News from around the world

August 2021 New Releases

A selection of new recordings

 

Here is our list of new releases, mostly of albums becoming available during August 2021. There's also a list of festivals, concerts and operas which we've been invited to review, and also a book for review.

Our regular writers will receive an email about this list.

The list is very large and has been prepared quickly. Apologies if the information is not up to our usual standards, and please let us know if you find any mistakes.

 

FESTIVALS / CONCERTS / OPERA

Oregon Symphony
Notations
The musical journey of an artist is deeply shaped by one’s heritage and culture. Notations features five extraordinary Oregon musicians, spotlighting their stories, lived experiences and cultural backgrounds,  exploring the ways in which those histories permeate their works. Each episode culminates with a performance that includes Oregon Symphony musicians and reflects those unique perspectives. Notations airs bi-weekly on Oregon Symphony’s recently launched digital hub, Studio 125.

Orchestre Philharmonique et Chœur des Mélomanes (OPCM)
2021-22 Season (starting in October 2021)
New energy for great classics
Alain Lefèvre will bring to life the legendary
Concerto de Québec by André Mathieu

Musik i Uppland
5 Aug 2021
Malin Broman möter stråkar ur
Uppsala Kammarorkester
5 aug kl 12.15 Gottsunda kyrka
5 aug kl 19.00 CIK, Knivsta

Ian Page and The Mozartists
Recording of Jommelli's Il Vologeso and concerts in London UK at Wigmore Hall and Cadogan Hall
16 September 2021 | Wigmore Hall ‘The Swinging Sixties’ concert
17 September 2021 | Release of Il Vologeso album, Signum SIGCD692
22 November 2021 | Cadogan Hall ‘1771 – Mozart’s Perspective’ concert

La Muse en Circuit
Je suis honorée d'être née dans ta tête
Séverine Ballon
26 > 28/08 - 18h30
Jardin Anne Frank (Paris) / Maison de la poésie | Hyper Festival
'Erreurs salvatrices'
Wilfried Wendling avec Denis Lavant & Cécile Mont-Reynaud
29/07 > 14/08
Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil

Cycle 'Imaginarium' : suivre le journal de création #4
Wilfried Wendling, Directeur
La Muse en Circuit – CNCM
18 rue Marcelin Berthelot - 94140 Alfortville, France

SIC Choir of the Earth - online Festival of Choral Music
1-7 November 2021

Northern Ireland Opera
La Bohème
September 2021
Artistic Director Cameron Menzies first production in front of live audiences since he joined mid-pandemic in February this year.  Cameron’s award-winning career spans the worlds of opera, theatre, music theatre, cabaret and film-making.

ESO Digital
Bártok  Bluebeard’s Castle
Friday 13 Aug 2021, 7.30pm then free to listen until 17 Aug
– Orchestration by Christopher van Tuinen
– Revision by Michael Young
English Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Kenneth Woods
Soloists: April Fredrick (Judith) / David Stout (Bluebeard)

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Lithuanian National Opera, Strauss’ masterpiece sees the debut of Carmela Remigio as the Feldmarschallin conducted by Sesto Quatrini
From 3 Sept 2021
A new production of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), staged by Damiano Michieletto, is about to open in Vilnius. Initially scheduled for the Spring of 2020 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels – which is co-producing the show with the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Lithuanian National Opera – it was then cancelled due to the pandemic. The premiere is scheduled on Friday 3 September at Vilnius Opera House. Sesto Quatrini, the theatre’s Artistic Director, will be conducting. The sets are once again by Paolo Fantin, costumes are by Agostino Cavalca, and light design is by Alessandro Carletti. Among the protagonists is Carmela Remigio, one of the few Italian singers to have approached the role of the Feldmaschallin. Next to Remigio are Eglė Šidlauskaitė playing Octavian, Albert Pesendorfer as Baron Ochs, Lina Dambrauskaitè interpreting the role of Sophie, Steponas Zonys as Faninal, Rafailas Karpis as Valzacchi, and Regina Šilinskaitė as Annina. Liudas Mikalauskas (a police inspector), Mindaugas Jankauskas (the Feldmarschallin’s Major-Domo and Faninal’s Major-Domo), Deniz Leone (an Italian singer) and Egidijus Dauskurdis (a notary) complete the cast.

Dutch National Opera and Ballet
Michel van der AA's 'Upload' - film version on medici.tv
What if our minds could live forever—if advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience offered us a way to transfer our memories and experiences into a sustainable digital consciousness? Against the backdrop of present-day and near-future technologies, Michel van der Aa’s provocative new opera Upload explores age-old philosophical questions: What are the limits of human memory, and what happens when we are unable to forget? Where do our identities really reside—in our minds, our bodies, our relationships? And how far do the raw data of our lives determine our fate?  When the live performances of Upload could not take place last March during Dutch National Opera's Opera Forward Festival, the idea of creating a film version was born. Apart from the two singers Roderick Williams (Father) and Julia Bullock (Daughter), the film version also features actors Katja Herbers (Psychiatrist), Ashley Zukerman (CEO), Esther Mugambi (Scientist) and Claron McFadden (Childhood friend). Composed, written and directed by Michel van der Aa. Ensemble MusikFabrik conducted by Otto Tausk.  (Viewers in the US will not be able to access the feed until after 1 April 2022.)  The staged version of Upload is scheduled for the upcoming Bregenzer Festspiele, followed by performances in Amsterdam from 1 October 2021.

Secret Garden Concerts
Streatham, South-west London, UK
30 July-12 September 2021
Secret Garden Concerts is an entirely outdoor and Covid-safe festival based in Streatham, South-west London, which returns this summer with a fabulous array of international stars in an intimate, magical setting, with sensational food to match. Borne out of the desperate situation for the arts brought on by the pandemic, cellist Chris Grist, (founder and artistic director of London Concertante and Secret Garden Concerts), was faced with all the doors of his regular venues being shut, so he literally opened his own doors to his beautiful and magical garden to bring an amazing offering of arts to the local community.  Grist comments: 'When the Government announced that outdoor performances could take place in July last year, my fellow musicians and I had not had the opportunity to perform to a live audience for many months. The music industry had been enormously hit by Covid, and all around me freelance musicians were having to turn to other professions, which was tragic to see. We started Secret Garden Concerts to give musicians crucial work and audiences an opportunity to watch performances without compromising their safety.'

Edinburgh International Festival
Digital programme offers free full-length performances for global audiences.
18 full length performances available for free throughout 2021

MITO SettembreMusica 2021: 'Futures'
Milano-Torino, 8-26 September 2021
Diversity and continuity in an ambitious program: Musicians from throughout Europe make their return to Milano and Torino, with music of the past and present, as we set our sights on the future.
#soloamito: 126 concerts especially conceived to represent the theme for this, the fifteenth edition of MITO SettembreMusica: “Futures” – all concerts will be staged in both host cities.
Opening concert with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fabio Luisi, featuring pianist Francesco Piemontesi; the festival winds up in Milano with the Teatro Regio Orchestra of Torino conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, and in Torino with the La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly.
This year’s artists include pianists Ivo Pogorelich, Brad Mehldau, Gabriela Montero, Michail Lifits; violinist Sergej Krylov; tenor Ian Bostridge; accordionist Ksenija Sidorova.
7 world premieres, including one commissioned by MITO SettembreMusica.
12 Italian premieres.
The involvement of more than 60 living composers.
Choir Day features 13 concerts, all free admission.
We continue our collaboration with Rai Radio3, with many concerts streamed live or with live recordings available for online listening; Rai Cultura will be making a documentary film about MITO SettembreMusica.

Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham, UK
The COVID-19 Variations: A Piano Drama
A unique Theatrical Event at The REP to open its 50th Anniversary Season.
By Alison Jackson and Richard Thomas
Directed by Sean Foley
Friday 27 August 2021 at 6pm and 8.30pm
Saturday 28 August 2021 at 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Alison Jackson, BAFTA and multi-Award winning contemporary artist, and Richard Thomas, Birmingham born Artistic Associate of The REP and Olivier Award winning composer and lyricist, together with acclaimed, New York based, concert pianist Philip Edward Fisher have collaborated to create a special theatrical event to mark the re-opening season of The REP in it’s 50th year on Centenary Square. Directed by REP Artistic Director, double Olivier Award winner Sean Foley, The Covid-19 Variations: A Piano Drama is a playfully provocative one-off piece of event theatre - an outrageously funny film and concert in one. An inadvertently powerful and always entertaining take on the last 18 months, The Covid-19 Variations stars everyone from Donald Trump to Elton John, from Kanye West to the Royal Family - because everyone has lived through Covid. Inspired by having had Covid - twice! - Richard Thomas's 'piano drama’ is a Gershwinesque 23 minute riff on the experience of being in the grip of the disease du jour. He wrote the piece for Birmingham born and raised Philip Fisher who was extremely ill with Covid in New York in the first days of lockdown. Philip recovered and played the piece in an empty auditorium on Long Island… A recording of his performance found its way to Alison Jackson, and she in turn was inspired to create 19 short films for each of the Covid-19 Variations, drawn from her world of fake news, alternative facts, and celebrity lookalikes, and commemorating life in the time of Covid.


A BOOK

GRANTA BOOKS

2 Sept 2021
Mozart in Motion by Patrick Mackie
Mackie returns to the vital experience of listening to Mozart's music. By uncovering new perspectives on the priorities and emphases of the music, he explores how Mozart was composing at precisely the moment when the modern world was forming, and how this speaks clearly to our time. Mozart in Motion is a fresh and revitalising exploration of Mozart’s life and work through the prism of the turbulent time in which he lived, and gives us a new understanding of why his pieces still move us so intensely.

 


RECORDINGS

This large list of recordings is presented alphabetically, by record label name.

ACCORD

30 July 2021
Krzysztof Penderecki
Symphony No. 6; Concerto per clarinetto
Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephan Genz, Joanna Kravchenko, Andrzej Wojciechowski, Wojciech Rajski
ACD270
Two musical orders meet in the programme of this album, both with reference to the most broadly conceived music history and to the universe of Krzysztof Penderecki’s output. Apart from the opera, which holds its own separate place, they are the two largest-scale formal orders in the musical art: those of the symphony and the concerto, which represent two fundamental ideas: respectively, those of co-operation and of competition. Krzysztof Penderecki’s symphonic writing is one of the most important elements of his output as a composer, and possibly the most fascinating one. The composer himself frequently emphasised the autonomous identity of his symphonic oeuvre both in the context of Polish works in this genre and in the broad perspective of Western music. Despite the distance of more than 30 years that separates the Clarinet Concerto from Symphony No. 6, the two works are both evidence of a similar turn in Krzysztof Penderecki’s artistic stance – a turn from monumentalism to an intimate and internally lucid type of musical statement.

 

ALBION RECORDS

23 July 2021
Vladimir Golschmann; Robert Hull; Francis Tursi; A. Stratton
RVW From America: Forgotten Recordings Of The 50s
ALBCD048

 


ARS PRODUKTION

3 Sept 2021
Duo Praxedis
'Piazzolla' – Transcriptions for Harp and Piano
ARS 38592 (2 CD)
CD1: Le Grand Tango; Revirado; Introducción al Ángel; Muerte de Ángel; Milonga del Ángel ; Violentango ; Undertango ; Michelangelo 70 ; Tangata ; CD2 : Soledad ; Decarísimo; Suite Porteña de Ballet; Libertango; Buenos Aires Hora Cero; Verano Porteño; Fuga y Mysterio; Oblivion
Duo Praxedis feature harp and piano instrumentation, which is rare these days, yet at the same time being sonically fantastic listening. The dynamic aura of the concert grand in constant interplay with the sensual sound of the harp seem to be made for this music - a previously unheard-of tango experience that you will not want to do without, especially after you hear the unique sound of the Duo Praxedis for the first time. The Piazzolla ‘classics’ presented here have been transcribed by the Duo themselves and are premiere recordings and are a broad cross-section of different periods of the composer's career.

 

AUSTRALIAN ELOQUENCE

16 July 2021
Sara Macliver; Paul McMahon; Christopher Richardson; Bowman
Songs By Calvin Bowman: Real & Right & True
ELQ4817051

16 July 2021
Catherine Hewgill; Vladimir Ashkenazy
From Darkness To Light
ELQ4816562

16 July 2021
Moye Chen
Four Worlds: Rachmaninov, Grainger, Horowitz
ELQ4817037

16 July 2021
Various Pianists
Pianists Of The Sydney Int'l Piano Competition (1992-2016)
ELQ4819497

 


AVIE RECORDS

17 Sept 2021
Charles Owen
Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, Suisse; Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
AV2476
Coinciding with Charles Owen's 50th birthday year, this release showcases pieces loved by him since his teenage years and revisited in depth during the first Covid lockdown of spring 2020. As Charles says of the music, 'Liszt’s extraordinarily powerful imagination was fired up by a wide range of visual, aural and literary experiences. The Alpine views he encountered on his journeys of the 1830s, the awe-inspiring mountains, field, lakes and valleys all found exquisite musical depiction in his ‘Années de pèlerinage, Suisse’. Against the background of an unexpected homebound existence [in lockdown] the imagery of journeying took on extra meaning in my mind. Together with Liszt’s sublime ‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude’ these pieces became constant, valued companions during some very uncertain days.'

 

BIDDULPH RECORDINGS

6 Aug 2021
William Primrose plays Baroque sonatas and encore pieces
William Primrose
85005-2
This CD features recordings by the great Scots-born violist William Primrose. The recordings were made between 1939-42, which most people regard were Primrose’s prime years. This was the period in which he collaborated in many chamber music recordings with Heifetz and Feuermann, and also founded the Primrose String Quartet, with Oscar Shumsky and Josef Gingold and Harvey Shapiro. Especially notable about this CD release is that it features 14 previously unissued recordings. Among the works that are new to the Primrose discography are Handel’s popular Sonata in A, as well as such favourites as Schubert’s Ave Maria, Schumann’s Warum? and Debussy’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair. Also included are numerous original compositions and transcriptions by Fritz Kreisler, Primrose’s idol. These include Liebesfreud, Syncopation and Aucassin and Nicolette, as well as pastiche pieces in the style of Baroque composers. Another item that receives its premiere on this CD is Kreisler’s transcription of Richard Heuberger’s beloved aria Im chambre séparée. This CD ends with the first commercial release of two well-known English salon pieces.


BIS RECORDS

30 July 2021
Johann Sebastian Bach, Roberto Gerhard, Heinz Holliger, Brice Pauset
Ciaccona
Ilya Gringolts
BIS2525 (Hybrid SACD)
Throughout his career, Ilya Gringolts has devoted himself to performing contemporary music as well as the great concert repertoire, while also developing a keen interest in historical performance practice. The focus of his latest recital disc is therefore quite logical: music of our own time and its inspiration: Johann Sebastian Bach. The album title is Ciaccona and besides Bach’s iconic composition, Gringolts plays a further two chaconnes – or three if one counts the Ciacconina which opens Heinz Holliger’s brief cycle, composed for Isabelle Faust in 2014. The Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard wrote his Chaconne using his own take on twelve-tone technique. In his introduction to the album, Gringolts describes its twelve movements as including ‘everything from chorale to ländler ... probably the most Viennese music ever written by a Catalan.’ The disc closes with Kontrapartita by the French composer Brice Pauset, ‘a kind of through-the-looking- glass Bach partita’ to quote Gringolts once again. Pauset composed his work in 2008 – seven movements, each written with a particular movement from Bach’s partitas for solo violin in mind. For this work (and the interwoven movements by Bach) Gringolts has chosen to use a violin with a baroque setup, finding that the instrument seemed to respond to the ‘historically informed avant-garde’ of the writing.

