PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Classical Music and Visual Disability, including contributions from Charlotte Hardwick, Robert McCarney, Halida Dinova and Giuseppe Pennisi.

November 2022 New Releases

Browse a selection of new recordings

 

Here is our list of new releases, as of 6 November 2022, ordered by release date.

Our regular writers will receive an email about this list, and will be asked to choose which items they would like to review. If you have submitted details of an album and it is chosen for review, we will request a review copy from you, your label or its UK distributor.

The list has been prepared quickly, from emails received between 1 October and 6 November 2022 inclusive. Apologies for any omissions, or if the information is not up to our usual standards. Please let us know if you find any mistakes.

Unless otherwise specified, each item is a single CD.

Extra information about some new releases can also be found here.

 

27 JANUARY 2023

 

Jessye Norman - The Unreleased Masters
Decca Classics
Release: 27 January 2023
An unrivaled and towering figure on stage and in the studio, Jessye Norman was unquestionably one of the most exceptional sopranos of all time. Her death in September 2019, which left the world bereft of an unmistakably radiant light, saw legions of fans, including celebrities, civil rights and arts world leaders, sharing the impact she made on their lives, and reinvigorated discussion in articles, blogs, and fan groups around 'unreleased recordings'. Launching 2023 with this headline release at the very top of the year, and with the support of her family and estate, Decca proudly presents a collection of six unreleased Philips recordings of works by Britten, Haydn, Berlioz, R Strauss and Wagner.

 

13 JANUARY 2023

Daniel Pioro: Saint Boy
Platoon
Release: 13 January 2023
Daniel Pioro has announced his new album Saint Boy, scheduled for release on Platoon on 13 January 2023. Saint Boy is a collection of ancient and contemporary, sacred and secular music for solo violin, chamber organ and string quartet. From the liturgical ritual of Hildegard von Bingen to the beauty of Laurence Crane, the album is a demonstration of Daniel's technical virtuosity, imagination and belief in the storytelling potential of music. Daniel says: 'I would like the listener to imagine they are walking through a cathedral for the first time. Each piece is a stained glass window telling its own story'. A devotion to sound lies at the heart of this album. Pioro invites the listener to sit within the four walls of his violin, to be enveloped by its voice, and to have the inner workings and mysteries of the instrument revealed as he performs a kaleidoscope of music, including works he composed, arranged, and commissioned. Speaking about Saint Boy, Pioro adds:  'I find those two words, sat side-by-side, so beautiful. There is something irreverent about the combination of Saint and Boy. Street culture meets ancient Monastic life. The album hovers around and attempts to engage with the sacred in sound, or at least how we perceive it with Western Classical ears. It is, on the surface, an homage to the great music of the past yet within this programming there is irreverence and rebellion too'. Daniel Pioro is a soloist, collaborative artist, and advocate for new and experimental music.

 

9 DECEMBER 2022

Steven Mackey: Beautiful Passing
Anthony Marwood, violin; Sydney Symphony Orchestra / David Robertson
Canary Classics
Release: 2 December 2022
Steven Mackey releases a portrait album of his music for violin and orchestra, Beautiful Passing, on Canary Classics. Works include Mackey's violin concerto Beautiful Passing (2008), with soloist Anthony Marwood, and his symphony, Mnemosyne's Pool (2014), both recorded live by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra led by conductor David Robertson. Mackey shares deeply personal accompanying notes in the booklet, followed by a conversation with longtime collaborator of more than 15 years, David Robertson. The conductor leads the National Symphony Orchestra in performances of Mnemosyne's Pool on December 1, 2, and 3, 2022 at The Kennedy Center in Washington DC. The NSO, alongside the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and New World Symphony, commissioned the symphony. Mackey introduces the album, 'All of the music on Beautiful Passing engages with memory, albeit in different ways. Mnemosyne's Pool deals with memory within the music itself, and in so doing it deals with our memory, the human capacity for memory and the act of remembering. Beautiful Passing deals with my memory, a particular memory from my personal experience which gave rise to the music and may in turn invite related memories from the listener.' Steven Mackey's violin concerto Beautiful Passing (2008) – performed on this album with British violinist Anthony Marwood MBE – is a work in two halves, separated by a cadenza. It was inspired by Mackey's experience watching his mother pass away from esophageal cancer. He shares, 'During this time, I was working on a violin concerto which was intended to be a flashy show piece, but I lost my mojo for that and could not stop thinking about the three states of being that this experience had drawn so expressively: First, my mother's serenity and strength as she assumed control of her destiny. That calm stood in sharp contrast to, second, the frantic, albeit benign, chatter around her from the electric, phone, and cable TV companies haggling over prorated charges, as well as the nurses, aides, and friends (myself included) who did not believe that she had any agency in in this matter. Third and finally, my insomnia and the flickering consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. As I reflected on this last state, I pondered what my mother's experience of flickering consciousness between life and death might have been like. I was filled with admiration as I realized that I had been unable to relinquish consciousness for a mere six to eight hours, while my mother let go for eternity, as far as we know. Beautiful Passing does not attempt to retell the story of my mother's passing but rather to distill those three states of being into musical threads that interact with one another as musical elements do, not as my story did. The 'story' is a linear narrative, while the composition follows a quite different, musical logic.'  The work was co-commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and St. Louis Symphony, with Music Director David Robertson, and premiered by violinist Leila Josefowicz with the BBC Philharmonic led by Juraj Valcuha in 2008. The Guardian raved, 'It contends, asserts, floats and flickers, but entirely on Mackey's own stylistic terms. The piece is all the stronger for the negativity it grapples with, and maybe that will prove to be so of his work as a whole.'

2 DECEMBER 2022

Pasquale Anfossi: Symphonies & Ouvertures (first recordings)
Concerto Classics
Release: 2 December 2022
Domenico Bonifacio Pasquale Anfossi was born in Taggia, in the province of Imperia, in 1727 and died in Rome in 1797. Amongst the protagonists of the Neapolitan Musical School, Anfossi, together with Tommaso Traetta, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi and younger Giovanni Paisiello and Domenico Cimarosa, was a composer gifted with remarkable artistic sensibility and wrote seventy-six works, counting dramas, comic operas and intermezzi. His name is strictly bonded to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who entrusted the Italian Maestro with considerable admiration, so much that he named him in his letters and was inspired by him to work on some themes: on the occasion of two representations in Vienna in 1783 and 1788, the genius from Salzburg wrote some arias for two of Anfossi's operas, Il curioso indiscreto (The inappropriate curious) and Le gelosie fortunate (The fortunate jealousies). Listening to the two composers, one could in fact observe significant resemblances: formal models, style of the voice-leading, harmonic coherence and straightforwardness, instrumentation usage knowledge, rhythmic inventiveness, clear and distinct juxtaposition of the thematic ideas, agogic brightness as well as the melodiousness of the andanti. The clear and expressive style of Anfossi, together with lively rhythmic movements and optimal instrumentation, credited him with the fame of being one of the most capable composers of his time. Through a long and meticulous research work, lasted several months, we managed to regather his manuscripts, preserved in various libraries from all over the world (Italy, Switzerland, France, Sweden, UK and US). The world premiere recording of the Symphonies & Ouvertures selection included in the CD occurred in Prague on September 16th 2022 with the prestigious Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

Harriet Adie: Christmastide
Harriet Adie, harp
MPR (Mike Purton Recording) MPR113
Release: 2 December 2022
British classical harpist and composer Harriet Adie plays her own unique compositions of traditional carols. Christmastide is a collection of traditional Christmas carols which Adie has arranged for solo pedal harp.

