New Release Round-up,
New Releases from Winter 2023
Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 8
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano), Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy
This eighth instalment of Bavouzet's Mozart series with Gábor Takács-Nagy and Manchester Camerata comprises Piano Concertos Nos. 26 & 27 plus the overtures to Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte and La clemenza di Tito. No. 26 was performed at the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor in 1790; Mozart premiered the final concerto at his last public concert, which took place in Vienna on 4th March 1791.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This is Savall's first Mendelssohn recording, and features two versions of the 'Italian' (which the composer described as 'the jolliest piece I have ever done' in a letter to his sister Fanny): the first account presents the piece as it was performed at its premiere in in London on 13th May 1833, whilst the second incorporates the revisions which he made the following year (a version which received its first recording only in 1999, under John Eliot Gardiner).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'
Mari Eriksmoen (soprano), Jennifer Johnston (mezzo), Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus, Santtu-Matias Rouvali
This second release on the Philharmonia's own label received a five-star review in the November edition of BBC Music Magazine (where it was featured as Orchestral Choice), with David Nice remarking that 'This is special indeed, and given such spectacular engineering (by Tom Stokes under producer Andrew Cornall), anyone wanting a Second in state-of-the-art sound should be happy with it.' The recording was made live at the Royal Festival Hall in June 2022, when Opera Today noted that it offered 'incandescent playing, perfect timing, [and] a sense of occasion'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Villa-Lobos: Cello Concertos Nos. 1-2 & Fantasia for Cello & Orchestra
Antonio Meneses (cello), São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Isaac Karabtchevsky
Premiered in Rio de Janeiro in 1919, the Tchaikovsky-influenced Cello Concerto No. 1 was Villa-Lobos's first major orchestral work; No. 2 dates from 1953 and was commissioned by the Brazilian cellist Aldo Parisot. In a four-star review earlier this month, BBC Music Magazine described the 1953 Fantasia as 'the work that really shows the composer at his most potent'. The album is the latest addition to Naxos's Music Of Brazil series, which has featured works by composers including Claudio Santoro, Alberto Nepomuceno, Carlos Gomes and Camargo Guarnieri.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
After a first instalment dedicated to Corelli's influence on 1720s London, the French ensemble skips forward two decades to explore works by some of the musicians who came to the English capital to play in Handel's orchestra: the programme includes flautist Friedrich Weidemann's Concerto No. 6 for German Flute, oboist Giuseppe Sammartini's Concerto a piu istromenti and violinist Pietro Castrucci's Sonata for viola da gamba. There are also excerpts from The Caledonian Pocket Companion by Scottish composer James Oswald, who was Chamber Composer for King George III.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The third volume of The Mozartists' Sturm und Drang series focuses on music composed between 1771 and 1788, featuring Haydn's Symphony No. 44 (known as the 'Trauersymphonie'), Mozart's Adagio & Fugue in C minor for Strings K546, Leopold Koželuch's Symphony in G minor, and scenas from Paisiello’s Annibale in Torino and Schweitzer’s Alceste. BBC Music Magazine deemed Pogorelc's contribution as the 'stand-out feature', observing that the young American soprano 'has superb technical sureness, state-of-the-art command of the music’s wild emotional switchbacks, and firework-display virtuosity to match'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Bach: Partitas (Re-Imagined for Small Orchestra by Thomas Oehler)
Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, Soloists from The Glenn Gould School, Trevor Pinnock
Oehler's 'reimaginings' of Partitas Nos. 1, 2 and 5 were commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music's principal Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, and are scored for the same forces as Józef Koffler's arrangement of the Goldberg Variations (also released on Linn in 2020. A short original piece by Oehler himself (who studied at the Academy under the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies) completes the programme: Brook of Light, commissioned especially for this project.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This second instalment of Hewitt's projected series of the complete Mozart sonatas features a work which the Canadian pianist played in her first-ever full-length recital, aged nine: the incomplete Fantasia in D minor K397 (given here in a edition thought to be the work of August Eberhard Müller, a former Thomaskantor). Reviewing the album earlier this month, Gramophone declared that 'if you want Mozart from an Apollonian vantage point, with spotless surfaces and impeccable proportions, Hewitt is your ideal pianist'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart y Mambo: La Bella Cubana
Sarah Willis (horn), Jonathan Kelly (oboe), Wenzel Fuchs (clarinet), Stefan Schweigert (bassoon), Harold Madrigal Frías (trumpet); Havana Lyceum Orchestra, The Sarahbanda, José Antonio Méndez Padrón
This album completes Willis's Mozart y Mambo project with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra, which has also involved three documentary films, two international tours and fundraising to help support classical musicians in Cuba; La Bella Cubana takes its title from a dance by José White Lafitte, and also includes Edgar Olivero's Mozart-inspired Rondo Alla Rumba, Joseíto Fernández's Guajira Guantanamera, and Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 & Sinfonia Concertante for Winds.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Parry: Scenes from Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound'
Sarah Fox (soprano), Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), David Butt Philip (tenor), Neal Davies (bass-baritone); London Mozart Players, Crouch End Festival Chorus, William Vann
Commissioned for the Three Choirs Festival (Gloucester) in 1880, Parry's Wagner-influenced Shelley setting was described by the critic Henry Cope Colles as displaying 'a sense of forceful declamation which English music had not known since Purcell', whilst the musicologist Ernest Walker declared that its premiere could reasonably stand as 'a definite birthday for modern English music.' This is the work's first-ever recording, following Vann & Co.'s Gramophone Award-nominated premiere of the composer's Judith in 2020.
Read our interview with William Vann here.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This powerful recital takes its title from a line in Thomas Hardy's 'Channel Firing' (written just before the outbreak of World War One), which is one of the poems that Finzi set in his song-cycle Before and After Summer (originally for baritone, but sung here by Fleur Barron). The programme also includes Britten's WH Auden cycle On This Island, William Marsey's Removal and Other Powers (setting text taken from the 2014 immigration bill and commissioned for this project), and Joanna Ward’s SUMMER DRESSES / STRANGER FRIENDS.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Belgian choir and its founder present three cantatas which were composed for St Thomas's Church in Leipzig in the mid-1720s, shortly after Bach was appointed as Kantor: 'Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan', 'Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden', and 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben'. The soloists include CVG veteran Peter Kooij (who also featured prominently on Masaaki Suzuki's complete Bach cantatas project), soprano Dorothee Mields, and the young English tenor Guy Cutting.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schreker: Der Schatzgräber (DVD)
Elisabet Strid (Els), Daniel Johansson (Elis), Michael Laurenz (Der Narr); Deutsche Oper Berlin, Marc Albrecht, Christof Loy
This is the first-ever DVD release of Schreker's Der Schatzgräber ('The Treasure-Hunter'), which was premiered in Frankfurt in 1920: set in medieval times, the opera concerns a wandering minstrel who is tasked with tracing a queen's missing jewels and narrowly escapes execution for a murder which he didn't commit in the process. This new production by Christof Loy was filmed at the Deutsche Oper Berlin last May, and the recording was a Gramophone Critics' Choice as well as their DVD/Blu-ray of the Month in November.
Available Format: DVD Video
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