30 July 2021
Kalevi Aho Solo
Sharon Bezaly, Piet van Bockstal, Marie-Luise Neunecker, Samuli Peltonen, Simon Reitmaier, Bram van Sambeek, Hiyoli Togawa
BIS2446 (Hybrid SACD)
Kalevi Aho is one of today’s most prolific composersof large-scale orchestral scores, including 17 symphonies and 32 concertos to date. Less wellknown is the fact that he has also written chamber music, as well as an ever-expanding series of solo pieces – starting with Solo I for violin from 1975, the most recent in the series, for clavichord, is the 17th. Some of these pieces has originated as part of Aho’s preparations when composing a concerto for the instrument in question, while others have been written for competitions, including Solo III for flute and Solo IV for cello on the present disc. This first volume of Solos gathers seven pieces in all, four of which have previously appeared as part of separate discs. Aho’s Solos share the characteristic that they pose great technical, interpretative and often also physical challenges to the performer. Most of those heard here are performed by the musicians for whom they were written, including Hiyoli Togawa (Solo XII), Piet Van Bockstal (Solo IX), Simon Reitmaier (Solo XIV) and Marie-Luise Neunecker (Solo X).

30 July 2021
Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No. 1; Bernhard Gander: Peter Parker
Joonas Ahonen
BIS2409 (Hybrid SACD)
Of the two large piano sonatas composed by Charles Ives, No. 2 (’the Concord Sonata’) is by far the bestknown, overshadowing its sibling. The First Piano Sonata is comparably ambitious, however, and with a playing time of more than 40 minutes, similarly expansive. Like many works by Ives it had a long gestation period, beginning in 1901 with additions and revisions being made well into the 1920s. In contrast to the Concord, Ives didn’t provide the work with an explicit programme, but wrote that it was ‘mostly about the outdoor life in Connecticut villages in the 1880s and 90s.’ This can to an extent explain the various borrowings from hymns, but New York City, where Ives was living, has also left a clear mark with a liberal use of ragtime rhythms. Ives composed a third ‘sonata’ for the piano, the socalled Three-Page Sonata, cast in three brief but challenging movements. The two works are both included on this recording by Joonas Ahonen, who released the Concord Sonata in 2017 to critical acclaim, with the French magazine Classica praising ‘his youthful impetuosity and technical prowess’. Ives’ sonatas frame the third work on the disc, the Austrian composer Bernhard Gander’s Peter Parker from 2004. It is the alter ego of the superhero Spider-Man that has lent his name to Gander’s highly virtuosic and original piano piece which presents a panorama of the superhero’s patterns of movement, transformed into music.

30 July 2021
Britta Byström, Eduard Tubin, Jesper Nordin, Carin Malmlöf-Forssling
Back to Stockhome
Rick Stotijn, Malin Broman, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta, Simon Crawford-Phillips, James Gaffigan
BIS2379 (Hybrid SACD)
For the past ten years Rick Stotijn has been making Stockholm his second home, finding musical inspiration as well as new friends there. The present disc is a reflection of this, with existing and new repertoire involving the double bass by composers who have all at some point lived and worked in the city. The oldest work, as well as the best known, is the Concerto for Double Bass by Eduard Tubin, composed in 1948. Stotijn performs it here with the support of his own orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan. The other concerto on the disc was composed especially for Stotijn and for the violinist Malin Broman by Britta Byström. Infinite Rooms (2016) is a double concerto – in which the violinist switches between violin and viola – with inspiration from the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It was awarded the most important Swedish composition prize, Stora Christ Johnson-priset, in 2020, and comes with three ‘Walks’, potential encores which can also serve as bridges to the next work during the concert, be it by Schubert, Bruckner or Strauss. The orchestra heard in Infinite Rooms is the Västerås Sinfonietta, conducted by Simon Crawford- Phillips, who also appears on the disc in the role of pianist: Jesper Nordin’s Piano Trio, is an adaptation by the composer for these performers, of an earlier score for violin, cello and orchestra. Closing the disc is In memoriam by Carin Malmlöf- Forssling, a brief vocalise for soprano here transcribed for the double bass.

30 July 2021
Xiaogang Ye Winter
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Shenyang, Sharon Bezaly, Wei Lu, Noriko Ogawa, Gilbert Varga, José Serebrier
BIS2113
‘As intriguing as it is beguiling’ was how the ‘east-meets-west soundworld’ of Xiaogang Ye was described in the BBC Music Magazine on the release of a previous disc of his orchestral works in 2016. On that occasion Ye’s music was championed by José Serebrier, who returns here, sharing the task with Gilbert Varga. Between them they conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and four international soloists in five works which highlight the beginning of Ye’s career as well as his more recent works. The Brilliance of Western Liang was written in 1983, during Ye’s time as a student at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and is named after a fifth-century kingdom in northwest China. Five years later, Ye wrote his Op. 28, Winter for orchestra, shortly after the he had gone to stay in the U.S.A. A wintry theme returns in December Chrysanthemum (2006), composed in memory of Ye’s daughter Nini, who passed away as an infant. Two years later, Ye was given the prestigious task of writing a work for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics. His Starry Sky for piano, chorus and orchestra, was performed for a worldwide audience with Lang Lang at the piano. The most recent work on the disc is The Song of Sorrow and Gratification (2012), a cycle of four orchestral songs dedicated to the bass-baritone Shenyang who also performs them here.

 

BLACK TRUFFLE RECORDS

10 Sept 2021
Becoming Air/Into the Vanishing Point, Music by Annea Lockwood Also Featuring Nate Wooley

 


BRIDGE RECORDS

13 Aug 2021
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concertos, Vol. 3
Anne-Marie McDermott, Odense Symfoniorkester, Sebastian Lang-Lessing
BRIDGE 9538
The first two volumes of Anne-Marie McDermott’s Mozart piano concerto cycle with the Odense Symfoniorkester have received a superb critical reception. Volume 3 of the series hears the great American pianist in Mozart’s final piano concerto, K. 595, paired with Mozart’s sparkling, heartbreaking E-flat concerto, K. 449. The Odense Symfoniorkester is led by the German conductor, Sebastian Lang-Lessing.

9 July 2021
Antioch Chamber Ensemble
Robert Kyr: In Praise of Music
BRIDGE 9558
The choral ensemble's album, In Praise of Music, touches on themes of conflict, celebration, peace-making, and music itself throughout the album's ten works, with texts by Kyr and a variety of other sources.

 

BRILLIANT CLASSICS

September 2021
De Falla Collection
Simón Bolívar Symhony Orchestra of Venezuela, Eduardo Mata, Martha Senn (5CD)
Regarded as the greatest Spanish composer of the twentieth century, Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) developed an interest in native Spanish music - in particular Andalusian flamenco - while studying with Felipe Pedrell in Madrid in the late 1890s. From 1907 to 1914 he lived in Paris where he met, and was influenced by, Ravel, Debussy and Dukas. Together with his compatriots Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados he established the Spanish national school, integrating the rich Spanish folklore and music tradition in their own personal language. This 5-CD set presents the most important works by De Falla: the ballet El Amor Brujo, the Dances from El Sombrero de Tres Picos, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, La Vida Breve, the piano concerto Nights in the Gardens of Spain, the Harpsichord Concerto, the popular Seven Spanish Folksongs and the complete piano music. Excellent performances by the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Eduardo Mata, Martha Senn (mezzo soprano), and pianist Benita Meshulam.

September 2021
Krebs: Complete Harpsichord Music - Michele Benuzzi (6CD)
Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713-1780) was born in Buttelstedt, a small town in Thuringia and was sent to study organ, lute and violin in Leipzig. He spent nine years from 1726 to 1735 studying at the Thomasschule where Johann Sebastian Bach was Kantor. Krebs was considered one of his best students and he was Bach's assistant at the Thomaskirche, playing the harpsichord at the Collegium Musicum under the direction of his Master. Krebs left Leipzig in 1737 to take a position as organist of the Marienkirche in Zwickau. In 1755 he accepted a position as organist at the court of Duke Friedrich of Gotha-Sachsen-Altenberg in Altenburg where he remained until his death in 1780. This newly recorded 6-CD set contains the complete music for harpsichord by Krebs. Such was the power and influence of Bach that it is inevitable that Krebs’ style is strongly inspired by his master. Bach once remarked about his highly esteemed pupil: “Er ist der einzige Krebs in meinem Bache” (he is the only crab in my brook). The harpsichord works include Partitas, Suites, Sonatinas and Preludes.

September 2021
Albeniz: Iberia, España, Recuerdos de viaje, Sonata No.5 - Esteban Sánchez (3CD - reissue)
Esteban Sánchez Herrero (1934-1997) was a Spanish pianist, a winner of many important International Awards, the Ferruccio Busoni, the Alfredo Casella and several others. He was awarded the Dinu Lipatti Medal, and finished his studies under Alfred Cortot and Carlo Zecchi. In Spain his recordings of Spanish music, made in the sixties and early seventies, are still revered for their imagination, tremendous bravura, and deep passion. This 3-CD set of piano music by Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) includes Sánchez's fiery performance of that towering masterpiece, Iberia. Despite less than great sound, this is the real deal, with blazing energy engulfing the music with an intensity few others achieve. The other selections on the CD (España, Suite Española, Recuerdos de Viaje, Piano Sonata No.5) are all played by Sanchez with fervor and an extraordinary authenticity. With many supremely refined performances of Iberia available in contemporary fine sound, this set should be considered as an authentic and unique alternative version of Albéniz's greatest work.

 

C-AVI

6 Aug 2021
Ensemble Cristofori & Arthur Schoonderwoerd
Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Eroica
AVI8553487

6 Aug 2021
Linos Piano Trio
Stolen Music
AVI8553035

16 July 2021
Markus Schafer & Tobias Koch
Schubert: Die Winterreise
AVI8553103

 

 

CAPRICCIO

6 Aug 2021
Ernst von Dohnányi: Tante Simona; American Rhapsody; Suite Op. 19, Leó Weiner: Serenade Op. 3
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Roberto Paternostro
C5380
Ernst von Dohnányi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time, but his works are now seldom played. Capriccio has sought to fill that gap and this is the fifth album to feature his sensual, late romantic music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition. The programme opens with the overture to the one-act opera Tanta Simona, which has plenty of the Italian flair that runs through the opera’s plot. Following its premiere in 1910, the Suite in F sharp minor, Op. 19 became one of Dohnányi’s most performed works, whereas the American Rhapsody, Op. 47, which contains quotations from numerous American folk melodies, was his last orchestral work; it was premiered in 1954 at Ohio University. The programme concludes with the Serenade in F minor (1906) by Leó Weiner, who was eight years younger than Dohnányi. This early composition is filled with typical Hungarian colours and rhythms, alongside the particular influences of German and Austrian romantic composers.

6 Aug 2021
Nikolai Kapustin
Piano Concerto No. 4; Double Concerto; Chamber Symphony
Frank Dupree, Rosanne Philippens, Meinhard Jenne, Württembergisches Kammerorchester, Case Scaglione
C5437
Drawing parallels with another famous composer of symphonic jazz, Kapustin is occasionally considered a ‘Russian in Gershwin’s clothing’. Most of his compositions are influenced by jazz and expertly combine jazz elements with those of the traditions running from Bach to Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The aesthetic diversity with which the classical roots and the stylistic devices of jazz are amalgamated in Kapustin’s output hallmark all three compositions on this recording. Only late – perhaps too late for Kapustin – did his catalogue of works reach greater international recognition. People who knew him describe him as a man who never desired the limelight. Apparently, he was happiest when he was able to compose work after work in his apartment, far away from the public eye.

6 Aug 2021
Pancho Vladigerov
Orchestral Songs - Bulgarian Folksongs; Six Lyric Songs; Lud Gidyia, Four Songs; Six Bulgarian Folksongs; Song for the beloved
Roumiana Valcheva-Evrova, Maria Ventsislavova, Evelina Stoitseva, Pavel Gerdjikov, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Vladigerov
C8070 (2 CDs)
This fifth volume of the Pancho Vladigerov Edition focuses on one genre in the composer’s output that many other composers have either never, or hardly ever, touched: orchestral songs. It is perfectly plausible that Vladigerov found himself exposed to it during his formative years in Berlin and Vienna, where the genre was at the peak of its popularity during the time he spent there (witness works by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Joseph Marx and others). Notably, Vladigerov always used poems by Bulgarian writers, complementing the interest he showed in Bulgarian folk songs. Like many other 20th-century composers from a host of different countries and ethnicities, Vladigerov delved deeply into the folk songs and folk dances of his homeland, developed over centuries by various ethnic groups; some remain popular today, while others have been largely forgotten. In these arrangements, Vladigerov the composer finds a perfect synthesis with Vladigerov the Bulgarian national.

 

CEDILLE RECORDS

13 Aug 2021
Leo Sowerby
The Paul Whiteman Commissions & Other Early Works
Avalon String Quartet, Andy Baker Orchestra, Alexander Hanna, Winston Choi, Andrew Baker
CDR 90000 205
Evoking the Roaring Twenties, Chicago composer Leo Sowerby’s engaging and ingenious Synconata (1924) and Symphony for Jazz Orchestra (“Monotony”) (1925), critically praised for their distinctive harmony, counterpoint, and humor, receive world-premiere recordings by Chicago bandleader-trombonist Andrew Baker and his Andy Baker Orchestra, making their Cedille Records debuts. Sowerby was among the leading young American classical composers commissioned by celebrity bandleader Paul Whiteman to create fresh repertoire for his landmark series of “symphonic jazz” concerts — a roster that also included George Gershwin, Ferde Grofé, and Zez Confrey. The same Jazz Age concerts that saw the premieres of Sowerby’s Synconata and Symphony for Jazz Orchestra also launched Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue into America’s consciousness. The program also includes Sowerby’s Serenade for String Quartet and the world-premiere recordings of his String Quartet in D minor and Tramping Tune for piano and strings, all performed by the Avalon String Quartet, an ensemble “prizing grace, charm and elegance” (WQXR Radio).

 

CENTAUR RECORDS

2 July 2021
Beethoven Diabelli Variations, Op 120
May Phang, piano
CRC3882

 

CHALLENGE CLASSICS

30 July 2021
Cappella Pratensis & Stratton Bull
Gaude Virgo! A Renaissance brotherhood celebrates the Virgin Mary: The Den Bosch Choirbooks, vol. 1
CC72877

 


CHANDOS RECORDS

3 Sept 2021
Francesca Dego | Sir Roger Norrington | RSNO
Mozart: Violin Concertos 3 & 4
CHAN 20234
The virtuoso violinist Francesca Dego joins forces with the legendary conductor and period performance pioneer Sir Roger Norrington for this recording of Mozart’s Third and Fourth Violin Concertos –the first time either soloist or conductor hasrecorded the works. The outstanding musicians of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra provide the accompaniment, with reduced numbers of strings and antiphonal violin seating to replicate the size and seating of the Salzburg court orchestra which gave thefirstperformances of these works. Norrington’s attention to detail and style is enthusiastically embraced by soloist and orchestra,resulting in a beautifully fresh and captivating interpretation of these well-known works. Degocompletes the album with the Violin Sonata in E minor, Op.1 No.4,with her regular recital partner,Francesca Leonardi.  

3 Sept 2021
Nicholas Daniel | Doric String Quartet
British Oboe Quintets
CHAN 20226
The legendary British oboist Leon Goossens inspired all the composers represented on this recording, and all but one of the pieces were writtenfor his oboe, on which he premièred the works by Delius, Bax, Bliss, and Finzi. The piece by Vaughan Williams is arrangedfor cor anglais, but it was on hisown precious instrument that Goossens would premièreVaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto, in 1944.Nicholas Daniel has, with special permission from Goossens’s daughter Jennie, recorded Delius’s Two Interludes on Goossens’s (now 110-year-old) oboe, rather than his own modern oboe, and contributes a fascinating booklet note on the influence and experience of playing this instrument.

