New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 24th November 2023
Handel: Messiah
Lucy Crowe (soprano), Alex Potter (counter-tenor), Michael Spyres (tenor), Matthew Brook (bass), The English Concert & Choir, John Nelson
Recorded live at Coventry Cathedral exactly a year ago, this Messiah features bonus-tracks of material which Handel revised or added for performances between 1741 and 1750 (including an alto version of 'How beautiful are the feet' and a triple-time setting of 'Rejoice greatly'). Reviewing the live performance, The Times's Rebecca Franks declared: 'Nelson injected a welcome shot of energy...This was Handel straight from the opera-house: dramatic and eloquent'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs + DVD Video, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schumann: Piano Quartet - Piano Quintet
Isabelle Faust (violin), Anne-Katharina Schreiber (violin, Antoine Tamestit (viola), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Alexander Melnikov (piano)
Melnikov, Faust and Queyras collaborated on a superb series of Robert Schumann's piano trios (each one coupled with a concerto) back in the mid-2010s, with International Piano describing their account of No. 2 as 'top-quality chamber playing in a reference recording' and Record Review praising the 'intelligence and mutual sympathy' of their playing. Now they are joined by two distinguished guests for two slightly larger works from 1842, both of which received their public premieres with Clara at the piano.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The third volume of this popular advent series from John's includes Cheryl Frances-Hoad's 'Lo! The Desert-Depths are Stirr'd', Helen Grime's 'Telling' (composed especially for this choir), Francis Pott's 'There is No Rose', Judith Weir's 'Drop down, ye heavens, from above', and two carols by Philip Ledger: 'Adam Lay Ybounden' and 'Advent Calendar'. Now Director of Music at Westminster Abbey, Nethsingha writes: 'By the time this album is released it will nearly be time to enjoy Christopher Gray’s first Advent Carol Service broadcast, as the next chapter of this wonderful choir’s history is beginning'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Guthrie's own arrangements of Schubert's song-cycle for voice, string quintet and nineteenth-century guitars was inspired by his childhood memories of family story-telling sessions around the fire and by his PhD research on ornamentation in Schubert Lieder; reviewing a live performance (complete with puppetry!) in 2021, The Arts Desk described the results as 'a fusion of folk, soundtrack and even jazz that finds unexpected new accents and colours in the familiar cycle'.
(We will be hosting a launch-concert for the album at our store in Leamington Spa this evening, so do look out for highlights from the event on our YouTube channel in the coming weeks...).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Luke Bedford: In the Voices of the Living
Mark Padmore, London Sinfonietta, Geoffrey Paterson, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oliver Knussen, Arcis Saxophon Quartett et al
The title-work on this portrait of the British composer (b.1978) is a song-cycle for tenor and six instruments, inspired by the writings of Petrarch, Joyce, Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, and Shakespeare himself: the piece was commissioned by London Sinfonietta in 2019 and premiered at Kings Place in June 2021. The programme also includes Outblaze the Sky (conducted by the late Oliver Knussen, and described by The Guardian as 'a sequence of luminous, beautifully voiced Scriabin-like chords worked to a fiery climax'), Instability (premiered at the BBC Proms in 2015), and the Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra from 2017.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Lina Johnson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (mezzo-soprano), Martin Platz (tenor), Manuel Walser (bass), La Capella Nacional de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall
Following their recordings of Beethoven's complete symphonies, the period instruments of Le Concert des Nations turn to a work which Savall describes as 'one of the most inestimable treasures of the human mind': the Catalan conductor contends that the use of gut strings and the elimination of vibrato from the vocal soloists and choir 'restore[s] the organic, fragile and therefore essentially human dimension of Beethoven’s music'. The recording was made at the Collégiale de Cardonia in Catalonia this May.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following several acclaimed recordings of Classical repertoire, the Wigmore Soloist present a programme of twentieth-century chamber works: Howard Ferguson's Octet from 1933, Sir Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet from 1932, and Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C from 1979 (scored for the same forces as Schubert's Octet, which the group recorded in 2021). The line-up of players includes Isabelle van Keulen, Michael Collins and Scott Dickinson.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Copland, Creston, Kay & Piston: Concertos & Orchestral Suites
Timothy McAllister (alto saxophone), Anna Mattix (cor anglais), National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, JoAnn Falletta
This programme of twentieth-century American music features world premiere recordings of two works: Ulysses Kay’s Michelangelo-inspired elegy Pietà (composed in Rome in 1950, shortly after Kay won the Prix de Rome) and Paul Creston’s Saxophone Concerto in its original version from 1941. The album also includes the suites from Copland's 1954 opera The Tender Land and Walter Piston's 1938 ballet The Incredible Flutist.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The German pianist describes this programme as 'a journey from the earthly to the light': beginning with Scriabin's Vers la flamme, it comprises Eckardstein's own transcription of Strauss's Tod und Verklärung, 'Regard de l'église d'amour' from Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, an improvisation by Eckardstein, and Beethoven's final piano sonata & Andante Favori.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Latvian soprano's fifth solo recording on her own label Prima Classic features arias from Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Gianni Schicchi, La Bohème, Tosca and La rondine, Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame, Boito's Mefistofele and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Catalani's La Wally and Dvořák's Rusalka.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Elizabeth Poston: Carols & Anthems
St. Albans Cathedral Girls Choir, Lay Clerks of St. Albans Cathedral Choir, Tom Winpenny
The centrepiece of this album is The Nativity: a 'Sequence for Christmas' from 1950, which incorporates Herefordshire folk-carols collected by Vaughan Williams Individual carols include the ever-popular 'Jesus Christ The Apple-Tree', a traditional Cornish tune, and carols from medieval manuscripts held in Chester, London, Cambridge and Oxford. Individual carols include the ever-popular 'Jesus Christ the Apple-Tree', plus 'The Dormouse Carol, 'In Bethlehem Town, 'The Queen of Sheba's Song' and the Two Carols in Memory of Peter Warlock.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bach 300
Lang Lang (piano), Daniel Hope, Albrecht Mayer, Sophie Kauer, Francesca Aspromonte, Cameron Shahbazi, Thomaner Chor Leipzig, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Andreas Reize
This all-star concert took place at the market-square in Leipzig earlier this year to mark the tercentenary of the composer's appointment as Kantor at the city's Thomaskirche; the programme includes the Cello Suite No. 1, Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor BWV 1060, 'Bist du bei mir', excerpts from the Goldberg Variations, Singet dem Herrn, and the Gloria from the Mass in B minor.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
