half an hour to just ten minutes in length) are presented on a single CD for the first time, in accordance with conductor Tonu Kaljuste’s conviction that they form ‘a single grand symphony…a biographical narrative’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