3 Sept 2021
Silesian Quartet | Piotr Szymyślik
Penderecki: Complete Quartets
CHAN20175
The Silesian Quartet sprang to international attention with itsaward-winning recordings of chamber music by Grażyna Bacewicz. Itslatest project –the complete quartets of Penderecki –was startedin 2012, but not completed until January 2021.Presented chronologically, the works on the album takeus on a journey from Penderecki’s early avant-garde‘sonoristic’ style of the 1960s –the first and second quartets –to thelater neo-romantic style of the third and fourthquartets, composedin 2008 and 2016 respectively.Of all Penderecki’s output, the Quartet for Clarinet and String Trioshows the strongest links to the chamber music of the nineteenth century. Pendereckiwas inspired to write the pieceby the 1992 recording bythe Emerson String Quartet and Mstislav Rostropovichof Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, D 956. Here the Silesian Quartet isjoined bytheclarinettist Piotr Szymyślik.

3 Sept 2021
Imogen Cooper
Le temps perdu
CHAN 20235
Borrowing from the title of Proust’s great novel, the latest recitalbyImogen Cooperfeatures a collection of pieces that she learnt as a teenager in Paris, or in her twenties working with Alfred Brendel in Vienna, but none of which she has performed on the concert platform, or really played at all in the intervening years. Cooper studied in Paris from 1961 to 1967 with Jacques Février (who had known Ravel well), Yvonne Lefébure (who had known Alfred Cortot), and Germaine Mounier. She started to wonder about the messages from her teachers she would find on her scores, and about the nature of memory. She was also interested to see if the repertoire she has acquired since she learnt these pieces would change her view, or shed new lighton them. This highly personal recital is an exemplar of Imogen Cooper’s outstanding pianism and musicianship.

30 July 2021
Petar Dinev, Pavel Grigorievich
More honourable than the Cherubim
PaTRAM Institute Male Choir, Mikhail Davydov, Vladimir Gorbik
CHSA 5287 (SACD)
The Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute strives to present Russian Orthodox choral music in its highest possible form, uniting deep spirituality, a profound love for the rich traditions of Orthodox Christian singing, and an uncompromising standard of musical professionalism rooted in the great traditions of Russian choral composers. The 2019 PaTRAM Institute Recording Project was to record the sacred works of Alexander Gretchaninoff, but as the project was in development, His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral), First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, had granted his special permission and blessing to allow the 725-year-old wonderworking Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign to travel with the PaTRAM Choir to the recording location in Saratov, Russia. The timing of the recording also coincided with the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. In honour of this event, the repertoire was changed to a compendium of sacred masterpieces by various composers, glorifying the Most Holy Lady Theotokos. The album brings together singers from five countries, including an unprecedented nine octavists, to form the fifty-six-member international PaTRAM Institute Male Choir.

30 July 2021
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No 6
BBC Philharmonic, Juanjo Mena
CHAN 20221
Considered by some to be the ‘Cinderella’ of his symphonies, the Sixth Symphony of Anton Bruckner was composed in 1879 – 81. It may well demonstrate a reaction to the severe criticism of the first Viennese performance, in 1877, of his Third Symphony, which Eduard Hanslick described as a vision of how Beethoven’s Ninth befriends Wagner’s Walküre and ends up being trampled under her horses’ hoofs’. Much the shortest of his mature symphonies, the Sixth also reverts to a more classical form than its predecessors. This recording was made in 2012, during the first season of Juanjo Mena as Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, and just a month before their acclaimed performance of the work at the BBC Proms. Classical Source commented: ‘Mena didn’t miss a trick and the result for the whole symphony was a revelation, and you don’t get many of those. This was a thrilling, delightful performance.’

30 July 2021
Ferruccio Busoni
Elegien; Toccata; Sonatina
Peter Donohoe
CHAN 20237
Peter Donohoe CBE studied at Chetham’s School of Music and Leeds University before going on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He first came across the works of Busoni in the early 1980s and, as he states in his booklet note, ‘Busoni’s contribution to the musical history of the twentieth century is inestimable, and I feel very much enriched by the several decades of my exposure to it.’ The programme he has chosen includes three of the pinnacles of Busoni’s virtuosic output: the Toccata, BV 287, the seven Elegien, and the Sonatina on Bizet’s Carmen, alongside the much earlier Bach transcription of which Peter Donohoe writes: ‘The Toccata, in particular, has always struck me as one of the most joyous pieces in the history of instrumental music, and Busoni’s transcription certainly brings out that joy.’

 


COL LEGNO

30 July 2021
Wolfgang Mitterer
temp tracks
COL15008
Mitterer studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm. He is not only one of the Austrian specialists for electronics as well as being equally brilliant on the keyboard and on the slide controls, but is also one of the most innovative composers. His work oscillates between composition and open form. Apart from music for organ and orchestra, a piano concerto and an opera he has produced electronic pieces, conceptualized sound installations, and engaged in collective improvisation with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity. The pleasure he takes in experimenting leads him to combine contrasting elements in the creation of unpredictable musical events. In one major composition, for instance, he juxtaposes musical bands and children’s choirs with specialized instrumentalists and singers, while filling the hall with surround sound created by live electronics. But his work transcends the merely spectacular, precisely because of his musical presence and the high – deeply moving – intensity and complexity of his compositions. Listening intensely to low sounds has its place just as much as the ‘installing’ of exploding sound fragments in the listeners’ minds. Far from being smoothly pleasurable, Mitterer’s music is still uncannily beautiful at times.

30 July 2021
Xiaoyong Chen: Qian & Yan
Played by internationally requested E-MEX-Ensemble from Germany and taiwanese Chai Found Music Workshop, conducted by avantgarde-specialist Christoph Maria Wagner and co-produced by Deutschlandfunk.
COL20449
In his music, Xiaoyong Chen likes to strike a constant balancing act between his origins in Beijing and Hamburg, which he has made his home, where he studied with György Ligeti, and where he has been teaching composition and intercultural mediation since 2013. His compositions are, in a manner of speaking, “westeastern travelling parties”: To the classical inventory of European instruments, he introduces the sounds of Chinese instruments that have several thousands of years of history to them. Among those are the sheng, a mouth organ, the guzheng, a plucked zither, the pip , the four-stringed “Chinese lute”, and the yangqin (similar to a Western dulcimer). Chen brings the occasionally resulting sharp cultural differences,
the seemingly incongruent musical material, and his understanding of music all together in a melting pot. From all of this, he creates fascinating and ever-new, original, serious concoctions. As part of this process, Chen asks: “Will the art of the future be based on tradition?”, only to add, matter-of-factly: “If so, why?”


CONTINUO CLASSICS

30 July 2021
Johannes Brahms
The 3 Sonatas for Violin and Piano
Christophe Giovaninetti, Michaël Levinas
CC 777.719
The three sonatas op. 78, op. 100 and op. 108 for violin and piano, composed by Brahms between 1878 and 1886, constitute a marvelous evidence of the chamber music repertoire, responding to a formal and purely instrumental balance. They correspond to the ideal to which Brahms aspired. This Brahmsian ideal achieved with these three sonatas was, during Brahms’ lifetime, the issue of debates and aesthetic conflicts linked to the end of German romanticism. Let us quickly recall what is at stake in this debate. The followers of pure music, united in particular around the work of Brahms and represented by the critic and musicologist Edouard Hanslick, opposed the influences of Liszt and Wagner who reflected on new forms marked by the lyric drama, the cyclic form leitmotifs, as well as the symphonic poem, in other words, a music loaded with metaphorical expressions that want to be resolutely turned towards the future. Music turned towards the future. This concept of modernity and avant-garde will be one of the foundations of creation throughout the twentieth century until today. In this context, the work of Brahms has long been difficult to situate in relation to the concepts of modernity, especially in France, because it seems that the foundations of Brahmsian writing cannot completely fall into this category. The issue is more complex and very fruitful for creation at the start of the 21st century.

30 July 2021
Serge Rachmaninov, Anton Arenski
At the heart of Slavic romanticism ... Quintet with piano & String quartets
Quatuor Élysée, Mahoko Nakano
CC 777.724
This musical program is a perfect combination between 2 styles of writing close to 2 Russian composers who lived around the same time. One, Anton Arensky born in 1861, very marked by the influence of Tchaikovsky, the other, Sergei Rachmaninov, born in 1873, also influenced by the great Tchaikovsky, which brings them together in a sense beyond their meeting at the Moscow Conservatory where Rachmaninov studies Harmony, Fugue and Composition with Arensky and Counterpoint with Serge Taneïev. Our CD therefore includes the 2 unfinished Rachmaninoff string quartets n °: 1 and 2 and “mirrored” Arensky’s piano quintet no.1. The interest here is to bring together these two great Russian composers in order to hear through their works the evolution of the musical language of the time. The Elysée Quartet was founded in 1995 by former members of two quartets that each won the Grand Prix at the Evian International Competition: the Anton and Ysaye Quartets.

 

CPO

30 July 2021
Ferdinando Paer: Leonora, opera in two acts
Elonora Bellocci, Paolo Fantale, Renato Girolami, Marie Lys, Luigi De Donato, Carlo Allemano, Kresimir Spicer, Innsbrucker Festwochenorchester, Alessandro de Marchi
555411-2 (2 CDs)
In 2020, in a fitting contribution to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival presented a concert performance of the opera Leonora by his contemporary Ferdinando Paër. With this program selection the conductor Alessandro De Marchi rescued from oblivion the counterpart of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio and its model. Spirited recitatives, extended arias, cabalettas, and marvelously mellow duets occur in sequence in Paër’s works, including his opera Leonora, premiered in 1804. During the Napoleonic Wars what he presented here was a heroic liberation opera of French stamp. The action corresponds to the spirit of the times, and the faithful wife displays heroism in her rescue of her unjustly imprisoned husband from a self-complacent tyrant’s dungeon. Dark political intrigues are denounced, and honesty, uprightness, and pure love are glorified. Paër’s musical setting of Fidelio’s heroic story differs from Beethoven’s only opera in many respects. First and foremost because the libretto is in Italian, a language that has very different effects on the melodic, rhythmic, and rhetorical flow of the music and its expressive character. Then there is also the fact that Paër composed considerably more coloraturas for the principal singers than Beethoven did. Here an Italian opera composer of the high Neapolitan school clearly continuing to point back to Hasse and Porpora makes his voice heard.

30 July 2021
Georg Philipp Telemann
Liebe, was ist schöner als die Liebe’, Wedding Serenata for soprano, tenor, oboe, strings & Bc TVWV
Julia Kirchner, Georg Poplutz, La Stagione Frankfurt, Michael Schneider
555300-2
Georg Philipp Telemann never missed the opportunity to delight those around him with countless compositions treating the subject of love and its consequences. The origins of his enormous achievement in this field are certainly to be sought in his personal disposition: in his exuberant joy in composition, combined with an open, optimistic attitude in his dealings with his environment, which in his works not rarely revealed his roguish sense of humor. And so he above all was very much in demand as a composer of wedding pieces. The texts of the wedding serenata Liebe, was ist schöner als die Liebe undeniably exhibit mirthful exuberance and belong to the most original and wittiest musical creations of all by this composer. The serenata has the form of a disputatio, a dramatic dialogue in which an advocate of marriage (Ametas, soprano) and a skeptic (Crito, tenor) are in disagreement about the usefulness of the institution of marriage. The CD also includes the solo cantata Lieben will ich, in which the imponderables of love are celebrated in witty free texts, and the cantata Der Weiberorden, which quite clearly was composed in conjunction with a wedding feast and in lighter tones enables to join the young bride in joyous anticipation of her future married life.

30 July 2021
Boris Papandopulo Works for Piano & Strings
Oliver Triendl, Amaury Coeytaux, Vanessa Szigeti, Andrei Ionita
555106-2
Our fourth CD in this series offers listeners the opportunity to enjoy chamber music for piano and strings by Boris Papandopulo. The recording premiere of his Concertino in modo antico presents a little masterpiece of Croatian Neoclassicism. As the title itself indicates, here the composer draws on historical models both in form and content. For example, the Overture, a free rendering of the sonata form, recalls similar forms from the Late Baroque and Early Classical periods. It pulsates in a lively motoric rhythm and is based on the polyphonic imitation of numerous short motifs running through the entire movement and reaching their end in a little Fugato. Masterful motivic work, brilliance, and verve as well as real and true joy of performance distinguish this composition, which easily finds its way into the hearts of musicians and audiences alike – and the same is true of the other chamber pieces heard here. The Rapsodia concertante, to name one example, is not only a highly effective and attractive composition in which three contrasting movements are skillfully linked together; it is also a virtuoso piece representing the summit of technique and worked out to perfection.

30 July 2021
Camillo Schumann
Works for Clarinet & Piano
Bettina Beigelbeck, Jeannette La-Deur
555226-2
Many works by Camillo Schumann remained unpublished during his lifetime and today are housed in the Saxon State Archive – a fate very different from that of his elder brother Georg Schumann, whose oeuvre has experienced a selective, though continuous renaissance on the recording market during the past decades (e.g., on cpo). And yet Camillo Schumann’s oeuvre covers almost all the musical genres, and more than three hundred works by him have now been documented. The special qualities of Schumann’s compositional capabilities are present in fine fashion everywhere in his sonatas for clarinet and piano: careful, finely balanced architectonic structures with skillfully elaborated transitions between the individual movement sections, attractive dialogues between the voices, congenial use of the resources of the particular instruments, suspenseful intensifications, and neatly proportioned solutions and conclusions. The compositional tradition of Reinecke and Radecke in which Schumann grew up is continued practically without a break into the twentieth century. Along with his fourth sonata, his playful Serenade in F major in five movements for clarinet and piano was his last composition of more than one movement for these instruments. Here too he proves to be a composer who knows what he is doing and knows how to realize his ideas with the greatest technical expertise.

30 July 2021
Johann Nepomuk Hummel: Quintet op. 87 in E flat major; Franz Schubert: Quintet D. 667 in A major ‘Trout Quintet’
Libertalia Ensemble
555383-2
Stylistically, Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s music generally stands for the end of Viennese Classicism and the transitional period between this epoch and Romanticism. Hummel composed his Quintet op. 87 in 1802, that is, seventeen years before Schubert wrote his ‘Trout Quintet’ in 1819. The famous chamber music critic Rudolf Felber wrote of Hummel’s work: ‘The quintet is a masterpiece; the first movement immediately captivates and impresses the listener with its power and passion. The peculiar main theme has a somewhat belligerent character....The Allegro agitato finale is full of carefree mirth and ends with a brilliant and effective conclusion.’ On this new CD Hummel’s quintet is combined with Schubert’s famous ‘Trout Quintet’.The esteem in which Schubert held Hummel manifested itself on various occasions and is reflected particularly by the fact that he dedicated his last three sonatas to him. These two radiant quintets representing the best of classical chamber music are interpreted by the Libertalia Ensemble, whose members include the renowned and successful cellist Alexandre Castro-Balbi.

20 Aug 2021
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Symphony No. 1 in B minor
Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Fawzi Haimor
555377-2 (2 CDs)
Wilhelm Furtwängler was an avid composer even as a boy. His natural talent developed continuously until he had reached early adulthood. His compositions from these early years included symphonic works and an impressive Te Deum, but the promise they contained was not fulfilled: while Furtwängler quickly was able to obtain increasing success as a conductor, his creative juices ceased to flow for almost a quarter of a century. It was first after his open conflict with the new German regime (in the “Hindemith Affair”), causing him to resign from all his official posts, that his compositional energies once again streamed forth. The yield from the last twenty years of his life, when he apparently was in search of lost times past, included two violin sonatas, a piano quintet, a piano concerto, and three monumental symphonies. And the search was successful: already the Symphony No. 1 in B minor composed between 1938 and 1941 releases with elemental force the energies formerly held back and sends them flowing into architectures of Brucknerian dimensions without the composer ever slavishly following the precedents set by the Austrian master. With this work Wilhelm Furtwängler, standing firmly on Late Romantic tonal ground, thoroughly acquainted with the resources of the philharmonic orchestra, slow and deliberate in his composing, introduced a triptych that can be understood as a memorial to a bygone era and at the same time is to be heard as a hopeful signal.