Mahler: Symphony No 5
Park Avenue Chamber Symphony / David Bernard
Recursive Classics RC5956731-D
Release: 2 December 2022
Continuing their series of releases on the Recursive Classics Label, David Bernard and the
Park Avenue Chamber Symphony turn their attention to Mahler's Symphony No 5. Mahler's Fifth represents a seismic shift in the composer's conception of the symphony. Unlike the earlier set of Wunderhorn symphonies, all of which either featured embedded text or quoted separate songs with related text, in the Fifth, Mahler leaves us without an explicit word-music connection. The result is a symphonic experience that leads both performers and listeners on a journey experienced in real time, without a predisposed program. The Fifth also represents a shift in Mahler's symphonic style, bringing a new focus on contrapuntal transparency brought on by Mahler's obsession with Bach that emerged around the time of the work's composition. Within each movement, the intense focus on the horizontal dimension is evident, culminating an a Finale that brings a tour-de-force display of Mahler's 'Grand Style'--evoking Mozart's similar display of contrapuntal prowess in the Finale of his 'Jupiter' Symphony. Mahler's quest to achieve this new style, involving an ongoing series of modifications to improve transparency of the voice leading, spanned over a decade. The result is a clear triumph for Mahler, performers and audiences.

Dialogues
Su-a Lee, cello
Bandcamp / self-released
Release: 2 December 2022
Celebrated South Korea-born cellist Su-a Lee draws on her 30 years of musical experience in her stunning debut solo album Dialogues. Set for physical release on Friday 2 December 2022, the album will then be available to download and stream on major digital platforms from Friday 20 January 2023. Continually reaching beyond the classical genre, the top-class chamber musician has worked with exceptional World music artists throughout her career. She is highly sought after for her distinctive sound, expression and willingness to explore. In Dialogues, Su-a showcases the highlights and inspirations of her non-classical career, and brings her own unique voice to the fore. Dialogues is a series of musical conversations with 15 of her all-time favourite folk musicians from home and abroad. Each piece is an intimate duet that takes their musical relationship to the next level. Each collaborator has carefully chosen a tune or song that is close to home and heart, and one that also celebrates their strong connection with Su-a over the years. Many are original compositions, written especially for the album and dedicated to her, while others are fresh arrangements of traditional tunes. Su-a Lee said: 'Playing solo is not really my thing. I am energised by working with other people, especially these people. I didn't want my debut solo album to be just about me taking the limelight. This album celebrates the musician featured on each track. Each piece reveals something of their roots, identity and inspirations, while also striking a chord with me. As much as this album is about finding my own voice, it is also about the interaction and development of two voices.  Welcome to our dialogue.' The album also explores the role of the cello in folk music. In fact, the cello is the original Scottish folk rhythm section instrument – famous Scots fiddlers of the 18th century, like Neil Gow, Peter Milne and James Scott Skinner were regularly accompanied by a cellist. However, the cello went out of fashion for a century or so, in favour of guitar, piano and other instruments.

Bach: Clavier-Übung III
Jeremy Filsell, the organs and choir of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, New York
Signum Classics SIGCD744
Release: 2 December 2022
The first recording to use all five organs of St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, from regular Signum recording artist, Jeremy Filsell. The third part of Bach's monumental Clavier-Übung explores both Lutheran hymnody and the 'German Organ Mass'. Pursuing complex contrapuntal structures, the preludes that comprise Clavier-Übung III are extraordinarily wide-ranging and demanding in their expression.

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D 784 and D 959
Eric Lu
Warner Classics 5054197298127
Release: 2 December 2022
Eric Lu's career continues to go from strength to strength since winning the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition. Recent debuts with the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and important forthcoming UK first with London Symphony Orchestra and at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 2023 underpin his reputation as a significant pianist of our time. Now comes his second album of Schubert on Warner Classics, pairing two of the composer's greatest sonatas – D 784 in A minor, written in 1823, and D 959 in A major, written in 1828, the last year of Schubert's short life; complementing them is the Allegretto in C minor D 915, dating from 1827. Lu writes, 'I love Schubert. It is difficult to describe how meaningful his music is to me. He was the ultimate artist, in the purest sense of the word. Late in his life, with death staring him down and all his hopes and dreams dashed ... he continued to churn out one masterpiece after another ... He is the composer who moves me most intensely.'

Liszt Transcendental Études
Alim Beisembayev, piano
Warner Classics 5054197296451
Release: 2 December 2022
Alim Beisembayev, winner of the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition, makes his album debut on Warner Classics with solo works by Liszt, including seven of the ambitious Études d'exécution transcendante. Born in Kazakhstan and trained primarily in the UK, Beisembayev has been praised by critics for the spellbinding polish and maturity of his playing. 'The Transcendental Études of Liszt are amongst the most challenging piano works ever written by any composer,' he says. 'Frequently described as tone poems, these inspirational works take the étude to a new level … Since early childhood, I had been inspired by performances of these works by legendary pianists such as Cziffra, Richter and Kissin, never dreaming that I would one day be performing them myself .... However, like most young pianists, the challenge, for me, was the attraction, and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to record these pieces.'

Hildur Guðnadóttir: Women Talking (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Mercury Classics Soundtrack & Score
Release: 2 December 2022
Mercury Classics Soundtrack & Score will release Hildur Guðnadóttir's brooding original motion picture soundtrack for Women Talking, the poignant film written and directed by Sarah Polley. Women Talking is a highly emotive and inspiring story, based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, that follows a group of women from an isolated religious community who grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith. Guðnadóttir's affecting, ruminative score captures the film's emotional complexity. Rousing guitar-led motifs underpin the folk-influenced score, punctuated by unsettling percussion and mournful strings.

