New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 10th January 2020
Today’s new releases include the Elgar Cello Concerto from Sheku Kanneh-Mason with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons’s first New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna, Handel’s first opera Almira from the Boston Early Music Festival, and a recital of Mahler, Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Korngold from Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling.
The 20-year-old cellist’s performance of the Elgar concerto at last summer’s BBC Proms was described as ‘poised and massively confident’ (The Telegraph), and this account was recorded at Abbey Road just a few weeks earlier; the album also features new arrangements of Elgar’s Nimrod and Romance in D minor, Frank Bridge’s Spring Song and Fauré’s Élégie, plus Julius Klengel’s Hymnus for 12 Cellos.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This was Nelsons’s first New Year’s Day visit to Vienna, though he’s conducted the orchestra regularly since 2010 (their joint discography includes a recent cycle of the Beethoven symphonies and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2). The programme includes the traditional waltzes and polkas by the Strauss family, Ziehrer’s Overture to Die Landstreiche, Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture, and (in deference to the 2020 anniversary) excerpts from Beethoven’s Twelve Contredanses, WoO 14. The DVD and Blu-ray will be released on 31st January.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Brodskys recorded the Op. 18 quartets alongside newly commissioned companion-works in the early 2000s, and now they mark this year’s Beethoven anniversary with the last six quartets and the Grosse Fuge; the recording was described in yesterday’s Guardian as ‘technically immaculate’, with Andrew Clements observing that ‘the highlights reach very high indeed’.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The final instalment of the Dante’s survey of Stanford’s complete string quartets (begun in 2015, and praised by BBC Music Magazine for its ‘verve and precision, and immaculate recorded sound’) includes the world premiere recording of Quartet No. 6 (1910) and the first two quartets, which Stanford composed whilst on holiday in Llandudno during the summer of 1891.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
For her fourth recital-album on BIS with her regular partner Paul Rivinius, the Swedish soprano explores fin de siècle Vienna; the programme includes Zemlinsky’s Walzer-Gesänge Op. 6, selections from Korngold’s Sechs einfache Lieder Op. 9 and Berg’s 7 Frühe Lieder, and Schoenberg’s Vier Lieder Op. 2.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Brabant Ensemble continue their explorations of sixteenth-century polyphony from the Low Countries with this album devoted to music by two members of the so-called ‘wolf pack’, a group of Renaissance composers whose names derive from the Latin lupus: Johannes Lupi (c.1506-39) and Lupus Hellinck (1493/4-1541).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
A regular soloist with groups including Le Poème Harmonique, Hespèrion XX and Les Arts Florissants, the French baritenor Marc Mauillon is perhaps most closely associated with early music, but his vocal clarity is also ideally suited to this programme of Fauré, which includes settings of poetry by Paul Verlaine, Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire. His debut album on Harmonia Mundi, Michel Lambert’s Leçons de ténèbres, was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice in June 2018.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Composed when he was just 19, Handel’s very first opera was enthusiastically received at its premiere in 1705 but was quickly eclipsed by the composer’s later works; the Boston Early Music Festival staged the work in 2013, and this recording from five years later is the first account of Almira on period instruments for over twenty years. The eponymous Castilian princess is sung by sparky Hungarian soprano Emőke Baráth, with Amanda Forsyth as her love rival Edilia, and Colin Balzer and Zachary Wilder as their love-interests.
Available Formats: 4 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schiff’s late-night performance of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier at the 2017 BBC Proms was described as ‘thoughtful, sober, even understated performance’ by The Independent and ‘a Bach masterclass' by BachTrack, whilst The Times observed that ‘his playing has a sort of universality in its immaculateness, an archetypal quality.’ Book Two will follow on DVD and Blu-ray on 21st February.
Available Format: DVD Video
HD 16:9
PCM stereo and DTS-MA 5.1
Available Format: Blu-ray
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