20 Aug 2021
Max Reger
Organ Works, Vol. 7
Gerhard Weinberger
555229-2 (2 SACDs)
At long last our successful Reger Edition continues on its way. The critics have been more than enthusiastic about the previous releases, and Musik & Theater even stated: “These recordings number among the best currently available in the field of Reger’s organ music.” This month we are releasing Vol. 7, again with two CDs in the best Surround Sound, and this time featuring Reger’s five easy-to-play Preludes and Fugues op. 56. Although the composer termed this composition an organ work of small caliber in a letter to the publisher Lauterbach & Kuhn, the critics reacted positively, and the organist and composer Robert Frenzel numbered its pieces, which form anything but a secondary work, “among the most poetic phenomena in the most recent organ literature.” And we absolutely have to agree with him. The generic combination of Prelude and Fugue is frequently assigned to the realm of so-called absolute music, but Reger’s op. 56 does not seem to belong to this world in which only the musical structure is of significance; instead, particularly the preludes, which mostly practice dynamic moderation –like many of the “pieces” from op. 59 and other works – are distinguished by a pronounced poetic character.

20 Aug 2021
Georg Philipp Telemann Cantatas
Hanna Zumsande, Dominik Wörner, barockwerk hamburg, Ira Hochman
555426-2
This CD features three dazzling but previously only little-known compositions for royals from Telemann’s immense trove of vocal music. The selections have been chosen from the field of commissioned and occasional compositions written for special occasions such as acts of homage, funerary ceremonies, weddings, birthdays, and inaugurations. Two works from Telemann’s primary creative field, that of church music, round off the program. The three works featured on this recording have in common points of reference to the particular English kings during whose reigns they were written; these monarchs were also in personal union the Prince Electors of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (for short: “Electors of Hanover”). All three works are distinguished by scoring for an ensemble with trumpets as “royal instruments” – sometimes in a majestic function, sometimes in a tonally subdued, mournful function – and with a bass singer as the vocal representative of the monarch. These works brimming with ideas and designed with virtuosity and color are from the master’s late compositional period and, depending on the particular occasion, express gratitude, appreciation, or grief vis-à-vis the British-Hanoverian rulers. Although these feelings certainly first and foremost reflect the stance of those who commissioned them, Telemann’s musical settings lend them universal appeal.

20 Aug 2021
Michael Haydn Endimione
Aleksandra Zamojska, Ulrike Hofbauer, Lydia Teuscher, Nicholas Spanos , Salzburger Hofmusik, Wolfgang Brunner
555288-2
Michael Haydn wrote his Italian “Serenata” to a libretto by Metastasio on the theme of the lover’s grief felt by the goddess Diana, who took vows of chastity without thinking that she might be hit by Amor’s arrows. This opera in two acts from 1778 celebrated its premiere during Michael Haydn’s lifetime but then was forgotten for more than two centuries; it was first performed again in full in Salzburg in 2018 and now is finally available on cpo. The performance was a cooperative venture of the Institute for Mozart Interpretation, Salzburger Hofmusik, and Johann Michael Haydn Society. The term “serenata” should not be mistakenly equated with serenade. It refers to musical tributes for instruments and voices performed mostly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for occasions such as coronations, weddings, and birthdays and ranging in genre from the secular cantata to the full-scale opera. After the successful performance drehpunktkultur.at wrote: Johann Michael Haydn, the great Joseph’s ‘little brother,’ the ‘Salzburg Haydn,’ is always good for surprises. Wolfgang Brunner introduced the composition with humorous wit and supplied finely felt and energetic accents at the harpsichord, also in the arias. His approach to the performance of the work was perfect and in original sound. The Hofmusik – and, in its sole short appearance, the Mozart University Vocal Ensemble – performed with animo and sympathetic feeling. The audience was extremely pleased.

20 Aug 2021
Franz Lachner
Symphony No. 6, Op. 56 in D major
Chia-Hua Hsu, Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, Gernot Schmalfuss
555210-2
The premiere of Franz Lachner’s Symphony No. 6 was held in Munich on 19 April 1837 with the composer as the conductor. The Munich press termed it a “magnificent work” and an outstanding masterpiece, and in this truly extraordinary work Lachner refrains from the confrontational juxtaposition of large-format thematic blocks (above all occurring in his third and fifth symphonies), instead presenting a “more organic” compositional style in which motivic-thematic developments are realized step by step. Lachner’s Concertino for Bassoon and Orchestra is a work from 1824, composed during his Vienna years. He dedicated it to Theobald Hürth, who was then the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra’s principal bassoonist. It is not known whether or not Hürth ever performed this work in public, and performances of it are not documented. It is one of the earliest extant compositions by Lachner and possibly his first work with orchestra. Here Chia-Hua Hsu, the solo bassoonist of Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, interprets its recording premiere.

 

CUGATE CLASSICOS LATINOS

30 July 2021
Latin Summer
by various artists

 

DACAPO RECORDS

13 Aug 2021
Rued Langgaard, Allan Gravgaard Madsen (arranger)
Music of the Abyss
Esbjerg Ensemble, Signe Asmusse
8.226152
Rued Langgaard’s (1893-1952) inner division can be experienced at its extreme in the chamber music written between 1913 and 1924, in which the secure world of his youth is undercut by a dark musical understream. This is most apparent in the work for piano, Music of the Abyss, which is presented here in a transcription for chamber ensemble by Allan Gravgaard Madsen (born 1984) of which this is the first recording. This meeting between Langgaard and Gravgaard brings to a climax the work’s view of modern man’s destructive strength in a crazy ride towards the abyss.


DANACORD

30 July 2021
Jean Sibelius
Thomas Jensen Legacy, Vol. 1
Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Emil Telmányi, Thomas Jensen
DACOCD 911 (2 CDs)
Having played the cello in several of the symphonies under the composer’s baton, Thomas Jensen brought a definitive combination of passion and authority to the music of Jean Sibelius. To launch an extensive series dedicated to Jensen’s artistry, Danacord presents a new compilation of major works by the Finnish composer in live and studio recordings, including CD premieres for these broadcast performances of the Second and Seventh symphonies.

 


DB PRODUCTIONS

6 Aug 2021
Visions of a Century: Edward Elgar; Germaine Tailleferre; Lucien Durosoir; Rebecca Clarke
Malin Broman, Simon Crawford-Phillips
DBCD199
After the award-winning album “Fanny & Felix” (dBCD191 ), Malin Broman and Simon Crawford-Phillips now invite you to a nostalgic journey 100 years back in time: music that was written for violin/viola and piano in 1918-1921, with one foot in late romanticism and impressionism, and the other in more modernistic forms of expression. Broman/Crawford-Phillips prove once again that they are one of the tightest chamber music constellations in Sweden.

 


DELOS

20 Aug 2021
Vicenzo Bellini I Puritani
Lawrence Brownlee, Sarah Coburn, Azamat Zheltyrguzov, Tadas Girininkas, Liudas Norvaišas, Tomas Pavilionis, Jovita Vaškevičiūtė, Constantine Orbelian, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, Kaunas State Choir, Constantine Orbelian
DE 3537 (3 CDs)
This stunning recording of I Puritani, Vincenzo Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece, features superstar singers Lawrence Brownlee and Sarah Coburn. Constantine Orbelian, New York City Opera’s Music Director and Principal Conductor, leads the superb Kaunas City Symphony and State Choir.

 

DUX RECORDING PRODUCERS

30 July 2021
Wieslaw Przadka Quinteto Tango Nuevo
Piazzolla: Los Pajaros Perdidos
DUX1752

30 July 2021
Wolanska/Gajda Duo, Sepia Ensemble, Wojciech Jelinski, Anna Szmatola
Ewa Fabianska-Jelinska: Chamber Music
DUX1684

16 July 2021
Trio Lontano, Adrian Stanciu
Zelenski: Chamber Music
DUX1735

16 July 2021
Szymon Telecki, Tadeusz Gadzina & Huberman Philharmonic Czestochowa & Adam Klocek
Paciorkiewicz: Violin Concertos
DUX1316

 

DYNAMIC

20 Aug 2021
Franz Joseph Haydn Die Schöpfung (The Creation)
Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Hanna- Elisabeth Müller, Maximilian Schmitt, Michael Volle, Veta Pilipenko, Zubin Mehta, Lorenzo Fratini
CDS7909 (2 CDs)
Inspired by hearing performances of Handel’s oratorios during his visits to London, Haydn composed Die Schöpfung (The Creation) in 1798. Through a series of accompanied recitatives, arias, duets and choruses, the music depicts the creation of the universe and the carefree existence of Adam and Eve. Haydn drew on the full complement of his symphonic and vocal prowess which reach peaks of almost operatic intensity. With rich harmonies and sonic magnificence in abundance, Die Schöpfung represents the apex of the Viennese oratorio tradition. It’s a monumental composition with orchestrations of superb richness in which Haydn combines the splendour of classicism with the majesty of sacred music. Large choruses, a sense of momentum and music that’s both powerful and refined accompany the listener through the various phases of the Bible‘s account of the Creation, from the explosion of the first light to the marvelous air of the creation of man. To quote Alexander Pereira, superintendent of Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino: “The Creation conveys a meaning that reaches all the religions of the world equally, and that is why we decided to propose this marvelous masterpiece by Haydn as a sign of unity between all; it is a very important message at this time.

20 Aug 2021
Francesco Cavalli Hymns and Psalms
Chorus and Ensemble Claudio Monteverdi di Crema, Bruno Gini
CDS7902
Cavalli was of great importance to the history of 17th-century Italian music, his fame having been established in the then new and swiftly evolving world of opera. Cavalli’s sacred music has often been compared to that of Monteverdi but, drawn from a wonderful anthology published at the apex of his career as a composer, the stylistic and expressive richness documented by the pieces in this programme delivers a strong overview of the variety and power of his musical language. The originality of Cavalli’s style was in finding an ideal means of expression for the feelings and emotions suggested by the text, breaking down the boundaries between sacred and secular music, and creating a more serene merging of artistic and religious sensibilities. Commenting on the performance interpretation, Massimo Loreggian (harpsichordist and composer in European/Baroque style) added: ‘The Hymns and Psalms of Francesco Cavalli are presented in this performance in a new interpretative form as regards the ornamentation of the pieces’ vocal and instrumental parts. This type of artistic imprint is what we would have heard at the time... All in all, what has been recorded in this programme is unique, a version of Francesco Cavalli’s works never written or heard before.’

20 Aug 2021
Alessandro Stradella
Cantatas & Serenatas Vol. 2
Alessandro Stradella Consort, Estévan Velardi
CDS7894
Alessandro Stradella was the undisputed star composer of his day who wrote hundreds of works in varying genres. His cantatas are in essence miniature operas in which the themes of love and the complexities of the human condition reflected the composer’s own ‘cloak and dagger’ misadventures amidst Roman and Venetian aristocracy. From an allegory of life in Apre l’uomo infelice and captivating pastoral scenes in Qui dove fa soggiorno, to unrequited love and the desire for freedom expressed in Per tua vaga beltade, Stradella adapted his inventiveness to his patrons’ tastes to create these veritable jewels in music, all of which are rich in splendid melodies and refined artistry. The Alessandro Stradella Consort is a vocal and instrumental ensemble founded in July 1987 by Estévan Velardi and formerly called the Camerata Ligure. It focuses on the performance of Italian Baroque repertoire on period instruments. It explores music from the Renaissance to the present day, ranging from works for vocal or instrumental duo to grandiose operas and oratorios with vocal soloists, chorus and large orchestra. It is especially dedicated to reviving rare or unpublished works by Italian composers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Its recordings, comprising a vast repertoire of instrumental and vocal/instrumental works, oratorios and operas, appear on several labels beside Dynamic.

 

FIRST HAND RECORDS

23 July 2021
Alexandra Papastefanou
J S Bach Goldberg Variations
FHR110

16 July 2021
Roman Rabinovich
Joseph Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol 2
FHR072

 


FONDAMENTA

23 July 2021
Emil Gilels
The Unreleased Recitals At The Concertgebouw 1975 - 1980
FON1803032

 

FRANCIS HON MUSIC

9 July 2021
Dusk
Francis Hon, piano
Dutilleux, Bach, Liszt, Beethoven, and Scriabin
Studio album by New York-based Taiwanese pianist

 

GLOSSA

30 July 2021
Guido Balestracci; Paolo Pandolfo; Edoardo Eguez
Sonatas Per Viola Da Gamba & Basso Continuo Op. 5
GCDC80032

30 July 2021
A Corte Musical; Rogerio Concalves
Songs From Evora Collections
GCDC80030

30 July 2021
Le Concert Spirituel; Herve Niquet
Charpentier: Te Deum
GCDC81603

30 July 2021
Orchestra Of The 18th Century; Frans Bruggen
W A Mozart: Wind Concertos
GCDC81129

30 July 2021
La Risonanza; Fabio Bonizzoni
Johann Caspar Kerll: Missa Non Sine Quare
GCDC80033

30 July 2021
Il Complesso Barocco; Alan Curtis
Carlo Gesualdo: Sesto Libro Di Madrigali
GCDC80031

 

HANSSLER CLASSIC

30 July 2021
Felix Mendelssohn
Te Deum
Kammerchor Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
HC20034
With the monumental composition Hora est MWV B 18, written at the end of 1828 for performance by four four-part choirs, Mendelssohn embraces the founding myth of the Sing-Akademie. It was formed in 1791 on the initiative of the music teacher and composer Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch in order to perform a 16-part mass by the Roman composer Orazio Benevoli. Two years before Hora est, Mendelssohn wrote his eight-part Te Deum MWV B 15 for the Sing-Akademie. This festive composition was probably created to commemorate its newly-completed building adjacent to a now-filled-in moat on a branch of the Spree. In any case, the work was often heard there on a wide variety of occasions - for example on the 20th birthday of the composer, who also conducted this performance himself. 1832 Mendelssohn’s first collection of three spiritual works was published under the simple title Church Music for Choir. The principal piece of this first edition is the eight-part Ave Maria MWV B19 which the composer created during an Italian visit in the autumn of 1830.

30 July 2021

Peter llyich Tchaikovsky Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra
Andrej Hoteev, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra Moscow, Vladimir Fedoseyev
HC20083 (3 CDs)
All Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra exist in multiple versions. The aim of this Edition is to present the unabridged versions of Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra as a box set. It took some considerable time till Hoteev gained access to those papers whose mere existence represented a hidden danger to the re- writing of history demanded by Socialist Realism: ”After the Revolution, Tchaikovsky was made into a champion of the people,” says Hoteev. “There was a line of research that set out to ‘discover’ how Communism was heralded in the works of Tchaikovsky, of Pushkin and Tolstoy. After Andrei Hoteev had finally succeeded in assuring the supervisory board of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin outside Moscow of his very best intentions, the strictly confidential classified material was gradually made available. Born in St Petersburg (known then as Leningrad), Andrei Hoteev is one of the most influenti al and intriguing Russi an pianists of our time. Alongside his piano studies, Andrej Hoteev engaged in detailed musicological research, which Ied him time and again to discover various composers’ original scores.