 

1 DECEMBER 2022

Christian Erbach Complete Organ Music
Manuel Tomadin, organ
Brilliant Classics 95329
Release: 1 December 2022
First recordings galore on the most comprehensive collection ever issued of an overlooked master of the early German Baroque. Born around 1570, Christian Erbach apparently pursued the career of a musician from his earliest years. By his early 30s he had taken over organist positions in Augsburg previously held by the better known Hans Leo Hassler (the subject of another unrivalled compendium by Manuel Tomadin on Brilliant Classics, 95331).
Like Hassler, Erbach was evidently influenced as a composer by Italian and in particular Venetian flavours of polychoral and effervescent writing even in his instrumental output.
The predominant forms in this set are toccatas, canzonas and ricercars, as well as instrumental'settings' of the Magnificat and the Ordinary of the Mass for liturgical use.
Erlebach himself must have been an organist of tremendous flourish and with an ear for liturgical theatre, to judge from the colourful array of textures he demands in his music. Both his music and his renown as a teacher exercised a formative influence over the next two generations of German organ music – from which eventually emerged its own dominant figure, Johann Sebastian Bach (who also looked over to the other side of the Alps for stylistic inspiration). In an extensive booklet introduction to Erlebach's life and works, the organist Manuel Tomadin makes available much research otherwise unavailable in English. He has chosen to make this comprehensive set on a selection of organs in northern Italy and Austria, all of them equipped with the registral possibilities to make the
composer's music sing in its own language, and several of them dating from Erlebach's own time, based in Bologna, Mantova, Pistoia and farther afield. All the instruments are illustrated in the booklet with colour photographs and a detailed registration plan, making the set invaluable for both organ buffs and any listener with a broader interest in the German Baroque.

Musickè: The Art of Muses, Harpsichord Music by Female Contemporary Composers
Luca Quintavalle, harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96476
Release: 1 December 2022
The composers presented are: Augusta Read Thomas (1964), Ursula Mamlok (1923- 2016),
Tania León (1943), Graciane Finzi (1945), Karola Obermüller (1977), Errollyn Wallen (1958), Santa Ratniece (1977), Anna Thorvaldsdottir (1977), Sofia Gubaidulina (1931), Misato Mochizuki (1969). All of the transcriptions of this CD were made by the artist in accordance with the composers' intentions. This is a transcontinental exhibition of modern female composers writing for the harpsichord in a dazzling array of styles, featuring many first recordings. Ursula Mamlok's Three Bagatelles are miniatures characterized by a free application of serial technique, courting expressionist parallels with rhetorical, concentrated gestures. In Tumbáo, Tania Leon uses a string bass pattern from her native Cuba without being confined to a specifically Latin style in its development. Graciane Finzi's Espressivo evokes Romanticism (the period when the harpsichord almost disappeared from view) and could even be heard as an evocation of Chopin, but for a complementary tape part featuring a second, detuned harpsichord. Karola Obermüller composed the Suite des
femmages as a set of tributes to both the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger and Obermüller's own mother, Barbara, and they are accordingly imbued with a ferocity and a bracing power which reflects her admiration for both the women and their accomplishments. Errolyn Wallen dedicated Louis's Loops to her infant godson, and there is a playful quality to the juxtaposition of frenetic activity with oases of peace, where echoes of the past resurface
poetically and sometimes with subtle irony. Santa Ratniece took inspiration from the world of astronomy for Mira, which is named after a kind of pulsing star: with every pulse cycle, Mira increases in luminosity and strength. The Mobius-Ring of Misato Mochizuki describes an earthly scientific phenomenon, looping like Wallen's and Ratniece's works through evolving pulsations of the same material. Sofia Gubaidulina organised the Ritorno Perpetuo along complementary principles of varied repetition, determined in part by numerology and the Fibonacci sequence. This is the most extensive work on the album, but
every piece here has something distinctive to say, and gains from its contrast with the others. A previous album of Italian contemporary works for harpsichord on Brilliant Classics (96408) demonstrated Luca Quintavalle's eclectic reach and mastery of diverse styles, to which this unique collection makes a lively sequel.

Jean-Baptiste Robin: Time Circles - Orchestral & Chamber Music
Orchestre National de France, Orchestre des Pays de Savoie
Brilliant Classics 96569
Release: 1 December 2022
There is a prevailing theme at the heart of Jean-Baptiste Robin's work, one from which this album draws its name (Time Circles) and can only be translated by the language of sounds: that of time moving inexorably forward, gradually altering beings and things in its path, on into death and oblivion. This recording focuses on Robin's more recent output. (2012–2020). The title of the first piece, Crop Circles (2012), refers to the man-made, symmetrical, geometric shapes found in crop fields. The slow introduction reveals two motifs: the first based on a symmetrical mode with a swirling melody, symbolising the geometrical designs of the Crop Circles in question; the second introduces the human element into this semi-natural, semi-artificial world. In the Allegro, 'the initial swirling becomes a whirlwind' (J. B. Robin), then in the slow central section the second theme appears on the solo violin, evoking man at the centre of nature (the eye of the storm or the centre of the circle...). #Tictac (2019) was a commission from the Versailles Grand-Parc communauté de communes. This sonatina in five movements varies the tempi, rhythms and melodies, but is based throughout on the unrelenting movement of a pendulum. The opening tick-tock introduces the dominant motif, beginning the process of metamorphosis which develops throughout the movements. Following the example of Crop Circles, Zénith (2020) brings together man and passing time through two juxtaposing or overlaying themes. A first section introduces the pizzicato tick-tock of time, then later the human theme appears alone and rises to an intense lyricism. A brief coda on the tick-tock: the struggle between man and time inevitably ends in the latter's victory. The theme of passing time is placed in a nocturnal setting in the three Poèmes de l'aube et de la nuit (Poems of the Dawn and the Night), wherein the unfolding of the night is ever perceived more slowly than the day. As such, there are no fast movements in these three poems, but instead alternating recitative sections and lyrical passages. The A-B-A' structure of the two first poems gives way to a through- composed structure in the third, which ends the piece with a piano postlude. Commissioned in 2014, Trois Nuits includes three movements and pays tribute to French composer Dutilleux. From the choreographic first movement to the recurring lament-like theme, the final increase of tempo leads the work to its infernal conclusion. Much of La lame des heures (2019) is punctuated by the symbolic tick-tock: 'Dark, mischievous, ill-tempered, heroic, the tick-tock takes on different characters and gradually appears as a blade that wounds, leaves scars, that never ceases.' (J B Robin). The near-constant dramatic tension of the piece is reminiscent of Crop Circles, and the final section culminates in the beating of twenty-four dissonant chords, symbolising the implacable cycle of the hours.

