Coming Soon,
Satie & Cage from Bertrand Chamayou and other forthcoming highlights
Other upcoming highlights include Baroque albums from mandolinist Avi Avital and guitarist Miloš Karadaglić, the final instalment of Andris Nelsons's Shostakovich cycle from Boston, and the first volume of a projected Shostakovich trilogy from Matthias Goerne, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck.
A year on from his award-winning recording of Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jésus, the French pianist explores the connections between two composers who 'changed the very idea of what music must be': Erik Satie and John Cage. The recital opens with latter's All Sides of the Small Stone - for Erik Satie, which was slipped into the notes of his student James Tenney as a 'Koan' (riddle) in the late 70s and discovered nearly four decades later; Tenney's own tiny tribute to Satie, Three Pages in the Shape of a Pear, also features on the programme.
Released 18th November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Osborne's previous recordings of Debussy have been widely praised, with BBC Music Magazine applauding his 'marvellous range of colour, finely judged touch, and ability to combine powerful waves of sound with diaphanous passagework' in the Préludes (2006), and The Sunday Times describing him as 'a master of illumination and perceptiveness in the French pianistic canon' upon the release of his set of early and late piano pieces last year. This new album also includes La plus que lente, the Berceuse héroïque, and Roy Howat's realisation of the six-page sketch for the eleventh étude.
Released 3rd November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The Canadian pianist signed to Deutsche Grammophon after taking First Prize at the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition, and a collection of live recordings from the contest (issued by the label a month after his victory) was described by Gramophone as 'one of the most distinguished Chopin recitals of recent years, full of maturity, character and purpose'. This debut studio album of French repertoire includes Ravel's Miroirs, Alkan's Le festin d'Esope, and excerpts from Rameau's Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin.
Released 3rd November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Ravel: Piano Concertos & Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Alexandre Tharaud (piano), Orchestre National de France, Louis Langrée
Twenty years after his recording of Ravel's complete solo piano music (in which The Scotsman detected 'a sense of enjoyment and energy that lights up Ravel's acute sense of texture and colour'), the French pianist turns his attention to the two piano concertos. Tharaud reflects that the two works (both premiered in 1932) 'are simultaneously unique and alike. They share meticulous craftsmanship and jazzy touches, and both evoke little automata and the ghosts of war.'
Released 13th October.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14
Asmik Grigorian (soprano), Matthias Goerne (baritone), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Mikko Franck
Dedicated to Benjamin Britten (who conducted the first UK performance) and scored for soprano, bass and small string orchestra with percussion, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 sets poems by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Rainer Maria Rilke and Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and was premiered in 1969. This is the first instalment of a planned Shostakovich trilogy from Goerne, Franck and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, with Symphony No. 13 ('Babi Yar') and the Suite on Poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti set to follow next year.
Released 20th October.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
As one Shostakovich project begins, another (much larger) one draws to a close - this is the final instalment of Nelsons's survey of the complete symphonies from Boston, launched in 2015 with a recording of Symphony No. 10 which won both a Grammy and a Gramophone Award. The works here span a thirty-five-year period, with the two youthful symphonies featuring a prominent role for choir - here the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, who are joined by the New England Conservatory Symphonic Choir for Symphony No. 13.
Released 20th October.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Montenegrin guitarist makes his debut on Sony with an all-Baroque programme, including transcriptions of the Chaconne from JS Bach's Partita No. 2, Couperin's Les baricades mistérieuses, two Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, and Weiss's Passacaille; he's joined by Arcangelo and Cohen for concerto movements by Vivaldi and Marcello, and the Fandango from Boccherini's Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D major.
Released 13th October.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Baroque repertoire also makes up the lion's share of the Israeli mandolinist's next album, which features arrangements of JS Bach's Concerto in C minor BWV1060 and Vivaldi's Concerto in B minor RV580 (originally for four violins); there are also bona fide mandolin concertos from Paisiello, Hummel, and the Neapolitan violinist-composer Emanuele Barbella.
Released 17th November.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Commissioned by Podger's Brecon Baroque Festival, Chad Kelly’s new arrangement of the Goldbergs attempts to imagine how the composer himself might have transformed his work for his Sunday coffee concerts in Leipzig, and is scored for single strings, oboe, flute, bassoon and harpsichord. Reviewing the live (online) premiere of the arrangement in October 2020, The Times's Rebecca Franks enthused that 'the playing was exquisite...hearing the imitative canons being passed around players amplified the brilliance of Bach’s writing'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Folk-inspired works featured on the Czech mezzo's Soirée with her husband and friends back in 2019, and now they team up with the Czech Philharmonic for four twentieth-century song-cycles with full orchestra: Bartók's Hungarian Folksongs, Berio's Folk Songs, Ravel's Cinq mélodies populaires grecques and Montsalvatge's Cinco Canciones negras.
Released 13th October.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lully: Thésée
Mathias Vidal (Thésée). Karine Deshayes (Médée), Deborah Cachet (Aeglé), Marie Lys (Cléone/Cérès), Bénédicte Tauran, (La Grande Prêtresse de Minerve), Thaïs Raï-Westphal (Dorine/Venus); Les Talens Lyriques, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Christophe Rousset
Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques continue their sterling advocacy for Lully with this recording of his tragédie en musique based on an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses, premiered for the court of Louis XIV in 1675. Reviewing their recording of the composer's Acis et Galatée last year, Opera Magazine declared that 'the performance is everything that has come to be expected in Lully from Christophe Rousset and his exceptional forces. That means it is all but flawless.'
Released 13th October.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