 


HARMONIA MUNDI

10 Sept 2021
Paul Lewis
Joseph Haydn: Piano Sonatas 20, 34, 51 and 52
HMM902372
In 2018 Paul Lewis embarked on an exploration of one of the richest bodies of work of the Classical era: the keyboard sonatas of Haydn. For his second volume, the British pianist tackles some of the most remarkable pieces in this vast oeuvre.

3 Sept 2021
Cuarteto Casals
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String Quartets
HMM902654
Mozart: String Quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn K. 421, 458 'Hunt', 464
Cuarteto Casals:
Abel Tomàs Realp, violin
Vera Martínez Mehner, violin
Jonathan Brown, viola
Arnau Tomàs Realp, cello

3 Sept 2021
Jean-Guihen Queyras, Tabea Zimmermann, François-Xavier Roth, Gürzenich-Orchester
Richard Strauss: Don Quixote; Till Eulenspiegel
HMM902370
Strauss: Don Quixote Op.35
Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche Op.28
Romanze for cello and orchestra TrV 118
Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello by Gioffredo Cappa, 1696, on loan from Mécénat Musical Société Générale
Tabea Zimmermann, viola by Étienne Vatelot, 1980
Gürzenich-Orchester
François-Xavier Roth, conductor

27 Aug 2021
Alexandre Tharaud
Jean-Philippe Rameau: 'Nouvelles Suites'
HMM931754
Alexandre Tharaud, piano Steinway
ANNIVERSARY EDITION (20 years)
New editorial content
This title was released for the first time in 2001.

27 Aug 2021
Isabelle Faust, Dominique Horwitz (English version)
Igor Stravinsky: The Soldier's Tale
HMM992671
Stravinsky: The Soldier’s Tale
Duo Concertant* for violin and piano
Elegy for solo violin
English version (also available in French and German)
STRAVINSKY YEAR 1971-2021
Isabelle Faust, violin                                      
Dominique Horwitz, narrator (the Narrator, the Soldier, the Devil)
Lorenzo Coppola, clarinets
Javier Zafra, bassoon
Reinhold Friedrich, cornets
Jörgen van Rijen, trombone
Wies de Boevé, double bass
Raymond Curfs, percussion
*Alexander Melnikov, piano (Steinway)

27 Aug 2021
Alexander Melnikov, piano
Sinfonieorchester Basel, Ivor Bolton
Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 Op 15; Tragic Overture Op 81
Cherubini: Éliza, ou Le Voyage aux Glaciers du Mont Saint-Bernard [Overture]
HMM902602

27 Aug 2021
L'Escadron Volant de la Reine
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger: Il tedesco a Roma
HMM902645

20 Aug 2021
Timothy Ridout & Frank Dupree
PROKOFIEV: Romeo & Juliet & SCHUMANN: Dichterliebe
HMN916118
In their debut recording for harmonia mundi, the young viola prodigy Timothy Ridout (who makes his BBC Proms debut this year) and his musical accomplice Frank Dupree celebrate the power of love, with selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, performed in Borisovsky’s popular arrangement, and with their own transcription of Schumann’s Dichterliebe.

20 Aug 2021
Anna-Liisa Eller, kannel
'Strings attached' the Voice of Kannel
HMN916110
Related to the harp but positioned horizontally, the kannel possesses an unusual timbre - at times reminiscent of the harpsichord. Anna-Liisa Eller offers us a chance to discover this treasured symbol of Estonia’s musical heritage courtesy of her own transcriptions of well-loved pieces by Couperin, Byrd, Dowland, and Rameau.

 


IBS CLASSICAL

30 July 2021
Manuel de Falla, Francis Poulenc, Salvador Bacarisse
Harpsichord Concertos
Silvia Márquez, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Javier Castiblandque, Robert Silla, José Luis Estellés, Aitzol Iturriagagoitia, David Apellániz, Virginia Martínez
IBS82021
In addition to including three harpsichord concertos composed in the 20th century, this CD offers suggestive interweavings: The concertos by Falla and Poulenc were both composed for Wanda Landowska (1879-1959), the great Polish harpsichordist who decisively contributed to the rediscovery of much 17th- and 18th-century music and to the renaissance of the harpsichord, not only as an ancient instrument, but also as a source of inspiration for 20th-century musicians. Poulenc’s Concert champêtre is the immediate heir of Falla’s Concerto. Accordingly, in the orchestral score of Poulenc’s Concert belonging to Falla, we can read the following autograph dedication by the French composer: “For you, my dear Falla, the little brother of your so magnificent Concerto. Fr. Poulenc”. The three concertos share a neoclassical aesthetic, albeit from different approaches: in his Concerto Falla explores and uses the ancient sources of Hispanic music; Poulenc evokes the French Baroque; and Bacarisse adopts stylistic elements typical of the neoclassicism of the 1920s.

30 July 2021
Cayetano Brunetti
Complete Oboe Sextets
Robert Silla, Il Maniatico Ensemble
IBS92021 (2 CDs)
Opposing the deprecatory view of a backward and isolated Spain that has prevailed until recently, Brunetti’s music shows that what was composed in the rest of Europe was widely and intensely welcomed in Madrid. Cayetano Brunetti was born around 1744 in Fano, a city located on the Adriatic coast. We know that in 1760, aged 15 or 16, he already lived in Madrid with his parents. Due to their unusual instrumentation, the six “Sestetti a due violini, oboe, due viole e violoncello” stand out within Brunetti’s work. According to the manuscript scores, the sextets were composed “per divertimento di S.M.C” (for the amusement of His Catholic Majesty), which means that they were originally written for the concerts that the musicians of the Royal Chamber would perform for Carlos IV. Lightness, emotion, brilliance, and complexity is what gives these sextets their peculiar beauty, which is hardly found in chamber music written during the second half of the 18th century. World premiere recording.

30 July 2021
Luis de Pablo Amicitia
Iñaki Alberdi, Bilbao Symphony Orchestra, Ernest Martinez Izquierdo
IBS102021
Luis de Pablo’s compositional output is tremendously attractive – for accordionists as well – in view of its outstanding originality and quality. It is also entirely different from the remaining contemporary repertoire for accordion: de Pablo’s particularly expressive musical vocabulary is perfectly tuned to the dynamic capacities of the accordion bellows, as well as to the instrument’s wide range of sonorities and extended performance options. We all agreed that an original work by a great master such as Luis de Pablo would make a valuable contribution to accordion repertoire. Amicitia calls for immense orchestral forces: fourfold woodwinds, four horns and four trumpets, three trombones and a tuba plus harp, celesta, timpani, four percussionists, and a complete lineup of strings. In spite of this vast scoring, Luis de Pablo employs the forces at his disposal with great subtlety, particularly vis-à-vis the accordion. Iñaki Alberdi has collaborated closely with different current composers, and premiered work by Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luis de Pablo, Joan Guinjoan, Gabriel Erkoreka, Ramon Lazkano, Jesús Torres, Agustín Charles and José María Sánchez-Verdú.

 

 

INTEGRA RECORDS

17 Sept 2021
Christian Forshaw & Grace Davidson
Historical Fiction
ING1006
Composer and saxophonist Christian Forshaw and soprano Grace Davidson release their fourth album together on Integra Records. The recording presents well-known Renaissance and Baroque works arranged and modernised for soprano, saxophone and organ in Christian’s signature ‘contemporary ecclesiastical’ style. In putting together these works, Christian was inspired by the process used by authors of the literary historical fiction genre, who embellish context and facts of a historical period to produce a story for modern audiences. Using the frameworks of original text, melodies and outline harmony, Christian and Grace have imagined a new setting for works by composers including G.F. Handel, Orlando Gibbons, Henry Purcell, John Dowland and Marin Marais. The pair used last summer’s UK lockdown as an opportunity amidst performance cancellations to explore how these established classics could be remodelled, experimenting with multiple keys and arrangements before producing the final recordings in St John the Baptist church in Cockayne Hatley, Cambridgeshire, accompanied by organist Alexander Mason. Linking each piece through reconstructed fragments of the original works, Christian and Grace have created the opportunity to listen to these pieces bound together in new ways while still staying true to style, phrasing and expression of the works’ original eras.

 

ISLANDIA MUSIC RECORDS

23 July 2021
Maya Beiser x Philip Glass
Includes Maya’s arrangements of Philip Glass’s piano Etudes Nos. 2 and 5, Mad Rush, Music in Similar Motion, and selections from Naqoyqatsi, part of Glass’s Qatsi Trilogy with filmmaker Godfrey Reggio. On this album, Maya creates a multi-layered sound sculpture with her cello, exploring and unveiling new dimensions in some of Philip Glass’s most powerful and achingly beautiful works.

 

KAIROS RECORDS

16 July 2021
XASAX; Theleme, Urorthodoxjukebox O
Jannik Giger: Krypta
KAI0015085

16 July 2021
Wolfram Oettl
Bernhard Lang: Works For Piano
KAI0015094

 


LAWO

30 July 2021
Alpaca Ensemble
Rehnqvist & Lindquist
LWC1224

16 July 2021
NyNorsk Messingkvintett
Nils Henrik Asheim: Hornflowers
LWC1221

 

MDG

16 July 2021
Trio Tastenwind
Fabian Hauser: Playground
MDG9032218 (SACD)

16 July 2021
Eckhard Manz
Orgelpunkt: The Rieger Organs St. Martin Kassel
MDG9512226 (SACD)

16 July 2021
Staatskapelle Dresden; Herbert Blomstedt
Mozart: Symphonies 38, 39, 40 & 41
MDG6502222

16 July 2021
Leipzig String Quartet
Haydn: String Quartets Volume 13
MDG3072224

16 July 2021
Steffan Schleiermacher
Erik Satie: Sports Et Divertissements
MDG6132208

 

 

MELISM

30 July 2021
Maurice Emmanuel
The 6 Piano Sonatinas
Patrick Hemmerlé
MLS-CD-018
Once in a while a composer appears on the musical landscape who seems to come out of nowhere, whose roots are not easily identifiable, and whose lineage cannot be traced with any degree of certainty. Even composers considered revolutionary today - Beethoven, Scriabin or Schöneberg for instance - started out as the heirs of the preceding generation; Beethoven owed much to Haydn, Scriabin started as a Chopin worshiper, and Schöneberg was influenced by Brahms and Wagner. So, it comes as something of a shock to see that at the time when one of the most radical of all composers, namely Debussy, was writing his delightful but deeply conservative Arabesques, Maurice Emmanuel, born the same year, was writing his first Sonatine, a work that explores modality, bitonality or even tritonality (!), and more generally, tonal effects stemming out of nowhere and that were vastly ahead of their time. Nevertheless, Emmanuel is not a complete maverick. His musical language also has roots, but these roots are in a soil far more remote than his contemporaries ever dreamed of. Under the influence of Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, his history of music teacher at the Conservatoire, he developed an interest in modal music as he heard it in renaissance polyphony. This interest was to become a passion and was to determine his destiny.

30 July 2021
Antonín Dvořák
Legends from the Bohemian Forest
Anna Zassimova, Christophe Sirodeau
MLS-CD-027
A journey through the pastoral wonderland of Dvořák’s exquisite miniatures for piano duet, full of character and whimsical charm, passionate drama, vivid imagery, symbolism, and nostalgic atmosphere. These gems of the repertoire deserve to be better known, as they express in miniature the essence of Dvořák’s genius. Internationally renowned for their performances and recordings of forgotten masterworks of the repertoire (Catoire, Feinberg, Medtner and many others), and critically lauded for their outstanding interpretations of Romantic repertory, especially Chopin and Brahms. Anna Zassimova and Christophe Sirodeau have now embarked on a series of duo recordings, of which this is the opening chapter.

 

MUSIC & ARTS

6 Aug 2021
François Couperin Concerts Royaux
Stephen Schultz, Jory Vinikour, Alexa Haynes-Pilon, Mindy Rosenfeld
MACD1302
Following on the success of their widely acclaimed Music & Arts release J.S. Bach: Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord, Stephen Schultz (Baroque flute) and Jory Vinikour (harpsichord) are joined by Alexa Haynes-Pilon (viola da gamba), and Mindy Rosenfeld (Baroque flute) in superlative performances of François Couperin’s four Concerts Royaux; works which stand among the pinnacles of the Golden Age that was French music during the reign of Louis XIV. This state-ofthe-art recording was produced and engineered at Skywalker Sound by two-time Grammy Award winner Jack Vad (2012, 2021).

 

NAVONA RECORDS

27 Aug 2021
Fall and Decline
Gregory W Brown
Variant 6
NV6359 (Vinyl and digital)
the composer chronicles the heights to which humanity can soar—but also the depths to which it may come crashing down. Scored for the solo voices of virtuosic vocal sextet Variant 6 (featuring several members of the GRAMMY-award winning choir The Crossing) and electronics, the sounds range from typical choral textures (though peppered with microtones) to angular and aggressive electronic soundscapes. The lyrics may span two-and-a-half millennia, but their spirit and subjects are abiding: humankind's struggle against the limitations of time, conflict, inevitable decay. Persian rulers of the fifth century BCE, Baroque historians, poets of the Victorian age, contemporary wordsmiths, they are all caught in a grander, timeless labor—as is every one of us. Fall and Decline is a stern reminder of Humanity’s ephemerality, but even more, it's a harbinger of hope, a celebration of creative endeavors despite perpetual adversity.

13 Aug 2021
Chamber Works
Wieslaw Rentowski: Solo and Chamber Music
NV6363
Internationally-renowned composer Wieslaw Rentowski presents Chamber Works on Navona Records, an album whose works span three decades of Rentowski’s chamber music oeuvre. Many of the works featured on the album are inspired by Louisiana and the Southern United States. The 1986 piece Baton Rouge for Prepared Piano celebrates the multitude of cultural traditions found in southern Louisiana and employs a variety of articulation techniques to create unique prepared piano sonorities. La Fiesta for Cello and Piano (1991) is a demanding work for cello that reflects the confluence of Spanish and Mexican cultures with others found in the Southern United States. More recent compositions include Affabile from 2017, whose musical language is more traditional and emphasizes melody and harmony while introducing nontraditional meter changes and musical textures. Chamber Works is a varied and inviting release that showcases the breadth and depth of Rentowski’s compositions.

13 Aug 2021
Brian Field: Vocal Works
NV6360
Throughout his ever-evolving career, Brian Field has penned music for everything from orchestra and chamber settings to ballet and television, sprinkling in influences of post-romanticism, minimalism, and jazz. On his album VOCAL WORKS on Navona Records, the human voice takes center stage, and Field doesn’t shy away from his brand of compositional diversity. Field brings six pieces springing from the page, including a traditional Sephardic lullaby, musical interpretations of Pablo Neruda's and e e cummings’ poetry, and works with texts written by the composer himself. Throughout the album, the Budapest Chorus conducted by Martón Tóth brings dynamism and emotion to every note.

 


NAXOS

27 Aug 2021
Times of Transition
Cello concertos by C P E Bach and Haydn
Andreas Brantelid, Cello
Concerto Copenhagen Lars Ulrik Mortensen
8.574365
The three cello concertos on this disc illustrate that fertile period in the second half of the 18th century when features of the Baroque were gradually replaced by the so-called galant style. Foremost amongst the composers inaugurating this change was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach whose Concerto in A major is a perfect example of the passionate and dramatic range that marked him out as a pivotal figure of his time. Haydn’s Concerto in C major modulates between older and newer styles, whereas his Concerto in D major is a Classical masterpiece, and a worthy companion to his greatest symphonies.