J S Bach in Himmerod Abbey
Adriano Falcioni, organ
Brilliant Classics 96615
Release: 1 December 2022
In 1731, Johann Sebastian Bach was commissioned to write a cantata to mark the inauguration of the new town council in Leipzig. The resulting piece, Wir danken dir, Gott begins with a Sinfonia, based on a transcription for organ and orchestra of the prelude from Bach's own Partita No.3 in E major for solo violin BWV 1006. Marcel Dupré's highly virtuosic organ arrangement of the work removes the orchestra and adds a pedal line, giving all the various parts to the solo organ. Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue BWV 903 was originally written for harpsichord. Bach may have written this piece, like the Well-Tempered Clavier, as proof of the power of equal temperament to explore the various keys and get the most out of the instrument's tonal resources. Max Reger's transcription uses changes of manual and stops and the technique of dividing the parts between the manuals and pedals to emphasise all the work's unique aspects. Bach was a huge admirer of Antonio Vivaldi and transcribed several of his concertos for solo keyboard. The Concerto in D minor here is taken from Vivaldi's L'estro harmonico, a collection of solo concertos that brought the composer much acclaim. Bach's arrangement follows the original division into four movements and, interestingly, this work was one of the few times Bach noted the stops the organist should use. The Chaconne from Bach's Partita No 2 in D minor BWV 1004 is another solo violin transcription, arranged for organ by Ulisse Matthey. A chaconne is a composition derived from a moderate-paced dance in ternary time, probably of Spanish or South American origin, comprising a series of variations over a basso ostinato. Matthey's transcription for organ gives the listener an even greater appreciation of the complex polyphony and sophisticated counterpoint that pervade the piece's 32 eight-bar variations. The Flute Sonata BWV 1031, attributed to J S Bach but potentially composed by his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel, is divided into three movements, the most famous of which is undoubtedly the Sicilienne, here in the version transcribed for solo organ by Louis Vierne. In musical terms a sicilienne or siciliana is a slow-paced dance, typically in the minor mode and usually in 6/8 or 12/8, characterised by dotted rhythms that are meant to recall a pastoral atmosphere. The Prelude and Fugue BWV 552 is considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of music. It is full of hidden symbolism, all celebrating the mystery of the Trinity: the three flats in the key signature, three themes in the Prelude and three subjects in the Fugue, are references to the numbers 9 (3×3) and 27 (3×3×3). The themes stylistically depict a part of the Trinity: the Father is solemn and majestic, the Son is livelier, and the Holy Spirit has a joyful feel. Like the chaconne, the Passacaglia is a moderate-paced dance in ternary time of Spanish origin. Here, once again, Bach's writing conceals several numerical symbols: ternary time, three flats in the key signature, and seven groups of three variations, making a total of 21 variations (2+1=3).

Christmas Harp Music
Anna Pasetti, harp
Brilliant Classics 96678
Release: 1 December 2022
Christmas has always been a source of inspiration for musicians, and this harp album contains many Christmas pieces and famous melodies. Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa (1789–1856) wrote much harp music, including his fantasy on Adeste fideles (dedicated to Clementi). Joseph Mazzinghi's (1765–1844) Andante from Sonata Op.30 No.3 consists of a series of variations on the, likely pre-existing, melody that almost a century later would become the famous song Deck the Halls. Charles Oberthür (1845–1924) was the first harp professor of the Royal Academy of Music in London. His piece 'Virgo Maria' is based on the ancient Marian hymn O Sanctissima. Unlike other tracks, Edmund Schüecker's (1860–1911) Weihnachtslied is not inspired by any traditional Christmas melody. His other didactic compositions are well known and still used in conservatories, unlike his concert pieces. The same can be said of his pupil, Dutch composer Johannes Snoer (1868–1936). His Phantasia combines the two themes of the Christmas carols Stille Nacht and Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen. In France, Alphonse Hasselmans (1845–1912) was the most important harp tutor at the Paris Conservatory, teaching Tournier, Renié, Grandjany and Salzedo. Rather than depicting a light-hearted holiday scene, Hasslemans' Conte de Noël evokes Christmas ghost tales. In 1912, Marcel Tournier (1879–1951) succeeded Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatory. Tournier composed in an impressionistic style, and his two pieces here are from his four volumes of Images (inspired by Debussy). Les enfants expresses children's joy watching the nativity scene, and Cloches evokes the sound of bells under the snow. Hasselmans' first choice for his replacement was, however, not Tournier, but Henriette Renié (1875–1956), perhaps the most important female harp music composer. However, the Minister of Education refused Hasselmans, as there were no women teaching principal courses at the time, and because she was a Christian when the French government was advocating secularism. The melancholic Conte de Noël opens her collection of Six Pièces brèves. Marcel Grandjany (1891–1975), a pupil of Renié, composed many pieces that remain part of study and concert programs for the harp, and his version of Stille Nacht here contrasts with Snoer's version. Marcel Samuel-Rousseau's (1882-1955) Variations Pastorales are inspired by an old French popular carol. Carlos Salzedo's (1885-1961) compositions for harp were very innovative: he invented and described several of the effects that are still used in contemporary harp music. His Concert Variations are based on the song O Tannenbaum, created from a late medieval or Renaissance melody. Jingle Bells needs no introduction. Composed by James Pierpont (1822-1893) in 1850 (originally for Thanksgiving), it has become a distinctive Christmas song, arranged here by harpist Masumi Nagasawa.

J S Bach: Guitar Music
Luigi Attademo, guitar
Brilliant Classics 96679
Release: 1 December 2022
A newly recorded collection of highlights from Bach's great corpus of instrumental writing, in transcriptions by Luigi Attademo himself. Bach left us a few isolated pieces and suites for the lute, predecessor of the guitar, but guitarists have always found the rest of his music as amenable to adaptation as every other musician. Luigi Attademo recorded all of Bach's lute music a decade ago on a 2CD Brilliant Classics album (94294) which attracted glowing reviews in the international press for the combined rigour and imagination of his playing. On this new recording he turns to pieces originally conceived for cello (the Preludio of the First Cello Suite), violin (the Chaconne from the D minor Partita), harpsichord (the Aria from the Goldberg Variations) and flute (the Siciliano from the E flat major Sonata) which have gained iconic status in the three centuries since their composition for their surface simplicity and expressive depth. The recital includes several stimulating pairs: the Aria from the Goldbergs with the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite; Gavottes from the Sixth Cello Suite and E major Violin Partita; the Siciliano from the G minor solo sonata for violin preceding the more famous flute example. These pairs only serve to underline the variety of Bach's response to a particular genre. Grandest and most superficially complex of the works here, the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue proves highly idiomatic on the guitar, relating the virtuosic and extrovert writing back to what we now think must be a lost violin original for the piece (possibly not even by Bach) rather than the form for organ which is now universally known. Attademo contributes a personal introduction to the album which explains his choice of repertoire and interpretative approach, taking inspiration from great Bach players of the past such as Mstislav Rostropovich and Dinu Lipatti.

