Coming Soon,
Chopin from Yunchan Lim and other forthcoming highlights
Highlights for April and early May include the complete Chopin Études from Van Cliburn Competition winner Yunchan Lim, a live recording of Yuja Wang's 2022 recital from the Konzerthaus Wien (featuring works by Beethoven, Scriabin, Albéniz and Kapustin), songs by Schubert, Mussorgsky and five English composers from British bass Brindley Sherratt & Julius Drake, and world premiere recordings of two new operas based on novels and film: Kevin Puts's The Hours (starring Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O'Hara) and Paul Moravec's The Shining from the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
Still in his teens, the South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, when jury-member Marin Alsop described him as 'that rare artist who brings profound musicality and prodigious technique organically together'; his live recording of Liszt's Transcendental Études from the semi-final of the competition was hailed as 'one of the finest and most compelling performances [of the work] I have ever heard' by Gramophone's Jeremy Nicholas. This set of the complete Chopin Études is his debut recording on Decca, with whom he signed in October.
Released 19th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Recorded live at the Wiener Konzerthaus in April 2022, Wang's programme includes Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 3, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18 ('The Hunt'), 'Lavapiés' and 'Malaga' from Albéniz's Iberia, Études by Ligeti and Glass, two of Kapustin's Preludes in Jazz Style, and Márquez's Danzón No. 2. Reviewing her performance of a similar programme in London a few days earlier, The Guardian remarked that 'technically everything was dazzling, every detail crisp and perfectly articulated, with chords exactly weighted and precisely placed...It was all thoroughly musical, too, never heartless or mechanical.'
Released 3rd May.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The British bass initially trained as a trumpet-player, then held a full-time position with the BBC Singers for many years before embarking on a solo operatic career which has seen him triumph in roles such as Sarastro, Baron Ochs, Gurnemanz and Claggart; his debut solo recording includes Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, Schubert's 'Fahrt zum Hades' and 'Der Tod und das Mädchen', and songs by Ireland, Head, Warlock, Gurney and Finzi.
Released 26th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kevin Puts: The Hours
Renée Fleming (Clarissa Vaughan), Joyce DiDonato (Virginia Woolf), Kelli O'Hara (Laura Brown), Sean Panikkar (Leonard Woolf), Kyle Ketelsen (Richard), Denyce Graves (Sally); Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Based on Stephen Daldry's 2002 film and the original novel by Michael Cunningham (which in turn takes inspiration from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway), The Hours was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022 and charts a single day in the lives of three women: Virginia Woolf, literary editor Clarissa Vaughan, and housewife & mother Laura Brown. The work was described as 'a stunning triumph' by Variety, whilst The Telegraph's Nicholas Kenyon declared that 'Joyce DiDonato has surely done nothing finer than her tortured Virginia Woolf'.
Released 19th April.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Paul Moravec: The Shining
Edward Parks (Jack Torrance), Kelly Kaduce (Wendy Torrance), Tristan Hallett (Danny), Aubrey Allicock (Dick Hallorann), Malcolm MacKenzie (Mark Torrance), Wayd Odle (Delbert Grady), Roger Honeywell (Lloyd); Kansas City Symphony, Gerard Schwarz
Based on Stephen King's 1977 novel (to which it adheres more closely than Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film), Moravec's opera was premiered in Minnesota in 2016, when The Wall Street Journal described it as 'a well-made, entertaining piece...[which] elevates the tale from a horror story to a human drama'. This recording was made around a new production in Kansas City last year, following a run in Colorado where the story is set.
Released 12th April.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
John Williams: Violin Concerto No. 1 & Bernstein: Serenade
James Ehnes (violin), Saint Louis Symphony, Stéphane Denève
Williams composed his Violin Concerto No. 1 in the mid-1970s in memory of his first wife Barbara Ruick, whose screen credits included the role of Carrie Pipperidge in the 1956 film of Rodger & Hammerstein's Carousel; the work was premiered by the Saint Louis Symphony in 1981 and was subsequently championed by Gil Shaham (who recorded it in 1999, with the composer conducting). Ehnes felt the Serenade made for an apposite coupling, reflecting that Bernstein is 'probably the only other American composer whose music has reached a similarly wide and varied audience.'