13 Aug 2021
Francis Pott (born 1957):
Christus
Improvisation on Adeste, Fideles
Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele
Surrexit Hodie
Tom Winpenny, organ
8.574252-53 (2 CDs)
Acclaimed for his sacred choral and organ works, Francis Pott was recognised in 2021 with the Medal of the Royal College of Organists, its highest award. Regarded as an Everest of the organ repertoire, Christus is a Passion symphony that traces this dramatic Biblical narrative through evolving tonality, portraying Christ’s vast struggle through betrayal and crucifixion towards ultimate triumph. Christus here enjoys its first studio recording, made in the presence of the composer. Included also are premieres of Surrexit Hodie (a toccata for Easter Sunday) and a commemorative chorale prelude, Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele.

27 Aug 2021
Evening Dusk Serenade
Newly Discovered Finnish Works for Violin and Orchestra
Bergstrom, De Godzinsky, Fougstedt, Gunaropoulos, Kaski, Klami
Linda Hedlund, violin
Elisa Järvi, piano
La Tempesta Orchestra / Jyri Nissilä
8.579095
The repertoire of Finnish music for violin and orchestra is full of hidden gems, with a substantial amount of works remaining unperformed and unpublished. The music on this recording represents a style of light classical music that was popular from the 1930s to the 1960s but remains largely forgotten today. All of the composers represented here created highly lyrical and charming works, including Uuno Klami who, after Sibelius, is considered one of the most important composers in the history of Finnish music.

13 Aug 2021
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897):
Clarinet Sonatas, Op 120
Flute and Piano Versions
Karl-Heinz Schütz, flute
Maria Prinz, piano
8.574291
Brahms had already decided to retire as a composer when, on a journey to Meiningen in 1891, he was inspired and challenged by clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld’s beautiful playing. The two Sonatas, Op. 120 are part of a late flowering that resulted in some of Brahms’s finest chamber music. Brahms himself explored these pieces beyond the clarinet, and Karl-Heinz Schütz’s arrangements are based on the composer’s own alternative versions, seeking out the ideal of two equally matched instruments in constant dialogue. Also included is a selection of ‘songs without words’, further expanding the flute repertoire with arrangements of these much-loved Lieder.

27 Aug 2021
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750):
Goldberg Variations
Arranged for ten-string guitar duo
Duo Synaphé: Dimitar Ivanov and Angela Kleger, guitars
8.551455-56 (2 CDs)
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a contrapuntal tour de force, and one of the pinnacles in the history of the variation genre. Composed ‘to refresh the spirits of music-lovers’, it is a constantly fascinating and deeply enriching evocation of an entire musical universe. This arrangement with two ten-string guitars is a transcription of the original text including later corrections and additional musical indications made by the composer. The additional bass strings of these instruments provide an entire lower octave, giving access to the full range of musical timbres in this eternal masterpiece.

13 Aug 2021
Behzad Abdi (born 1973): Hafez
Libretto by Behrouz Gharibpour
Sung in Persian
Various Artists
8.660426-27 (2 CDs)
The music of Iranian composer Behzad Abdi fuses dastgāh (the Iranian modal system) with Western classical forms. He wrote Iran’s first national opera, Rumi (Naxos 8.660424-25), and Hafez also exemplifies his approach to the medium. The opera’s subject is the great Persian poet and mystic Hafez, whose sonnets and poetry are still widely read across the Persian-speaking world today. Behrouz Gharibpour’s libretto traces the poet’s tribulations, memories of keeping his poems from being destroyed by a despotic government, and subsequent exile. Abdi’s polytonal technique serves to reflect the unique concepts of Hafez’s 14th-century poetry with passion, lyricism and power. Behzad Abdi is possibly the leading Iranian composer of our time. He was nominated in the 29th Fajr Film Festival for ‘Son of the Sun’ in 2011. In 2001 he won a special prize in composition at the International Puppet Theatre festival in Poland (Bialivostok) for The Last Flower. Abdi has lived in the Ukraine for a number of years – the performance is recorded there with the forces of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine

13 Aug 2021
Lord Berners (1883–1950):
The Triumph of Neptune (Complete ballet) L’uomo dai baffi • Valses bourgeoises • Polka Clive Bayley, Bass • English Northern Philharmonia Royal Ballet Sinfonia • David Lloyd-Jones
8.555222
Lord Berners’ early music was avant-garde in style earning the admiration of Stravinsky, and while it was soon to become more accessible, it never lost its distinctive style and flavour. The Triumph of Neptune is one of his major works and his most ambitious ballet score, commissioned by Diaghilev with choreography by Balanchine. A ballet-pantomime-harlequinade, its inconsequential plot features music as diverse as it is brilliantly inventive. L’uomo dai baffi is a delicious ballet for puppets with stripped-back instrumentation, and Philip Lane’s deft orchestrations of Valses bourgeoises and Polka offer ripe wit.

27 Aug 2021
Anton Arensky (1861–1906):
Egyptian Nights (Complete ballet)
Moscow Symphony Orchestra / Dmitry Yablonsky
8.573633
A student of Rimsky-Korsakov and the teacher of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Anton Arensky holds a distinguished place in the history of Russian music as both an academic and a composer. For his 1900 ballet Egyptian Nights, based on Pushkin, he chose an exotic theme – the dangerous love of the handsome Amoun for Queen Cleopatra – and sought authentic melodic material in scholarly texts. With his gift for orchestration and colour, Arensky fashioned a sensuous and vivid score, featuring a brilliantly conceived series of dances.
(Recorded in 1996 and initially released on Marco Polo 8.225028)

13 Aug 2021
Latin American Dances: Works for Saxophone and Piano
Sándor Rigó, saxophone, Christina Leeb-Grill, piano
8.579078
Virtuoso duo Sándor Rigó and Christina Leeb-Grill have taken Jean Françaix’s description of his own work, ‘musique pour faire plaisir’, as the motto for this programme. Dance styles and rhythms are at the heart of this repertoire, from the spectacular Brazileira with which Milhaud concludes his theatrical Scaramouche, through Piazzolla’s refinement of tradition in his Tango-Études, to the Brazilian rhythms showcased in Villa-Lobos’s Fantasia. Paquito D’Rivera adapted his Invitación al Danzón especially for this recording, providing Sándor Rigó with space to demonstrate his brilliance in improvisation.

27 Aug 2021
Franz Schubert (1797–1828):
Rarities and Short Piano Works
Two Scherzi; Fugues; Fugal Sketches; Allegro in E major
Wojciech Waleczek, piano
8.574135
Among Schubert’s compositions are rare and overlooked works for solo piano that reflect staging posts of his short compositional life. As a boy he had studied with Salieri who almost certainly encouraged him to explore contrapuntal techniques in 1812 – the fugues and fugal expositions he wrote are testament to his secure grounding in the form. Schubert’s admiration for Mozart is clear in the Fantasy in C minor, while the substantial Two Scherzi, D. 593 show early mastery. Also included is the Allegro in E major, Schubert’s first, unfinished attempt at a piano sonata.

13 Aug 2021
Antonio Ruiz-Ppio (1934–1997):
Works with Guitar, Vol 3
Monasterium Guitar Quartet
8.574339
Antonio Ruiz-Pipó was a versatile musician whose compositions display both Andalusian and Parisian influences as well as reflecting his own life story of non-conformism coupled with an infinite love for humanity. This programme reveals his inclination towards South American music, and in the duets Homenaje a Villa-Lobos and the quartet Américas he looks towards the habanera and samba (as well as a little boogie- woogie). Ancient sounds from a faraway land echo in the Homenaje a Antonio de Cabezón, while Cuatro para Cuatro and A Sevilla are pure Andalusian Ruiz-Pipó in terms of their colours, rhythms and narrative.

 

NEOS

30 July 2021
Amaryllis Quartet
David Philip Hefti: Light And Shade
NEOS12101

23 July 2021
Doris Bertschinger
Cesar Franck: Pieces Pour Harmonium
NEOS32001

 

NORWOOD RECORDINGS

1 Oct 2021
Fairy Tales
Recital music from Eastern Europe
Prokofiev, Tubin, Korvits, Balsys, Herdzin, Tcherepnine and Markovitch
Kyle Horch, saxophone
Yshani Perinpanayagam, piano
Anya Fadina, piano
NR202101
Alexandre Tcherepnine (1899-1977): 1Sontatine Sportive; Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953): 1Cinq Melodies Op. 35 (arr. K. Horch)**; Eduard Tubin (1905-1982): 1Sonate für Saxophon und Klavier; Ivan Markovitch (b1929): 1Complainte et Danse; Tõnu Kõrvits (b1969): 1Wings**; Eduardas Balsys (1919-1984): 2Three fragments from the ballet “Eglé, Queen of the Serpents” (arr. Kastytis Mikiška)**; Krzysztof Herdzin (b1970): 2Bajkowe Opowieśc/Fairytale Stories
** first recordings


NXN RECORDS

20 Aug 2021
Two Brothers
Thomas Torstrup Quartet – Thomas Torstrup, Piano Simen Kiil Halvorsen, Trumpet Stian Andersen, Double Bass Ivar Asheim, Drums
NXN2007
Thomas Torstrup, a jazz pianist and organist from Stavanger, has already released a couple of recordings with up-and-coming Norwegian jazz musicians. In recent years, Torstrup has composed new material for jazz quartet resulting in his debut as a bandleader. The songs on Two Brothers were recorded in the New Tone Studio in Oslo in August 2019. The music can be characterised as melodic jazz with an original touch and a wide palette of stylistic references. His sources of inspiration range from American jazz traditions to sacred music and the world of Olivier Messiaen. Thomas also finds inspiration in sounds of nature, such as raindrops and wind, and those of children trying instruments for the first time!

 

OEHMS CLASSICS

20 Aug 2021
Karol Rathaus, Heinz Tiessen, Paul Arma
Sonatas for violin and piano
Judith Ingolfsson, Vladimir Stoupel
OC491
The accomplished Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel is dedicated to the performance of rarities by the exiled composers Karol Rathaus, Heinz Tiessen and Paul Arma. Their works, written between 1925 and 1949, reflect the Zeitgeist of Expressionism and the incidents of World War II. The sonatas by Tiessen and Arma are recorded here for the first time.

20 Aug 2021
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Kitajenko conducts Tchaikovsky Orchestral Works
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Leonard Elschenbroich, Cologne Cathedral Choir - Boys’ Choir, Knaben des Kölner Domchores, Eberhard Metternich, Dmitrij Kitajenko
OC1903 (2 CDs)
This compilation brings together popular orchestral works and ballet music by Tchaikovsky. Kitajenko, who turned 80 last year and has been closely associated with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne as a conductor for many years, sets special standards for the interpretation of Russian music with these recordings.


OLD BRIDGE MUSIC

23 July 2021
Chris Newman
Breaking Bach
OBMCD23

 


OMNIBUS CLASSICS

30 July 2021
A Flute Alone Idit Shemer
CC5016
The idea of putting together compositions from the large breadth of the repertoire for solo flute has always appealed to me. So much has been written for solo flute and so little is actually performed. On this CD I have put together some of my favourite pieces, some very well-known, others less so. The choice was not easy; I was particularly happy to revisit works which I had played while I was a student. I wish to dedicate this disc to the memory of a beloved woman, Maxine Zhukov, who helped me find my voice and make it sound.

 


ONDINE

6 Aug 2021
Jurgis Karnavičius
String Quartets Nos. 3 & 4
Vilnius String Quartet
ODE 1387-2
The first volume of the premiere recordings of Jurgis Karnavičius’ (1884–1941) string quartets performed by the Vilnius String Quartet resulted in a growing number of excellent album reviews. It included the composer’s romantic and folkmusic-inspired first two quartets. This second volume includes the composer’s last two quartets: Nos. 3 & 4 which are more expressive and modern in nature. Karnavičius wrote his four impressive string quartets during his study and teaching years in St. Petersburg during the 1910s and 1920s, filling the chronological and stylistic gap between the String Quartets of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.

 

OPUS ARTE

27 Aug 2021
Richard Wagner The Bayreuth Edition
Linda Watson, Stephan Gould, Albert Dohmen, Hans-Peter König, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Ralf Luks, Andrew Shore, Edith Haller, Georg Zeppenfeld, Klaus Florian Vogt, Annette Dasch, Samuel Youn, Torsten Kerl et al.
OACD9048BD (30 CDs)
This remarkable set captures several summers of the great Wagner operas performed live in the composer’s own purpose-built venue by the elite performers and conductors of Wagnerian art in the 21st century

 


ORCHID CLASSICS

20 Aug 2021
Viktor Kosenko, Alexander Scriabin
Transitions
Igor Gryshyn
ORC100176
Ukrainian pianist Igor Gryshyn performs the music of one of his greatest compatriots, pianist-composer Viktor Kosenko, alongside repertoire by a figure who inspired Kosenko’s output: Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. This album brings Kosenko’s music into the spotlight and reveals a composer deserving of wider attention. Kosenko’s Études, Op. 8 brim with a wealth of ideas, encompassing the chromatic fluidity and shifting colours that show Scriabin’s influence with other stylistic traits ranging from full-blooded Romanticism to jazz. Scriabin’s Four Preludes, Op. 22 date from early in his career and demonstrate his love of Chopin’s music as he takes elements of Chopin’s style to new extremes of expression. The Sonata No. 4 in F sharp major, Op. 30 was composed at a crossroads in Scriabin’s life, and reflects his increasingly vivid treatment of music as a vehicle for his ecstatic, intoxicating visions.

 

ORFEO

6 Aug 2021
Júlia Várady: The Orfeo
Recordings
Júlia Várady, Elena Bashkirova, Aribert Reimann, Hartmut Höll, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Bamberger Symphoniker, Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunk Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin et al.
C210086 (10 CDs)
Orfeo honours Júlia Várady, one of the most important sopranos of the second half of the 20th century, with the release of this 10-CD boxed set ‘The Orfeo Recordings’ to mark the occasion of her 80th birthday on 1 September 2021.

6 Aug 2021
Giuseppe Verdi Messa da Requiem
Júlia Várady, Alexandrina Milcheva, Alberto Cupido, Nicola Ghiuselev, ORF Chor, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leif Segerstam
C210232 (2 CDs)
To mark the occasion of Júlia Várady’s 80th birthday, Orfeo is releasing this historical recording of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem – an ‘opera in ecclesiastical robes’, as conductor Hans von Bülow called it – captured at the Stiftskirche Herzogenburg in 1980. Appearing alongside her are Alexandrina Milcheva, Alberto Cupido, Nicola Ghiuselev, the ORF Choir and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leif Segerstam.

6 Aug 2021
Piano Poetry
Oleg Maisenberg, Gerhard Oppitz, Konstantin Lifschitz, Vardan Mamikonian, Amir Katz, Miroslav Kultyshev, Josef Bulva, Christina and Michelle Naughton
MP2102 (2 CDs)
Thirty pianistic ‘delicacies’ from the Orfeo back catalogue, including Liszt’s Liebesträume, Scriabin’s Poèmes, Op. 32, Debussy’s Épigraphes antiques, Chopin’s Etude ‘Butterf y Wings’, Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Also in this compilation, Josef Bulva’s performance of Szymanowski’s Masques, Op. 34: No. 1 ‘Sheherazade’ and Oleg Maisenberg’s Scriabin interpretations are made available for the first time on CD.