Giovanni Battista Vitali: Artificii Musicali Op 13
Andrea Coen, harpsichord; Riccardo Cimino, sound shaping
Brilliant Classics 96686
Release: 1 December 2022
Born in Bologna, Giovanni Battista Vitali (1632–1692) spent all his life between his birth city and Modena, where he moved in 1674. There is something noteworthy in this geography of the composer: Vitali's move from Bologna, then part of the Papal States under the administration of Rome, to the smaller but significantly more secular and artistically stimulating Modena, under the rule of the splendid Este family, is suggestive of a desire to achieve greater expressive freedom. All composers must tackle the dilemmas of their times, and Vitali's legacy is his ability to use his great skill to achieve that ideal synthesis between tradition and innovation. Artificii Musicali (Modena, 1689) has given Vitali a respectable place in music history, particularly if one considers the oft supposed idea that it served as inspiration for J S Bach's Musical Offering, J Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) and G.B. Martini's Saggio Fondamentale Pratico di Contrappunto sopra il Canto Fermo (1774). Vitali's Artificii Musicali appeared at a historical crossroad, during the final decades of the 17th century, when there was an explosive rise in instrumental music. The sprout of creative freedom for composers of instrumental music was immensely liberating, as the previous generations of musicians were often limited in their artistic endeavors by the rigid structures of choral polyphony or the madrigal form. Artificii Musicali is a unique pedagogical music handbook, a theoretic treatise of canonic science, and ultimately a testament to the originality and genius of its author. There are 40 canons in this work and interspersed among them there are 4 that can be classified as riddle-canons or enigma-canons. These intriguing pieces are accompanied by a brief Latin motto containing the key for their realization, which is left to the reader to decipher (of note, Bach also included two riddle-canons with Latin mottos in the Musical Offering). The final 9 pieces in the Artificii are an eclectic collection of balletti, capricci, a passagallo, and 2 violin sonatas, representative of the main forms of instrumental music at the end of the 17th century. Although Artificii was originally written for violin and bass, Andrea Coen performs here on a harpsichord, and furthermore a harpsichord in equal temperament. Such a choice is not the result of simplification or trivialisation, but is based on confirmed historical evidence reported by Patrizio Barbieri: 'For the entire fifty years in the middle of the 17th century, concrete attempts were made in Europe to tune harpsichords, organs and harps no longer with the usual mesotonic, but with equal temperament'. Furthermore, the recording choices on this album were of tantamount importance, and Riccardo Cimino has shaped and spatialized the sounds with great musical sensitivity and powerful sound engineering. The finalisation of the recording in Dolby Atmos gives many possible ways of listening to the Artificii, depending on the chosen media: from the three-dimensional Atmos music audio down to a binaural stereo. This, compared to traditional stereo, presents much greater depth.

Michael Haydn: Pro festo innocentium - Masses & Vesper
Accademia Vocale di Genova / Roberta Paraninfo
Brilliant Classics 96688
Release: 1 December 2022
From 1763 until his death in 1806, Johann Michael Haydn worked in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg – almost as long a period of service as that of his brother Joseph to the princely family in Esterhazy. During the course of those 43 years, he bridged the stylistic gap between early Classicism and the Biedermeier style. Indeed, he was initially regarded by contemporaries as equal in talent to Joseph. Only the older brother's steep rise to become the most important instrumental composer of his day somewhat overshadowed Johann Michael Haydn. In recent years his music has been rediscovered, and he has increasingly been recognized again. His output includes more than thirty works in Latin or German for two or three lines of upper voices, composed for his 'dear choirboys' singing at the cathedral in Salzburg. The first setting of the ordinary in this series was the Missa Sancti Aloysii, composed in 1777. It was initially intended for the Commemoration of the Holy Innocents on 28 December, when the chapel boys celebrated their principal feast day. This exceptionally charming mass is marked throughout by a wonderfully effervescent sense of joy. At the other end of his career, the Missa sub titulo Sti. Leopoldi pro festo Innocentium was Michael Haydn's last completed work, finished on 22 December 1805 in time to celebrate the same feast day as the earlier Mass, despite the composer's ill health, and drawing strength (according to the composer) from the optimistic character of his pupils. Complementing these two Mass settings, the Accademia Vocale di Genova and Roberta Paraninfo present a complete recording of the Vespers which Haydn wrote for the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1787. Though these attractive choral rarities have been recorded before, this is the only album to present all three complementary works together, and in modern recordings informed by the scale and performance practice which the composer himself would have known. Roberta Paraninfo founded the Accademia Vocale di Genova in 1995, and they have specialised ever since then in choral works of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods.

Earl Wild Complete Piano Music
Giovanni Doria Miglietta, piano
Brilliant Classics 96705 (3 CDs)
Release: 1 December 2022
The most complete available collection of the improvisations and transcriptions by a virtuoso of the Romantic school. Born in 1915, the American pianist Earl Wild was known to most listeners as a specialist in the line of Romantic pianist-composers from Chopin to Rachmaninoff. However, Wild was also a masterful improviser – in the tradition of the composers he played – and he wrote down (and recorded) many of them to leave a substantial legacy of transcriptions, fantasies and paraphrases, as well as original piano works. Recorded between 2013 and 2018, this is the first and so far only complete collection of Wild's piano music. It opens with deeply affectionate transcriptions of poetic slow movements from Marcello to Fauré. Wild's own Piano Sonata dates from 2000, by which time he had been performing and composing for more than 70 years. Cast in the traditional three movements, it comes bang up to date with a spectacular final Toccata 'à la Ricky Martin'. An album's worth of Rachmaninoff song transcriptions testifies to the deep sympathy of Wild for the composer's language. These original recastings blend the vocal line into the accompaniment and gain additional preludes and postludes in the manner of Liszt's song transcriptions of Schubert. Wild knew Rachmaninoff, often heard him perform, and knew the Russian soprano Maria Kurenko, who had worked with the composer on his songs, and shared the insights she gained. Willd could dazzle an audience with keyboard pyrotechnics like few others, as the rest of the collection makes evident: etudes and fantasias on Gershwin; transcriptions of Handel, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky; and finally his own, roof raising version of a Mexican hat dance.

