New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 6th October 2023
Brahms, Viotti and Dvořák
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Tanja Tetzlaff, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Paavo Järvi
This album is dedicated to the memory of Lars Vogt, with whom the Tetzlaffs recorded a significant amount of chamber music (including the Brahms piano trios in 2015, and works by Schubert in the final months of Vogt's life). As Brahms was one of the pianist's favourite composers, the siblings open the programme by joining forces for the Double Concerto; it's followed by Viotti's Violin Concerto No. 22 (which Brahms admired enormously), and Dvořák’s Silent Woods.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Researched and curated by the bass-baritone and musicologist Yannis François, Orliński's fourth solo album with Il Pomo d'Oro focuses on the early Baroque period and features ten world premiere recordings. The repertoire includes arias by Monteverdi, Caccini, Frescobaldi and Kapsberger, plus works by several less familiar composers: Claudio Saracini, Giorgio Netti and Polish polymath Adam Jarzębski.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Two years on from their Gramophone Award-nominated Nordic Rhapsody, Dalene and Hadland team up again for a programme which takes its title from an early work by Grażyna Bacewicz (whose Humoreske, Kolysanka and Taniec mazowiecki also feature on the programme. The recital also includes sonatas by Ravel and Prokofiev, plus Lili Boulanger's Nocturne and Arvo Pärt's Fratres.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Mass in C Minor
Anna Dennis, Lucy Crowe (sopranos), Jess Dandy (contralto), Nicholas Mulroy (tenor), Robert Davies (baritone), Dunedin Consort, John Butt
Nearly a decade on from their Gramophone Award-winning recording of Mozart's Requiem, Butt and his Dunedin forces turn to another of the composer's unfinished sacred choral works (given here in a new completed edition by Clemens Kemme). The coupling is CPE Bach's Heilig ist Gott from 1776, scored for contralto, double choir and double orchestra.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Dobrinka Tabakova: Orchestral Works and Concertos
Maxim Rysanov (viola), Guy Johnston (cello), Hallé Orchestra, Delyana Lazarova
Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova was the Hallé's Artist in Residence for the 2022-23 season, and this recording includes two of her major orchestral works: the Earth Suite (inspired by 'the overwhelming force of Nature’ and premiered in 2021), and the fanfare Orpheus’ Comet (which draws on material from Monteverdi’s Orfeo). The 2004 Viola Concerto is performed by its dedicatee Maxim Rysanov, whilst Guy Johnston is the soloist in the Cello Concerto (written for Kristine Blaumane and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in 2008).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Paris & Haffner Symphonies & Oboe Concerto
Xenia Löffler (oboe), Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Bernhard Forck
Akamus launches a new Mozart series on Pentatone with Symphonies Nos. 31 and 35, premiered in Paris and Vienna respectively; the ensemble's first oboist Xenia Löffler takes centre-stage in the concerto, and the programme is completed by Mozart's own woodwind arrangement of the overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail (composed in the same year as the Haffner symphony).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This album of Italian film-music includes excerpts from Once upon a time in America, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, The Legend of 1900, The Mission and Malèna (Ennio Morricone), The Godfather, La dolce vita and Amarcord (Nino Rota), Last Tango in Paris (Gato Barbieri), and Controvento (Silvestri). Albonetti writes: 'The masterpieces composed by two Italian film composers in particular, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, embody the cultural identity of most Italians and they have become recognised and loved by audiences around the world.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schubert's eight impromptus were written in 1827, though only the first two were published during the composer's lifetime. The D899 set is structured along the lines of a Classical sonata, whilst the D935 set is rather less conventional in form: the third piece is is a series of variations on ‘Rosamunde’, and the set concludes with a dazzling scherzo. Brautigam plays a Paul McNulty copy of a Conrad Graf fortepiano dating from around the time that the pieces were composed.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following recordings of the Toccatas, Partitas, Notebooks for Anna Magdalena, Italian Concerto & French Overture, the Iranian harpsichodist continues his acclaimed Bach series with the six French Suites plus three 'orphan suites' BWV818, 819 and 822. Esfahani writes: 'It would be a great error indeed to consider the French Suites as somehow less substantial works than Bach’s larger essays in this genre...In general, the motifs and phrases of the French Suites are more concise and the result of the distillation of craft that many a composer goes through in his middle period.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Appl's recital of Schubert songs as orchestrated by a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers and performers includes 'Erlkönig, 'Prometheus' and 'An die Musik' via Max Reger, 'Ständchen' via Offenbach, 'Du bist die Ruh', 'Der Wegweiser' and 'Tränenregen' via Webern, and 'Die Forelle' via Britten. Song pianist Alexander Schmalcz's arrangements of 'Abendstern' and 'An Silvia' (made for Matthias Goerne and recorded by him earlier in the year) also feature, as do Johann von Herbeck’s orchestrations of Schubert's dances.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is the world premiere recording of Benevoli Missa Tu es Petrus, based on Palestrina's famous motet of the same name and thought to have been composed for the newly-finished basilica of St Peter in Rome. The movements of the Mass are interspersed with four motets by Benevoli's contemporary Bonifazio Graziani (Domine, ne in furore tuo, Venite gentes, Ad mensam dulcissimi, and Justus ut palma), all of which also receive their first outings on record.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The German Renaissance composer Ludwig Daser is enjoying a surge in popularity this week, with a recording of his polyphonic masses from the Huelgas-Ensemble and Paul van Nevel scooping the Early Music prize at the Gramophone Awards; this album from Vienna-based vocal ensemble Cinquecento centres on the substantial Missa Pater Noster from the the Munich Choirbook 1565, and also features a selection of Latin and German motets including Fracta diuturnis, Dilexi, quoniam and Daran gedenck Jacob und Israel.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Almost thirty-five years on from their recording of Sheppard's Media Vita, The Tallis Scholars mark their fiftieth birthday with this programme centring on the composer's Missa Cantate and also featuring Gaude virgo Christiphera, Beata nobis gaudia and Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria. The album was praised in the October edition of Gramophone for the group's 'absolute unanimity, perfect tuning, impeccable diction, stunning control and seemingly effortless inevitability about everything they do'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