 

ORLANDO RECORDS

16 July 2021
Fie Schouten
Monologues 2020
OR0045

 

PHIL.HARMONIE

23 July 2021
Vogler Quartett
PHIL06034

16 July 2021
Kolja Blacher
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 & Suite For Jazz Orchestra No.2
PHIL06030

 

PROFIL

30 July 2021
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky Complete Operas and fragments
The Star Soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre: Feodor Chaliapin, Alexey Ivanov, Nikandr Khanayev, Yevgenij Kibkalo, Ivan Kozlovsky, Alexi Krivchenia, Maria Maksakova, Aleksej Maslennikov, Maxim Rozhdestvenskaya et al.
PH21002 (17 CDs)
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born - according to the Julian calender - on March 9 (Gregorian calender: March 21), 1839 in Karevo in the Russian district of Pskov. When he died on March 16 (28), 1881 at the age of just 43 years old in St. Petersburg, he had Lived an artistically rich, gregarious yet tragic life, ending his days in poverty and alcoholdependent. His career as a composer is closely associated with a group of artists known in the world of music as the “Mighty Handful” or simply The Five. Mily Balakirev ( 1937-1910), who was something like the chief ideologue and artistic mastermind of “The Five”, ralLied around him a group of like-minded composers with whom he consolidated and publicized his ideas about a form of Russian music that should not be “corrupted” by “Western” influences nor regulated by academic training. Only after Glinka in the second half of the nineteenth century did Russi an opera really come to the fore. Mussorgsky was a key player in promoting this trend - as we can see in the light of his posthumous fame. In accordance with his slogan of ”off to new horizons!” he took a radical and highly unconventional approach unparalleled by any of his contemporaries. And, sadly, in keeping with his disposition and his addiction, he did it in more entirely random ways than anyone else. Literally not one of his stage works has come down to us in a fl nished, letalone authorized, version.

30 July 2021
Louis Kaufman Plays
Louis Kaufman, Peter Rybar, Artur Balsam, Pina Pozzi, Theodore Saidenberg, Paul Ulanowsky, Helene Pignari, Aaron Copland, Robert Russell Bennett, Quatuor Pascal, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra et al.
PH21019 (6 CDs)
Louis Kaufman was born on May 10, 1905 in Portland, Oregon. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Romania. The thirteen-year-old Kaufman began studying with Franz Kneisel in New York City at the lnsti tute of Musical Art, now known as the Juilliard School. Kaufman gave his solo debut in the New York Town Hall in 1928. He then went on to play with such acclaimed musicians as Pablo Casals, Jasch a Heifetz etc. In 1932 Kaufman married the pianist Annette Leibol e and performed frequently with her in public. The famous Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch heard him play on the radio in 1934. Lubitsch liked the way Kaufman played and it was the beginning of a long collaboration. Kaufman played the music for between 400 and 500 films. At the same time, he continued to give concerts in Los Angeles and New York. This was the era of the big boom in long-playing records after the introduction of vinyl. Kaufman subsequently made more than 100 recordings of the main works for violin, together with leading orchestras and famous conductors. Louis Kaufman died on February 9, 1994. The recordings featured on this historic CD album are predominantly from the 1940s and sos.

 


RAVELLO RECORDS

27 Aug 2021
Absent Light: In Paradisum
Bill Whitley
RR8054
Peeling back the complex layers of Bill Whitley's ethereal Absent Light, one is astounded to see how this music could at once be so serene, yet technically intricate. For starters, there's the massive instrumental setup. Absent Light, despite its pleasant airiness, is scored for male soprano, piano, soprano saxophone, electric bass, electric guitar, celesta, glockenspiel, tenor instrument, and glass bowls. But its true beauty is of a mathematical nature: featuring three separate rhythmic cycles, instruments taking turns with arithmetic regularity, and a singing undercurrent of the glockenspiel playing a cryptic 73-beat counterpoint. Blurring the lines between mathematics and music, Absent Light is a shining example of intricate acoustic architecture. Mesmerizing and intense.

27 Aug 2021
Unquiet Waters
Nicki Roman saxophone
Casey Dierlam Tse piano
Kevin Day
Leonard Bernstein
Olivia Kieffer
Lucie Robert
Bruno Mantovani
Edvard Grieg
RR8055
With a potent timbre and powerful volume, the saxophone is an instrument that demands respect. Nicki Roman—saxophonist with the award-winning Fuego Quartet—is deftly able to wrest control of the mighty woodwind, making the most of its range and tone. On Ravello Records’ UNQUIET WATERS, Roman takes listeners on a tour of the saxophone’s capabilities, from Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy syncopated rhythms to lyrical wedding marches, to complex works free of barlines. Each piece is different from the last, showcasing not only the breadth and potential of saxophone repertoire, but Roman’s own virtuosity and technique as a performer. Roman is accompanied by longtime collaborator and pianist Casey Dierlam Tse, another herald of new music who plays in lockstep to enrich the saxophone’s tone.

 


REFERENCE RECORDINGS

20 Aug 2021
Stylus Phantasticus
Pacific MusicWorks
Stephen Stubbs, Artistic Director
Featuring Tekla Cunningham, Baroque Violin
FR-742
Reference Recordings proudly presents this unique album with 11 works of early Baroque composers. The famous Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) wrote in Book VII of the Musurgia Universalis describing different musical styles, but, in particular, he defined a “fantastical style” for instruments.

 


SIGNUM CLASSICS

23 July 2021
HD Duo
Australian Thai composers
SIGCD685 (CALA Signum)

6 Aug 2021
The Queen's Six
The Queen's Six Murder the Songs of Tom Lehrer
SIGCD689

6 Aug 2021
Cantus
Manifesto
SIGCD686

27 Aug 2021
Fretwork / Iestyn Davies
Lamento
SIGCD684

3 Sept 2021
Anna Lapwood
Images: Organ of Ely Cathedral
SIGCD688
Signum presents Anna Lapwood’s debut solo organ recording following her critically-acclaimed debut choral recording, ‘All things are quite silent’, with The Choirs of Pembroke College, Cambridge. This programme features some of Lapwood’s world-premiere arrangements and showcases the softer, more subtle side of an instrument more generally regarded for its bombastic nature.

3 Sept 2021
Tedd Joselson
Tedd Joselson’s Companionship of Concertos: Grieg & Rachmaninov
SIGCD675
American pianist Tedd Joselson presents a ‘companionship’ of his favourite concertos – the Grieg Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto, recorded over two days with two different orchestras at London’s Abbey Road Studios. Led by conductor Arthur Fagen with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Grieg) and the Philharmonia Orchestra (Rachmaninov), the disc is also a companion to Joselson’s April 2021 recording of the Lim Fantasy of Companionship for Piano and Orchestra, recorded at the same time at Abbey Road with the London Symphony Orchestra.

17 Sept 2021
The Mozartists
Jomelli: Il Vologeso
SIGCD692
The Mozartists continue their MOZART 250 project of staging operas by Mozart and his contemporaries with their recording of the UK premiere of Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, first performed over 250 years ago on 11 February 1766 for the Stuttgart court in Ludwigsburg. For this eagerly awaited performance The Mozartists assembled a cast headed by the Irish mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly, a graduate of the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artist Programme, tenor Stuart Jackson, a former Mozartists Associate Artist, and soprano Gemma Lois Summerfield, winner of the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier Award. Jommelli was born just north of Naples in 1714 (the same year as Gluck) and died there in 1774. Largely forgotten now, he was one of the most celebrated composers of his day, and during a career which spanned thirty-seven years he wrote some eighty operas as well as a great number of sacred works. He was seen as an important and progressive composer in combining the vocal melodiousness and lyricism of Italian opera with more elaborate and dramatically charged elements of French opera.

 

SIMAX

16 July 2021
Birgitte Christensen
Flagstad The Opera
PSC1383

 

SKANI

6 Aug 2021
Ilona Meija, Ivars Bezprozvanovs, Dzintra Erliha
Shadow Games In The River: Chamber Music by Latvian Composers for Flute, Cello and Piano
LMIC092

 

SOLO MUSICA

6 Aug 2021
David Pohle, Christoph Werner, Dietrich Becker, Augustin Pfleger, Christian Geist, Christoph Bernhard
O Lux Beata Trinitas’ - North German cantatas of the early baroque for alto, strings and basso continuo
Beat Duddeck, Ensemble Schirokko Hamburg
SM349
The works on this recording range from Danzig (now Gdansk) by way of Güstrow, Hamburg and Gottorf to Copenhagen and Stockholm. Born in the early 17th century, the choirmasters and Kapellmeisters of the Lutheran churches and courts of the North had ideal working conditions. They were greatly indebted to a composer from the preceding generation, Heinrich Schütz. His activities as a teacher, and the sheer volume of his published works, exercised a decisive influence upon his students and emulators. From the beginning, singing meant language and life, religion and emotion for Beat Duddeck. Through singing on concert tours all over the world and more than 100 CD productions with various early music ensembles, he found not only his profession, but also family and friends. This CD, too, is intended to reflect this to some extent, and its intimacy is a matter close to my heart.

20 Aug 2021
Francis Poulenc, Jean Françaix, Alban Berg, Sergei Rachmaninow, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms
Poèmes for Violoncello & Piano
Eva-Maria May, Klaus Kämper
SM379
Poèmes are wayfarers crossing borders between language and music. What had mostly been called Lied/Song before, has often been seen as poems in the past 200 years: Richard Wagner gave his Wesendonck-Liedern the titel Five Poems for Female Voice and Piano and Francis Poulenc composed around 30 Poèmes to be sung and accompanied musically. Just as with Lied, which also exists without words (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy), a Poème does not necessarily have to be based on a text. Alexander Scriabin, for example, composed 20 Poèmes for piano solo at the beginning of the last century. Francis Poulenc, the Janus-headed French composer, is difficult to grasp – it is impossible to peg a label on him. Yet, he has always remained stylistically faithful in his adherence to tonality, the empasis on melodic elements, the refined simplicity of texture and his effort for clarity and comprehensibilty true to his motto: “There is also room for new music , that does not mind applying the chords of other people.“

20 Aug 2021
Nikolai Amani, Hans
Schaeuble, Paul Müller-
Zürich, Sergei Prokofiev
Musical Rarities - String Chamber Music from Zurich and St. Petersburg
Trio Amani
SM353
The trio was founded in 2017 by violinist Marina Yakovleva, her fellow-violinist and brother Mikhail Yakovlev and cellist Lev Sivkov. They chose the name “Trio Amani” in honour of the Russian composer Nikolay Amani (1872- 1904), whose string trio they discovered in 2018 and premiered that year in Zurich. After a highly successful concert series, Marina, Mikhail and Lev invited violist Vahagn Aristakesyan to join them on the present recording of chamber music for strings in various scorings from Russia and Switzerland. The trio presented this programme in 2019 in a series of concerts in the composers’ homelands. The repertoire of Trio Amani comprises a wide variety of compositions for various formations, from duo to piano quintet. The CD will be released in the series “Musik aus der Zentralbibliothek Zürich”. The Music Department was set up in 1971 and rapidly established itself as an academic collection of European status. Alongside large holdings of printed and recorded music, the Music Department is home to one of the world’s largest collections of Wagneriana and now serves as a major repository of Swiss music manuscripts from the past 200 years.


SOMM RECORDINGS

20 Aug 2021
Mosaic
A4 Brass Quartet
SOMM CD 0638
The A4 Brass Quartet comprises principal players from the some of the UK’s top brass bands, including Black Dyke, Brighouse & Rastrick and Foden’s.  The SOMM label debut of this multi-award-winning chamber ensemble features an exciting kaleidoscope of new music by emerging composers and bespoke arrangements as well as audience favourites.  It’s an album of different colours and cultures and reflects their unique performance style and distinctive sound.

20 Aug 2021
Nightlight
Cordelia Williams, piano
SOMM CD 0639
‘Nightlight’ is pianist Cordelia Williams’ compelling exploration of the contrariness of night, its turmoil, terror and tenderness, and the longing for light.  Spanning four centuries, from Thomas Tomkins’ exquisitely melancholic A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times to jazz virtuoso Bill Evans’ hypnotic, fantasy-laced Peace Piece, the recital moves from sleep-inducing nightfall – Mozart’s D minor Fantasia, K.397 – to waking hopes for the new dawn in Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn). The becalmed and tempest-driven waters of the ocean in Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.2 (Sonata-Fantasy) prove a perfect metaphor for the stilled and turbulent currents of the night. Plunging into night’s darkest, most disturbed places, the dislocations of Schubert’s late Sonata in C minor, D958, are salved by two soothingly nocturne-like Liszt Consolations.

18 Jun 2021
Manhattan to Montmartre
Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown
SOMM CD 0635
SOMM Recordings celebrates the 10th anniversary of the acclaimed piano duo Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown with Manhattan to Montmartre, dazzling keyboard arrangements of American giants George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.

 

STRADIVARIUS

13 Aug 2021
Luciano Berio, Stefano Scodanibbio, Giacinto Scelsi, Franco Donatoni, Salvatore Sciarrino
Il nuovo contrabbasso italiano
Dario Calderone
STR37182
Since the 1970s, the instrumental repertoire for double bass has been enriched with a considerable amount of new literature. We are facing what can be defined as the “renaissance” of the double bass, which revolves around key players such as Fernando Grillo, Franco Petracchi, Joëlle Léandre and Stefano Scodanibbio. The disruption with the virtuosity of previous solo literature is radical: the emulation of the expressiveness of the other string instruments (which increased a quasi-complex of inferiority towards violinists and cellists) definitively gives way to the specificities of the double bass, so that the new literature becomes idiomatic. This collection of pieces therefore aims to be an update to the traditional double bass repertoire. In fact, it brings together works composed starting from the 1970s by some of the most representative Italian composers of the second half of the 1900s. The pieces in question have had, for various reasons, a large consensus among double bass players, and continue to have more and more, surviving the oblivion of the first performance, and fully entering the corpus of “standard” literature for solo double bass.

13 Aug 2021
Niccolò Paganini
24 Caprices
Anca Vasile Caraman
STR37193
After Paganini and his Caprices (as well as his concerts, obviously for the soloist part), the violin wasn’t the same anymore: Paganini, besides launching an original new way of performing the violin, operated a synthesis between the Ancient and the Romantic styles, going beyond and anticipating our days as well. He started with the musical instruments he knew, like the mandolin (which he studied in his youth), the guitar (the six-chord one, which he never left), the grand viola (the five-chord instrument he had specially made) and the violin. He chose the mixed form of the Caprice, so that he could be free to use counterpoint, harmony, singability (from his knowledge of the Opera), imitation and, most importantly, rhythmic and tonal variety. From the Caprices we understand Paganini’s familiarity with Rossini, his deep knowledge of the Opera and of its world, and with Berlioz. Many Caprices take inspiration from a range of orchestral sounds (the flute, the horns, the fanfare) or imitate the mandolin. From a melody perspective, the Caprices astonish for their uniqueness and beauty. From the point of view of the harmonics, they mesmerize: they are masterpieces and Schumann was among the first ones to recognise them as such.

13 Aug 2021
Fiori Musicali: Songs and Dances of the 16th and 17th centuries
Ensemble Mezzo
STR37195
This album includes a carefully curated selection of Renaissance and early Baroque gems. Lightly skirting the fluid boundaries between high art music and folk music in early modern Europe, much of the vocal music presented here demonstrates the grace and charm with which even the most erudite and famed composers applied their craft to popular song and dance. The instrumental music further reiterates the centrality of dance music in the 16th and 17th centuries, whether explicitly or as a rhythmic and formal underpinning. Above all, while skillfully composed by master musicians, the music is infused by musical cultures existing beyond the Church and court. At first glance unrelated, but a more discerning gaze will uncover the fine thread of cultural exchange between high art music and popular musical traditions running throughout the album. - Gideon Brettler

 

SWR CLASSIC

13 Aug 2021
Anton Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7, 9
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Sir Roger Norrington
SWR19528CD (5 CDs)
Roger Norrington was chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (today the SWR Symphonieorchester) for thirteen years. During that time he caused an international stir with what came to be known as ‘The Stuttgart Sound’, a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether in Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner or Brahms, Norrington sought to capture the performance experience of the time, adjusting the orchestra’s size and seating plan to create an authentic sound without vibrato. In these reissued recordings of Bruckner symphonies, Norrington and the SWR present the human face of a composer whose image in the public mind has sometimes been reduced to that of someone in a quasi-religious retreat. Bruckner’s symphonies, however, were distinctly secular works written with the Musikverein Vienna in mind. They describe journeys, nature and birdsong; there is dance music, humour, unexpected drama and pauses. In his entirely individual style, albeit with subtle influences of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Wagner, Bruckner conjures memories of his youth, from playing violin at village weddings to the sounds of the St Florian organ loft.