The Cello at the Montecassino Abbey - secular and sacred music in the 19th Century
Matteo Malagoli, cello
Brilliant Classics 96713 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 December 2022
Rare manuscripts from the library of an Italian abbey, rediscovered and recorded for the first time. Just off the main road between Rome and Naples, the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino can date its foundation back to AD 529, though it gained a more tragic renown during the Second World War as the site of exceptionally heavy Allied bombing in order to break Nazi defensive lines. The abbey's surviving library of manuscripts (theological, musical and others) was mostly moved to Rome during postwar reconstruction, but local archives mined for this release have turned up a treasure trove of pieces which testify to a lively culture of chamber music at the abbey during the 19th century. Several of the brothers must have been dedicated cellists of considerable gifts to judge from the surviving scores. They include a collection of six cello duets by Valentino Bertoja (1757-after 1820), a composer from the Veneto region to the north; the Duet No 6 opens this collection. The two most prominent monk musicians featured here are Padre Placido Abela (1814-1876), originally from Siracusa in Sicily, and Padre Mauro Liberatore (1810-1879) from L'Aquila. It is Liberatore who arranged both sacred and secular pieces to give a starring role to the cello, such as 'Casta Diva' from Bellini's Norma, and a then-popular aria from Mercadante's Il giuramento. Abela composed 'Concerti armonici' for a trio of piano, harmonium and cello, and then a part for the string instrument in the liturgical inserts of his Missa solennis. Other composers wrote pieces specifically for Liberatore to play, such as the Barcarola by the Sicilian cellist and composer Domenico Laboccetta (1823-1896), and two composers local to Monte Cassino, Pietro Ray (1773-1857) and Domenico Corigliano (1770-1838). This exceptionally rare repertoire is introduced in a booklet essay by the cellist Matteo Malagoli, who is the principal soloist on a collection of similar historical value from Brilliant Classics, of 'Early Neapolitan Cello Music' (96345) by Gerco and Francone.

Tintinnabuli - Arvo Pärt / Jeroen van Veen
Jeroen van Veen, piano; Joachim Eijlander, cello
Brilliant Classics 96840
Release: 1 December 2022
Eight years ago, a 2CD collection of piano music by Arvo Pärt became a Brilliant Classics best-seller (95053, now reissued on LP), with Jeroen van Veen's playing capturing both the zeitgeist and the rapturous stillness of the Estonian composer's aesthetic. This sequel reprises a selection of those 'modern classic' recordings, and adds a trio of newly made recordings for cello and piano. Jeroen van Veen is joined by his pianist wife Sandra, and cellist Joachim Eijlander, to present a portrait of Pärt the man and the composer, attentive to and yet at times purposefully isolated from the turbulent currents of music in the second half of the last century. The album opens with a new recording of Fratres in its familiar cello-and-piano guise, and continues with masterpieces of 'new simplicity' from the 1970s such as Für Alina and Pari Intervallo. Such pieces began to set out the harmonic world of 'tintinnabuli', characterised by open and slow-moving harmonies, for which Pärt later became famous worldwide. The Ukuaru Valss affords a rare glimpse of the composer's lighter side, before an extended version of Für Alina and then the unearthly, imperishable echoes of Spiegel im Spiegel, which distils the sound of Part as much as any other single piece. The album concludes with Pärtomania, a newly written 20-minute tribute to the composer's soundworld by Jeroen van Veen, scored for the same string-instrument and piano combination as Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel. Van Veen himself discusses the unique world of Pärt's music in a booklet introduction.

Cor De Groot: Hommage - Piano Music
Folke Nauta, Jacob Bogaart, piano
Piano Classics PCL10259
Release: 1 December 2022
Several first recordings in a unique collection celebrating a landmark figure in 20th-century Dutch piano history. The name of Cor de Groot (1914-1993) adorned the cover of many LPs of canonic concertos and sonatas throughout the 1950s, when his qualities were summed up in High Fidelity magazine in a review of the first two concertos of Beethoven: 'De Groot is a solid and sympathetic interpreter in the Central European tradition... His playing impresses with its substance and authority rather than with ostentation and glitter.' Some (though not yet all) of those recordings have received modern reissues on CD, but his own compositions have received comparatively little attention. An early Sonatina pokes fun at serial technique, before an Old Holland Suite deftly sketches a sequence of 11 Dutch landscapes and portraits. A sequence of five Homenajes documents his fondness for Spain, played here by its dedicatee Jacob Bogaart. Folke Nauta likewise became a friend and colleague of de Groot, making him an ideal pianist to record the repertoire for left-hand piano which the composer wrote once a long term injury to his right hand had derailed his career at the end of the 1950s. Eastern European influences such as Bartók can be found in most of the seven movements of Apparitions, while a trio of later miniatures such as Cloches dans le matin (1979) makes a virtue of simplicity. Between them, Nauta has made an imaginative selection of music written for de Groot, as a left-handed pianist, by friends and colleagues including Willem, Juuriaan and Louis Andriessen, all receiving their first recordings here. The collection ends on a note of personal homage and affection with EnCor, which Jacob Bogaart wrote in 2013 as a reminiscence of his improvisation and practice sessions with de Groot. Both pianists contribute substantial essays to the booklet, which is further enhanced by a memoir of the pianist by the curator, musicologist and producer Frits Zwart: 'I was, of course, impressed by this world-famous pianist,' he recalls, 'a very ordinary man in his doings, also in his outward appearance. Nothing about him betrayed the great artist.'

Koharik Gazarossian: 24 Etudes
Nare Karoyan, piano
Piano Classics PCL10263
Release: 1 December 2022
The first complete recording of scintillating piano studies by an Armenian pupil of Dukas. Though she gave piano recitals throughout Europe during her career, the name of Koharik Gazarossian has largely been forgotten today. Born to Armenian parents in 1907, she grew up in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and studied piano there with a Hungarian pupil of Liszt. Not yet 20, she was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, where her teachers were Paul Dukas (composition) and Lazare Lévy (piano). Gazarossian proceeded to make a name and a career for herself as a pianist touring 24 'well-tempered' recitals, arranged by tonality after the model of Bach's keyboard manuals. But she also composed throughout this time, especially for her own instrument, in a tonal language influenced by her teachers and by Armenian folk melodies and harmonies. Many of these pieces have yet to be rediscovered, but this album of the 24 Etudes presents the most compelling case for her revival. Gazarossian completed the Etudes in 1958, and they attracted the praise in particular of Armenia's most renowned composer, Aram Khachaturian, who maintained that her reputation would have been much higher had she gone back to her native land rather than to Paris – though in fact she never did so, and she continued to live in Istanbul. Not only the pre-eminent exemplar of Chopin can be heard in the technique of the Etudes, but also the sound of Scriabin (No 1), Rachmaninov (No 3) and Prokofiev (No 10). Each of the Etudes is dedicated to a different friend, and the set thus testifies to a wide social circle of accomplished musicians from across Europe and Asia. Several of them are dedicated to the best of her pupils back in Istanbul, others to fellow female pianists such as Magdi Rufer and Idil Biret. It is all the more appropriate that they should be revived here by Nare Karoyan, who grew up in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, before studying in Cologne with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, among other distinguished teachers. Now based in Germany, she gives regular recitals in Berlin, Bonn and other major destinations.

