New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-up - 27th April 2018
Osmo Vänskä’s Mahler project from Minnesota continues with the Sixth Symphony, Laurence Equilbey and Accentus (in association with Palazzetto Bru Zane) give one of Gounod’s last compositions its first-ever recording, and Marc-André Hamelin tackles Schubert’s final piano sonata and second set of impromptus.
The second volume of a hugely promising Mahler cycle from Minnesota: 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
Recorded live at the Barbican between 2008 and 2015, Gergiev’s Rachmaninov cycle won praise for its ‘romantic urgency and lyrical impulse’ (Gramophone on Symphony No. 2) and ‘verve and drive’ (The Sunday Times on Symphony No. 3); also includes the Symphonic Dances and two symphonic poems by Balakirev.
Available Formats: 4 SACDs + Blu-ray Audio, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The world premiere of a work which the composer (whose bicentenary falls this year) described as ‘a sort of musical diptych’ on paintings by Murillo and Giotto: Saint François d’Assise was completed just two years before Gounod's death, and the manuscript was only discovered in 2011. It’s complemented by the much earlier Hymne à Sainte Cécile and Liszt’s Légende de Sainte Cécile.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Power and Manze place Berlioz’s Byronic ‘symphony with viola’ alongside the composer’s transcriptions of his own La captive, Martini’s Plaisir d’amour and Weber’s Invitation to the Dance, plus the Andante and Rondo ungarese - originally written for Weber’s violist half-brother, who wanted a showpiece to include in a pasticcio on La fedeltà premiata at the Hamburg opera.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Romantic Piano Concerto 75 - Ferdinand Ries
Piers Lane (piano), The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein
The Australian pianist (a stalwart of the Romantic Piano Concerto series) revives the eighth and ninth piano concertos of a German composer now best known as a student, friend, secretary and biographer of Beethoven, but who left a substantial body of his own work including nine piano concertos, three operas and seven symphonies.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
A collection of odes, catches and anthems which Purcell penned as part of the post-Restoration Stuart publicity-machine, celebrating Charles II’s ascent to the throne and the Divine Right of Kings (Welcome, viceregent of the mighty king) and rejoicing at the suppression of anti-monarchist conspiracies (Fly, Bold Rebellion).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Before Mozart: Early Horn Concertos
Alec Frank-Gemmill (horn), Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan
Performing on a modern instrument but using eighteenth-century techniques, the British horn-player explores five works which pre-date Mozart’s famous quartet of concertos for horn, including a sinfonia concertante by Mozart’s father, and virtuoso concertos by Christoph Förster and Johann Baptist Georg Neruda (whose writing for the instrument is so vertiginous that it was previously believed to be intended for trumpet!).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
With his astonishing two-piano version of The Rite of Spring with Leif Ove Andsnes still ringing in our ears, Marc-André Hamelin turns his attention to the late works of Schubert, a composer who hasn’t featured much in his discography to date: The Philadelphia Inquirer praised a recent performance of the Sonata as ‘utterly distinctive to him and rendered in a manner that could only have been cultivated over multiple decades at the keyboard’.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
5 discs of recordings on modern instruments from the 1990s, including the Great Mass in C minor (with Barbara Bonney and Arleen Auger as soloists), the Posthorn Serenade, the Masonic Funeral Music, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and symphonies nos. 25, 28, 29, 31, 35 and 36.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