 

TACTUS

30 July 2021
Giovanni Bononcini
Cantate e Sonate
Aurata Fonte
TC 670202
Giovanni Bononcini was born in Modena on 18th July 1670, the eldest and best-known son of the composer, violinist and theoretician Giovanni Maria, one of the main exponents of the musical school of Modena in the second half of the seventeenth century. His talent was extremely precocious: in 1685 he published Trattenimenti da camera op. 1, Concerti da camera op. 2 and Sinfonie op. 3. Giovanni Bononcini is known above all for his dramatic and vocal chamber music, whose simple, refined intensity of expression was acknowledged by his contemporaries. The cantatas are formed of the prescribed succession of arias (or duets) and recitativos, and show Bononcini’s outstanding expressive skill and his ability in finely crafting the close relationship between words and music that was required by this genre of chamber music because of the need to “further the feeling of that divine poetry by means of the expression of the harmonious melodies” (as he wrote in a letter to Benedetto Marcello from London on 6 April 1725). This ability of his made it possible for him, through his perfect knowledge of counterpoint, to tastefully adjust “the exact observation of the different moods produced in the soul by the different modulations of the sound, so as to be able to adapt them suitably to the needs of the words”. Within this world premiere recording the Aurata Fonte ensemble is performing the manuscripts of a composer whose talent was recognized and affirmed by a great career throughout Europe.

30 July 2021
Vittore Veneziani
Liriche da camera
Beatrice Palumbo, Fian Francesco Amoroso
TC 872202
The name of Vittore Veneziani is mainly associated with La Scala Opera House, where he was engaged as Chorus Master from 1921 to 1954. His fortunate Milanese idyll was abruptly interrupted in 1938 by the imposition of racial laws. Veneziani, being of Jewish religion, was obliged to flee to Switzerland, abandoning his profession as well as his post as choral conductor at the Synagogue and to Israelian School. When he came back to Italy, soon after Liberation was declared and La Scala lay in ruins, Veneziani resumed his activity with a memorable concert at La Scala on May 11th 1946 working side by side with Arturo Toscanini who had come back, too, from his American exile. His Catalogue, not at all a brief one, includes quite a lot of choir works, four melologues for spoken voice and orchestra, some Operas, symphonic and chamber compositions and a series of choir transcriptions of folk songs and Hebrew melodies. In the field of chamber music, an interesting sylloge of lyrics for voice and piano stands out. It is based on poems by writer Guido Pusinich from Veneto. The present song collection and recording – by Beatrice Palumbo and Gian Francesco amoroso – form a project sustained and promoted by the Viktor Ullmann Festival, and these songs, despite their variety of musical language, can be defined as chamber music, clearly representing an evolution of both style and the social context in Italy at that time.

30 July 2021
Pier Paolo Scattolin
Suoni e rime sparse - choral, vocal and instrumental works
Coro Euridice, Coro da camera di Bologna, Ensemble ‘Circe’, Pier Paolo Scattolin
TC 941903
The CD synthesizes some stages characterizing the composition path of Pier Paolo Scattolin: from a cappella vocality to instrumentalism with stylistic dynamics sometimes distant but all having in common the research on sound, from the linguistic phoneme to the eclectic and sometimes experimental use of instrumental emission. The path winds through almost forty years of continuous investigation and dissection of both choral and instrumental sound, the latter of a chamber/soloistic character and in some cases concerted and intersected with the voice. In the a cappella choral repertoire a varied anthology collects poetic and literary texts by Dante Alighieri, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Alda Merini, Umberto Saba, Emily Dickinson, Alessandro Striggio, Agnolo Poliziano, Alceo, Saffo, Ipponatte, Enzo Iacchetti, Agnese Troilo and the composer himself. Some choral pieces are concerted with the Ensemble of ancient instruments Circe from Bologna, whose presence stems from the search for a sound language proceeding towards the stripping and essentiality of a music and a sound coherent with the setting of the poetic texts in order to transfer their instrumental characteristics to contemporary musical expression. In some pieces the solo voices are added as an almost instrumental colour, a timbre enrichment of the sonorities of the organ, the recorders, and the trumpets.

 

TAIZE

30 July 2021
Diverse Soloists & Choir Instrumentalists Of Taize
Remain With Me: Taize Songs In Arabic
T401

 

TOCCATA CLASSICS

6 Aug 2021
Peter Dart
Chamber Music and Songs
Jenny Duck-Chong, Sally Walker, Geoffrey Gartner, Daniel Herscovitch, Clemens Leske, Alison Pratt, Brad Gill
TOCC 0592
Painters sometimes talk about the intensity of the light they encounter in Australia. Peter Dart, born in Sydney in 1953, brings something of that brightness to his compositions, which are further animated by buoyant rhythms and a lively sense of humour, even mischief. They are, at the same time, anchored in a secure command of counterpoint, and given a timeless quality by his fondness for modal harmony. Most important of all, the technical mastery that gives these works their surefooted appeal is suffused with straightforward human warmth.

6 Aug 2021
Richard Flury
Orchestral Music, Vol. 2
Alexandre Dubach, Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann
TOCC 0601
This second volume of orchestral music by the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967) brings works from across his career. A suite drawn from an early Festspiel – a community pageant – opens with a march of Elgarian swagger and continues with a mix of charm and substance. Flury was a gifted violinist, and his Third Violin Concerto, written at the height of the Second World War, is virtuosic and lyrical in equal measure, its unashamed Romanticism perhaps an escape from troubled times. The four late Caprices for violin and orchestra form a concertante serenade in all but name; and one of his very last pieces was a dark and moving tribute to a musician friend, the slow movement of a suite he did not live to finish.

6 Aug 2021
Ottorino Respighi
Complete Piano Music, Vol. 2
Giovanna Gazzo
TOCC 0605
Respighi’s orchestral works are some of the most popular in the mainstream repertoire. His output of piano music, by contrast, is as good as unknown, and this Toccata Classics series will be the first ever to present it all: original works and transcriptions alike, for solo piano, piano four hands and two pianos. The prentice works on this second volume of solo works reveal a Respighi with roots in the high-Romantic past of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, but they also show the first signs of his later interest in the Italian pre-Baroque.

6 Aug 2021
Heino Eller
Complete Piano Music, Vol. 7
Sten Lassman
TOCC 0611
The piano music of the Estonian composer Heino Eller (1887–1970), a total of 206 works, is not only the largest part of his output: it is also the largest body of works in Estonian classical music. But most of these pieces are unknown, even though the best of them are original contributions to the piano repertoire of the twentieth century, with Eller’s sensitive lyricism underpinned by gentle humour and an occasional epic tone. This seventh volume brings music from half a century of music, from 1912 to 1961 – mostly miniatures but each of them full of atmosphere and personality.

20 Aug 2021
Charles-Valentin Alkan, Cécile Chaminade, Ernest Chausson, Benjamin Godard, Jules Massenet, Guy Ropartz
Four Hands for France, Music for Piano Duet.
Stephanie McCallum, Erin Helyard
TOCN 0007
Playing four-hands piano was both vital in the dissemination of music in the nineteenth century and also a popular domestic activity. The French composers recorded here span the Romantic century, from the salon charm of Chaminade and Massenet and the virtuosity of Alkan’s wild dance to the innocence of the family music-room in pieces by Chausson, Godard and Ropartz. The original 1853 Parisian Erard piano on which this recording was made combines warmth with bell-like clarity, because of its straight stringing, allowing it to produce a surprising variety of appealing, expressive textures.

20 Aug 2021
Elfrida Andrée, Mel Bonis, Ethel Smyth
First Ladies: Three Romantic Violin Sonatas
Annette-Barbara Vogel, Durval Cesetti
TOCN 0013
One could hardly intuit from these fresh and flowing violin sonatas the obstacles their female composers had to face – family opposition for Mel Bonis in France and Ethel Smyth in England, professional bigotry for Elfrida Andrée in Sweden. It has taken a century and more for that initial prejudice to fall away, and they are now beginning to attract a fair hearing for their music. What ultimately matters, of course, is not whether composers are male or female but whether they write good music, and these three sonatas – melodically expansive, rhythmically vivacious, harmonically warm – point to the musical riches that further exploration of their creators’ output will uncover.

 

TY CERDD

30 July 2021
Taliesin’s Songbook
Susan Bullock, Rebecca Evans, Catrin Finch, Gareth Brynmor John, Natalya Romaniw, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Elin Manahan Thomas, Andrew Matthews-Owen
TCR031
Taliesin’s Songbook is an exploration of 20th and 21st-century Welsh song, performed by a sparkling line up of Welsh artists: sopranos, Natalya Romaniw, Rebecca Evans, Elin Manahan Thomas and Susan Bullock; tenor, Elgan Llŷr Thomas; baritone, Gareth Brynmor John; pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen, who curated the album, and harpist Catrin Finch. From the precocious talent of Morfydd Owen, to leading Welsh composers of today, this collection unfurls the journey of Welsh song over the last 100 years. Tŷ Cerdd Records’ latest release is a celebration of Welsh Song performed by leading Welsh artists.

 

WARNER CLASSICS

17 Sept 2021
Amazone
Jupiter - Lea Desandre
featuring Thomas Dunford
CD: 0190295065843
SHRM: 0190295065805
Little wonder that the fast-rising mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, being of French-Italian descent (her name is to be pronounced all’italiana, “Désandré”), chose to present a sumptuous selection of French and Italian arias from the baroque era, ranging from the Neapolitans Francesco Provenzale and Giuseppe de Bottis or Venice’s fabled Vivaldi, to France’s celebrated Grand Siècle luminaries such as Couperin, Destouches and Philidor, and reaching as far as Germany where Saxon composer Georg Caspar Schürmann and Italian-born Carlo Pallavicino developed their careers – at Saxon courts, indeed, but still in the realm of Italian opera that was then all the rage. Sixteen out of twenty-five arias on this album Amazone are world premiere recordings, some of the pieces even never having been heard since their first (and last) performances 250 or 300 years ago. Vivaldi, Marais, Cavalli, Destouches and Couperin, of course, hide no secrets from anyone nowadays, but the aficionado will be astonished to discover several forgotten luminaries here, composers who were great stars and highly sought-after musicians during their lifetimes even though the passing centuries have been very unkind to them: Pallavicino, Provenzale, Schürmann, de Bottis, Viviani, all of whom worked between the 1650s and the 1750s. At any rate they have deservedly waited their turn for a few centuries in exchange for being rediscovered by Desandre’s delicate voice, whose timbre is so perfectly suited for this music, and whose astonishing vocalisation pyrotechnics are a pure wonder. The programme is built around the characters of the mythological (even though recent archaeology has provided some evidence of their possible existence) Amazons – hence the title – those fabulous female warriors and hunters, who matched men in physical agility and strength, archery, riding skills and the arts of bloodthirsty combat, but who were also associated with the foundation of temples and the establishment of numerous ancient cities. These ladies were named Myrina (or Mitilene), Antiope (present both in Pallavicino’s L’Antiope and Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte, where she is the main female character although for the premiere in Rome in 1723 the role had to be sung by a castrato since a papal edict prevented women from appearing onstage in the Eternal City), Marthésia (or rather Marpesia, but old misspellings are deeply ingrained) in Destouches’ Marthésie, première reine des Amazones. And if Alceste is not quite a true Amazon, her name – from the Hellenic root alki/alko, conveying a sense of valour, courage and strength – does grant her an honourable place in the roll-call of Wonder Women of the Ancient World.

1 Oct 2021
round midnight: Dutilleux, Merlin, Schönberg
Quatuor Ébène
Antoine Tamestit
Nicolas Altstaedt
Digipack: 0190296641909
SHRM: 0190296641886
The members of Quatuor Ébène went round the world with the complete Beethoven quartets, now they go ‘Round Midnight. This album offers a creatively conceived programme, bringing together major figures from different streams of 20th music: Arnold Schönberg, Henri Dutilleux and four masters of jazz and popular idioms – Thelonius Monk, Cole Porter, Henry Mancini and Victor Young. The three works in question, all nocturnally-themed, are: Schönberg’s passionate late-Romantic sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), composed in 1899, for which the quartet is joined by viola-player Antoine Tamestit and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt; Dutilleux’s glistening quartet Ainsi la nuit, first heard in 1978 and comprising seven brief movements, and Night bridge, a ‘nocturnal poem for string sextet’ composed by the Ébène’s cellist Raphaël Merlin. It muses on Monk’s jazz standard ‘Round Midnight, dating from around 1940, on Mancini’s ‘Moon River; made famous by the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, on Porter’s urbane and haunting ‘Night and Day’, originally a hit in 1932, and on ‘Stella by Starlight’ originally composed by Victor Young for the 1944 film The Uninvited.

5 Nov 2021
Rameau: Achante et Céphise
Sabine Devieilhe, soprano (Céphise)
Cyrille Dubois, tenor (Achante)
David Witczak, baritone (Le Génie Oroès)
Judith Van Wanroij, soprano (Zirphile)
Jehanne Amzal, soprano (La Grande Prêtresse)
Artavazd Sargsyan, tenor (Un Coryphée)
Arnaud Richard, bass baritone (Un Coryphée / Un Chasseur)
Marine Lafdal-Franc, soprano (Une Fée / Une Bergère)
Anne-Sophie Petit, soprano (La Deuxième Prêtresse / Délie)
Floriane Hasler, mezzo soprano (La Troisième Prêtresse)
Les Ambassadeurs, La Grande Ecurie
Les Chantres Du Centre De Musique Baroque De Versailles
Olivier Scheneebeli, chorus master
Alexis Kossenko, conductor
Clamshell: 0190296693946 (2 CD)
SHRM: 0190296693830
Jean-François Marmonte’s libretto combines mythology and fairytale in a single subject, mixing the magical powers of the evil genie, Oroès, with traditional tributes to Venus and Love

 

WERGO

10 Sept 2021
Tonband, Featuring Music by Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger

6 Aug 2021
Christian Wolff
Trio IX and Exercises
Trio Accanto
WER 74002
The American composer Christian Wolff (b. 1934) is the last living representative of the New York School (Rauschenberg, Rothko, etc.). Wolff was not even an adult when he studied with Grete Sultan and John Cage. Wolff’s music was much more politically motivated than that of Feldman and Cage, which is evident on this new WERGO album by Trio Accanto. The album features first recordings made in close collaboration with Wolff in the studios of Deutschlandfunk Cologne/Germany. Wolff’s great “Trio IX – Accanto” (2017) is a testament to his long-standing friendship with the musicians. Peculiarly serene and unobtrusively narrative, the piece features many reminiscences and hidden quotations from music by J. S. Bach to union songs. There are also tributes to Wolff’s own “Exercises”, whose more recent numbers can be heard on the album as well.

 

WINTER & WINTER

13 Aug 2021
Forma Antiqva - My Choice
Forma Antiqva
9102752
Forma Antiqva, founded in 1998 by the brothers Aarón, Daniel and Pablo Zapico in Asturias, is considered to be the most courageous baroque ensemble in Spain. With variable formations - from the trio of the Zapico brothers (Concerto Zapico) to the baroque orchestra with outstanding performers of the young generation - the Zapicos deal with repertoire of the 17th / 18th centuries and the present in an original and bold way: from Spanish dance music to great works of the late baroque, including legacy revivals by authors such as Vicente Baset.

Posted 3 August 2021 by Keith Bramich

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