 

25 NOVEMBER 2022

Lost in Venice
Vadym Makarenko, violin; Infermi d'Amore
Eudora Records EUDDR2206 (SACD, digital)
Release: 25 November 2022
Violinist Vadym Makarenko and his Infermi d'Amore present reconstructed and previously unrecorded Venetian music - Vivaldi, Veracini and Marcello. Reconstructions have been meticulously created by Olivier Fourés.

Schubert: String Quartet in E flat major D 87; String Quartet in G major D 887
Jubilee Quartet
Rubicon Classics RCD1082
Release: 25 November 2022

7 Movements: J S Bach; Sainte Colombe, father & son
Johanna Rose, viola da gamba
Rubicon Classics RCD1101
Release: 25 November 2022
7 Movements; three suites each with seven movements. In her intriguing new album, viola da gambist Johanna Rose places a prelude by Sainte-Colombe (father) in front of the six movement Bach suite in D minor, and finished the D major Bach suite with a chaconne. The third 'suite' is an all family affair with music by both father and son, fashioned into a suite by Rose.

Nuit et Jour - Debussy, Ravel, Zanon
Maria Martinova, piano
Rubicon Classics RCD1108
Release: 25 November 2022

Reflections - Shostakovich; Shostakovich arr Judith van Driel and David Faber; Bacewicz
Dudok Quartet Amsterdam
Rubicon Classics RCD1099
Release: 25 November 2022
Shostakovich: String Quartet No 5, Op92
Shostakovich arr Judith van Driel and David Faber: Preludes Op 34
Bacewicz: String Quartet No 4

Bach: Goldberg Variations
Fazıl Say, piano
Warner Classics 5054197234248
Release: 25 November 2022
Fazil Say worked on the iconic Bach Goldberg Variations during the early months of the pandemic in 2020. Honing in on just a handful of movements each week, the pandemic gave him the space to devote considerable time and focus to analysing the entire work, which he views as a masterpiece of music and mathematics. According to Fazil, 'the interpreter must deeply internalise this long piece, to the degree of presenting it as though it were their own composition ... Approaching a musical work of this kind is a lifelong journey. Who knows? Perhaps years later, having made new discoveries, we'll decide to record it all over again.'

Florence Beatrice Price: Songs of the Oak; Concert Overtures Nos. 1 and 2; The Oak; Colonial Dance; Suite of Dances
Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen / John Jeter
Naxos 8559920
Release: 25 November 2022
The rediscovery of Florence Price's music has revealed one of the most significant bodies of work by an African American composer in the 20th century. The variety of genres represented on this release place Price's immense artistic imagination on full display. The two Concert Overtures explore her engagement with spirituals, both episodically and coloristically, in music that embraces the somber, the poignant and the ebullient. Songs of the Oak is a tour de force of Hollywood-influenced storytelling while The Oak offers a more anxious, ultimately tragic portrait. Price's best-known work is the Suite of Dances – originally for piano it is heard here in the composer's full, sumptuous orchestration.

Shostakovich: Symphony No 10; Mahler: Symphony No 10
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra / Jaap van Zweden
Naxos 8574372
Release: 25 November 2022
These two Tenth Symphonies represent powerful statements by composers undergoing the greatest of crises in their eventful lives. Gustav Mahler's last and incomplete symphony was kept a secret by his widow Alma for many years after his death, the desperate scrawl of 'Almschi!' on its final page an outburst at her betrayal of their marriage. Shostakovich's intense and deeply symbolic Symphony No. 10, considered by many to be his finest, was kept hidden by the composer for fear of Soviet reprisals, and was only performed after Stalin's death in 1953. As far as Naxos is aware, Mahler's and Shostakovich's Tenth Symphonies are appearing here for the first time together on one disc. This version of Mahler's Tenth is also a premiere, recorded in its earliest incarnation as written in fair copy by Ernst Krenek and adapted by conductor Willem Mengelberg, one of Mahler's most loyal and insightful champions. Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony is justly famous and has been widely recorded but again, collectors will be very keen indeed to hear how it sounds with the fabulous Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Jaap van Zweden.

Edward German: The Seasons; Richard III – Overture; Theme and Six Diversions
RTÉ Concert Orchestra / Andrew Penny
Naxos 8555219
Release: 25 November 2022
Jettisoning the support of teaching and conducting appointments early in his career and working solely as a professional composer, Sir Edward German rose to prominence as a composer of orchestral music in the last decade of the 19th century. The popularity of his music resulted in prestigious commissions from festivals and theatrical producers, such as The Seasons written for the 1899 Norwich Festival, with its masterly evocations of nature, nostalgic yearnings and rustic festivities. The Theme and Six Diversions, one of the composer's finest concert works, owed its inspiration to a suggestion by German's friend and admirer Sir Edward Elgar.

The First Nowell - Christmas Carols Through the Ages
The Edison Singers / Noel Edison
Naxos 8574417
Release: 25 November 2022
The Christmas carol has its origins in the Middle Ages but it has since embraced a wide variety of musical backgrounds. In this album, religious sentiment is set in many different contexts – from the mystery plays to an African American spiritual, from its origins in Gregorian Chant and 16th-century secular dance to traditional examples rooted in poetry. Some of the most famous and beautiful examples are heard alongside energising contemporary carols to present a tapestry of the genre across the centuries. Canadian chamber choir The Edison Singers was founded in 2019 by Dr Noel Edison, and under his direction has quickly become known for its rich, warm sound, versatility, dexterity and clarity of texture. Annual auditions are held for current and aspiring choristers, which ensures the preservation and integrity of this trademark sound. The ensemble has been praised as one of the finest chamber choirs in Canada making significant contribution to the musical life of local communities. The Edison Singers is committed to presenting Canadian repertoire and collaborating with other artists from across Canada and around the world.

