New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 20th October 2023
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
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14
Asmik Grigorian (soprano), Matthias Goerne (bass-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.
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.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The second instalment of Gray's African American Voices series with the RSNO features Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations (composed in the wake of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama and also referencing the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the mid-1950s), Ulysses Kay's neoclassical Concerto for Orchestra from 1948, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Worship: A Concert Overture from 2001. (Volume One, released last October, features works by William Grant Still, George Walker and William L. Dawson).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Gerstein and the Berlin Philharmonic mark Rachmaninoff's 150th birthday with a live recording of the Piano Concerto No. 2 (the first work by the composer to be performed by the orchestra, back in 1903); Gerstein also contributes accounts of the Variations on a theme of Corelli, the Melodie from the Morceaux de fantaisie Op. 3, Rachmaninoff's transcription of Kreisler's Liebesleid, and his own solo piano arrangement of 'In the silence of the secret night'.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Composed to mark the fortieth anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution, Weinberg's symphonic poem Dawn (Zarya) appears to have remained unperformed during the composer's lifetime, receiving its premiere from the BBC Philharmonic and Storgårds in 2019. It's followed here by the Symphony No. 12, written in the mid-1970s in memory of Weinberg's friend and mentor Shostakovich, whom he regarded as the greatest symphonist of his age.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This collection of French symphonic poems takes its title from a work by Henri Duparc, and features four world premiere recordings; the programme ranges from popular works such as Dukas's L'Apprenti sorcier, Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre and Chabrier's España to rarities including Charlotte Sohy's Danse mystique, Mel Bonis's Le Songe de Cléopâtre and Henri Rabaud's La procession nocturne.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Presenting the fruits of Mackenzie and Sawers's lockdown exploration of various physical and online archives, this recital of music for cello & piano by female composers includes Marie Dare's Hebridean Suite and The Spanish Shawl, Christabel Baxendale's Plaintive Melody, AE Horrock's Twilight (Rêverie), Annie Maria Grimson's Nocturne, and transcriptions of two songs by Avril Coleridge-Taylor: 'Who knows?' and 'Can Sorrow Find Me?'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Russian-Lithuanian pianist partnered Asmik Grigorian on the award-winning Rachmaninoff recital Dissonance last year and made a stand-out contribution to Piano Classics's complete edition of the piano music in 2021, with The Guardian noting that he 'plays the complete preludes with such wonderful control, lucidity and poise it’s hard to believe the recording was taken live'. This album marks his solo debut on Alpha Classics.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This mainstays of this programme are Rheinberger's Cantus Missæ for double choir from 1878 (inspired in part by the Venetian cori spezzati) and Mendelssohn's Three Psalms Op. 78: 'Warum toben die Heiden', 'Richte mich, Gott' and 'Mein Gott, warum hast Du mich verlassen?'. Also includes Rheinberger's Abendlied (arguably the composer's most popular sacred work) and Mendelssohn's Six Motets Op. 79.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Hot on the heels of their superb account of Stravinsky's Les Noces (which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine), Ensemble Aedes present two works by a composer who featured on their award-winning 2019 recording; the Litanies à la Vierge noire from 1936 (inspired by the Black Madonna of Rocamadour) and the Stabat Mater from 1950. By way of interlude, Romano includes Janequin's secular motet 'O doulx regard, o parler gratieux'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their much-praised album of motets by Renaissance composer Vicente Lusitano (which won our Rediscovery Award last year), The Marian Consort jump forward to the present day with a programme including Sir James MacMillan's Laudi alla Vergine Maria, Howard Skempton's Ave Virgo sanctissima, Dani Howard's Unbound and Oliver Tarney's Prayer to the Mother of God. The title-work, by Scottish-Greek composer Electra Perivolaris, was premiered by the Marians in May and sets texts by Hildegard von Bingen and Welsh poet Heather Dohollau.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Porpora: Polifemo
Yuriy Mynenko (Aci), Max Emanuel Cencic (Ulisse), Pavel Kudinov (Polifemo), Julia Lezhneva (Galatea), Sonja Runje (Calipso), Dilyara Idrisova (Nerea); Armonia Atenea, George Petrou
Premiered at the King's Theatre in London in 1735 with a cast including the star castrati Farinelli and Senesino, Porpora's opera sets two episodes from the cyclops's story: his jealousy-driven murder of Acis (which had also inspired Handel in London thirteen years earlier) and his blinding at the hands of Ulysses. Acis's aria 'Alto Giove' (originally sung by Farinelli) has become a firm favourite with mezzos and countertenors, though stagings of the complete opera remain relatively rare; Cencic first directed the piece in Salzburg in 2019, and took it on tour earlier this year.
Available Format: 3 CDs
Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea
Elsa Benoit (Poppea), Jake Arditti (Nerone), Ambroisine Bré (Ottavia), Iestyn Davies (Ottone), Alex Rosen (Seneca), Stuart Jackson (Arnalta); Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García Alarcón
Filmed at the Palace of Versailles earlier this year (and broadcast on medici.tv), Ted Huffman's production of Monteverdi's opera was previously staged at the Aix-en Provence Festival, when OperaWire enthused that 'the gods themselves appeared to have an interest' in the results: Arditti's 'virile, volatile and domineering' Nerone was singled out for particular praise, as was Alarcón's 'fabulously detailed' approach to the score.
Available Format: Blu-ray + DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
