New Release Round-up,
New Releases from Winter 2022
As it's a relatively quiet time of year for new releases, this week we've decided to round up a few of our most popular titles from the past month or so which slipped under the radar the first time around, including Christmas with Tenebrae, the first instalment of Angela Hewitt's cycle of the Mozart piano sonatas on Hyperion, the world premiere recording of Andrew Gourlay's concert suite on music from Wagner's Parsifal, and a second helping of Ravel (including Ma Mère l'Oye and the Valses nobles et sentimentales) from Robert Trevino and the Basque National Orchestra.
Rattle's first recording as Chief Conductor Designate of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was made live over the course of two concerts last November - the second of which was dedicated to the memory of Bernard Haitink, who had died the previous month. BBC Music Magazine observed that the performance delivers 'all the detailed eloquence and intensity one might expect from Simon Rattle in concert. Yet it also suggests a maturing in his approach, an interpretive longer-sightedness.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the world premiere recording of Gourlay's 45-minute symphonic synthesis of music from Wagner's final opera, incorporating the Preludes to all three acts, the Transformation Music, and the Good Friday Music. Gourlay writes: 'Parsifal surely contains some of Wagner’s greatest orchestral writing, yet there is little orchestral-only material currently available for concert performance...My priority was to stitch the music together wherever possible using original Wagner'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The first instalment of Trevino's Ravel project was hailed as 'astonishingly beautiful' by Fanfare, and this sequel has already met with an equally warm reception: Record Review noted that 'Trevino revels in the sensuousness of this music', whilst Gramophone described it as an 'excellent disc'. The programme comprises the Valses nobles et sentimentales, the Menuet antique, the 'Ouverture de féerie' Shéhérazade, the suite from Ma Mère l'Oye, and the world premiere recording of Boulez's orchestration of Frontispice.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Thomas Adès: Märchentänze
Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Tomas Nuñez (cello), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
Last autumn, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and their Chief Conductor marked Adès's fiftieth birthday with a festival in Helsinki devoted to his music, a highlight of which was the world premiere of his folksong-inspired Märchentänze ('Dances from Fairytales') in its version for violin and orchestra. The album also includes the suite from the 1995 chamber opera Powder Her Face, the orchestral version of Lieux retrouvés, and Dawn - a 'Chacony for orchestra at any distance', written to accommodate COVID restrictions on numbers of players and social distancing in 2020.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The NDR Radiophilharmonie continue their advocacy of the music of Emilie Mayer (1812-83) with the 'Military' symphony from 1850 and the large-scale Seventh Symphony, thought to date from six years later. The previous volume, featuring Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2, was warmly received, with Fanfare arguing that '[No. 2] should catapult Mayer into the top tier of nineteenth-century Romantic composers' and BBC Music Magazine noting that both works 'give the impression of a composer having serious fun with her great talent'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
James MacMillan: Christmas Oratorio
Lucy Crowe (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), London Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir, Mark Elder
Premiered in Amsterdam in 2019, MacMillan's Christmas Oratorio sets poetry by Robert Southwell, John Donne and John Milton as well as Latin liturgical texts, passages from the Gospels of John and Matthew, and even a Scottish lullaby. Reviewing the London performance which this recording captures last Christmas, BachTrack declared that 'particularly when performed at this quality, MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio deserves its place alongside Bach in the seasonal repertoire.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the first instalment in a projected series of Mozart's complete piano sonatas (a project which Hewitt says provided 'endless hours of joy and wonder'); the programme comprises the first seven numbered sonatas, all composed during the mid-1770s and studded with what Hewitt describes as 'germs of pieces we know will appear in the future'. The album was the Instrumental Choice in the Christmas Edition of BBC Music Magazine, with Rebecca Franks predicting that 'if this first volume is anything to go by, the journey will be a joy.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Australian pianist and commercial barrister was nominated for a Gramophone Award for his 'almost incredible' debut recording of Alkan's Concerto and Symphony for Solo Piano back in 2020, and his third disc for BIS features the same composer's solo transcription of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor alongside Liszt's arrangement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony (dedicated to his son-in-law Hans von Bülow and published in 1865).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This luminous Christmas-gift from Tenebrae takes its name from a setting of a Jane Draycott poem by Joanna Marsh, commissioned by the choir and performed at their Wigmore Hall concert at Christmas 2019; the programme also includes Britten's A Ceremony of Carols and carols by Elizabeth Poston, Vaughan Williams, Sally Beamish, Owain Park, Joseph Phibbs, Ben Parry and Edward Naylor.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Niquet couples Mozart's Requiem (commissioned by Count von Walsegg in memory of his wife Anna, but the subject of much speculation as to whether the composer came to regard it as own epitaph) with the 'Piccolo Requiem' which Antonio Salieri composed in his early forties and intended for his funeral; the work was eventually performed at a memorial service held a month after his death in 1825.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bestion interweaves the movements of the Rachmaninov Vespers with traditional Byzantine hymns, explaining: 'I wanted to place the work in a liturgical context that I conceived by drawing my inspiration from the Orthodox ceremonies I have been lucky enough to attend in Russia and Romania'. The album has been nominated for an International Classical Music Award, whilst BBC Music Magazine observed that 'the All-Night Vigil appears here a denuded museum artefact, displayed alongside a distantly related musical tradition that ’s presented in a more vibrant and authentic style'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