Released 26th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Fischer began his Budapest Beethoven series back in 2008 with a recording of Symphony No. 7 which The Guardian hailed as 'among the greatest ever recorded...superbly articulated, thrillingly elated and emotionally exhausting'; Symphonies Nos. 4 & 6 followed two years later, with Nos. 1 & 5 appearing in 2019. Reviewing their Prom last summer, The Arts Desk declared that 'It takes quite some performance to overcome the seeming familiarity of Beethoven’s Eroica, and yet Iván Fischer and his Budapest orchestra achieved it...the balance and ensemble are consistently jaw-dropping.'
Released 12th April.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The French soprano's first Lieder recording sees her teaming up with regular recital-partner Mathieu Pordoy for a programme which includes Mozart's 'An Chloë', 'Abendempfindung an Laura' & Das Veilchen, and Strauss's 'Morgen!', 'Allerseelen', 'Die Nacht' and 'Amor' (from the Brentano-Lieder). Reviewing their 2022 recital of this repertoire at Wigmore Hall, The Spectator's Richard Bratby observed that 'the clarity and the lightly worn self-awareness of Devieilhe’s singing made for a seductive combination'.
Released 29th March.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
John Adams: City Noir, Fearful Symmetries & Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop
The main event on this triptych of orchestral works by John Adams is City Noir, which draws on historian Kevin Starr's portrait of mid-twentieth-century Los Angeles and is described by the composer as ‘an imaginary film score'. Fearful Symmetries was composed shortly after the premiere of Nixon in China and shares much of the opera's sound-world, whilst Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance (dedicated to Alsop) was inspired by the extraordinary life-story of the Irish-born dancer, courtesan and sometime lover of Liszt, Dumas and Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Released 5th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The main event on this third instalment of Dausgaard's Bartók series is the pantomime ballet The Wooden Prince, based on a story by the Hungarian poet Béla Balázs and premiered in Budapest in 1917; Dausgaard conducts Bartók's final version of the score, which eliminates material relating to specific stage action and was regarded as 'an absolute improvement' by the composer. The programme is completed by the Divertimento for Strings and the Romanian Folk Dances.
Released 29th March.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This fascinating anthology of works in the English Romantic tradition includes Holst's Ornulf's Drapa (a 1898 scena for baritone and orchestra on text by Ibsen), Delius's Petite Suite No. 1, Norman O'Neill's setting of Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci, Quilter's Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnel, and Alexander Campbell Mackenzie's Colomba; Havergal Brian's Legend (originally for violin and piano) is presented in a new orchestration by Marshall-Luck.
Released 19th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Following acclaimed recordings of Scriabin's mazurkas and Shostakovich's 24 Preludes & Fugues, Gugnin presents the original solo piano version of From Holberg’s Time (more commonly heard in the composer's own arrangement for string orchestra), the 1840 Ballade based on a Norwegian mountain-tune, and Books Three & Seven of the Lyric Pieces. Gugnin's Shostakovich recording won the Instrumental Prize at the 2020 BBC Music Magazine Awards, when he was hailed as 'a ferocious new talent who can also accomplish the introspection'.
Released 3rd May.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Mozart occupies a central place in the repertoire of the South African soprano, who made an unforgettable Glyndebourne debut as Countess Almaviva in 2016 (The Guardian remarked that it was 'hard to imagine finer soprano singing'), and is due to sing Fiordiligi at Covent Garden this summer. Her programme here includes the sextet from Così fan tutte, the quartet from Don Giovanni and the final scene of Le nozze di Figaro as well as solo scenes and arias from all three operas.
Released 12th April.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