Hugo Alfvén: Complete Symphonies, Suites and Rhapsodies
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra / Niklas Willén
Naxos 8507015 (7 CDs)
Release: 25 November 2022
Hugo Alfvén's music has always been close to the hearts of the Swedish people, and ranks among some of the most significant and representative of the spirit of the country. Alfvén is known as a cheerful entertainer in compositions such as Den förlorade sonen ('The Prodigal Son'), but his symphonies reveal a different, more elegiac and often more dramatic side. The success of Alfvén's symphonies fundamentally changed Sweden's musical climate and, with a substantial collection of further orchestral music representing his gloriously rich and varied style, these recordings sweep us into the remarkable world of Scandinavian landscape and culture.

Jean Sibelius: The Tempest
The Royal Danish Opera Chorus, The Royal Danish Opera Orchestra / Okko Kamu
Naxos 8574419
Release: 25 November 2022
Symphonic in scale and ambition, the incidental music to Shakespeare's play The Tempest was among the last orchestral works Sibelius composed before entering the mysterious 'silence of Järvenpää' that lasted until his death. Commissioned by leading Danish theatre producer Johannes Poulsen in 1925, the wide expressive demands of the play saw Sibelius calling on large musical forces. From the terrifying tone picture of the opening shipwreck via ethereal songs, boisterous character portraits and remarkable evocations of nature, Sibelius took full advantage of being set free to convert the themes of Shakespeare's magical world into his own unique sound. Sibelius had close ties with Danish musical life, and it is fitting that this recording should have such a Nordic flavour. The Royal Danish Orchestra is internationally renowned for recordings, as well as a pedigree of work with historical and current conductors that include Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Mariss Jansons, Marek Janowski, Hartmut Haenchen, Michail Jurowski and many others. This recording is conducted by Okko Kamu, a native Finn who has recorded an acclaimed cycle of Sibelius symphonies, alongside having a highly respected catalogue of over 100 albums to his name.

Dvořák: Greatest Melodies (Arranged by Peter Breiner)
Peter Breiner, piano
Naxos 8574371
Release: 25 November 2022
Antonín Dvořák's gift for melody was apparent as soon as he began writing music, and this naturally tuneful inspiration has long captured the imagination of arrangers. An expert in arranging for both orchestra and piano, Peter Breiner has selected 33 melodies in simple yet revealing piano reductions that give the listener an opportunity to journey with Dvořák through his career in Prague and ultimately overseas to America. This carefully curated programme also brings moods ranging from rustic celebration to nostalgic melancholy, and from traditional Czech dumka dances to the famous Song to the Moon, Dvořák's most prized operatic aria.

Chamber Music with Viola - York Bowen, Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst
Yue Yu, viola; Jeffrey Armstrong, violin; Anthony Hewitt, piano
Naxos 8574150
Release: 25 November 2022
An accomplished horn and viola player, York Bowen is said to have preferred the tone of the viola to the violin. Inspired by the virtuosity and vibrato style of the distinguished violist, Lionel Tertis, Bowen wrote several works for him and became his accompanist. Bowen's subtle shifts of key and heartfelt melodies are well in evidence here, including the powerful and poised Rhapsody, Op. 149, considered to be one of his most important works. Gustav Holst's daughter Imogen is represented here by the open-air freshness of her Four Easy Pieces and the terse, laconic narrative of her Duo for Viola and Piano. Britten's spiky Waltz is full of 1930s wit.

Beethoven: Grand Symphonies 2 (Arranged by Hummel for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano)
Pettman Ensemble, Uwe Grodd
Naxos 8574200
Release: 25 November 2022
Unless one lived in a major European centre with an orchestra, the opportunity to hear large-scale works by the great composers of the age was well-nigh impossible. The insatiable demand for new chamber versions of famed orchestral works saw Hummel arranging Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 'Pastoral' not long after the great composer's death. Hummel approached his task with great care, bringing a fresh perspective to the works in his sensitive and compelling chamber music configurations.

Changes - Contemporary Guitar Music by Cage, Carter, Dashow, Kampela, Reich
Arturo Tallini, James Dashow, Domenico Ascione
Naxos 8574394
Release: 25 November 2022
Repertoire for solo guitar has gained in depth and quality in recent decades, with acoustic and electronic techniques enjoying an ever more imaginative coexistence. Arturo Tallini's recital explores contrasting approaches for his instrument, beginning with the ostinato textures of Reich's Electric Counterpoint, an acknowledged classic in this field. Tallini's transcriptions of early piano works by Cage create a mood of reverie, while Carter's Changes forms a mercurial dialogue. James Dashow's iPiece fuses acoustic and electronic elements to stunning effect, while Arthur Kampela's Percussion Studies have proved pivotal in exploring new sounds for the guitar.

The Music of Richard Pantcheff, Vol 3 - Organ Concerto; Music for Choir and Orchestra
James Orford, London Choral Sinfonia / Michael Waldron
Orchid Classics ORC100206
Release: 25 November 2022
Orchid Classics presents its third volume of choral music by Richard Pantcheff in world-premiere recordings performed by the London Choral Sinfonia directed by Michael Waldron, with organist James Orford. This release again offers a wide range of interconnected works, centred around the genres for which Pantcheff has achieved the most notable success: music for organ, instrumental ensembles and choirs. Book-ending the disc are two Fantasias, originally composed for organ solo, here specially arranged by the composer for string orchestra and trumpets. At the heart of the album is Pantcheff's Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and Trumpets, a major new work commissioned by the London Choral Sinfonia and Michael Waldron. The Music of Richard Pantcheff, Volume 2 went straight to number five in the Classical Charts and received a 5-star rating from Choir and Organ magazine.

VIII
Isobel Waller-Bridge, 12 ensemble
Mercury KX
Release: 25 November 2022
Critically-acclaimed for her film, television and theater scores (Black Mirror, Fleabag, Emma), Isobel Waller-Bridge presents VIII, her individual artistic statement in reaction to years of writing for other mediums. This MKX debut is a bold, cinematic and gripping work for string ensemble. The eight tracks – conceived as compact miniatures – feature beautiful and lush soundscapes, innovative string techniques and exhilarating cinematic build-ups.

Snowdrops « Missing Island »
Christine Ott
Injazero Records INJA018 (vinyl and digital)
Release: 25 November 2022
France chamber collective Snowdrops return to Injazero Records for their third album Missing Island, a musical fresco in seven pieces, a naturalist painting that exists between contemporary classical, post-folk and electro-acoustic music. Missing Island is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Volutes (2020), and again sees multi-instrumentalists Christine Ott and Mathieu Gabry joined by violist Anne-Irène Kempf on most tracks. This new chapter in the natural history of Snowdrops is lent an earthier texture by the hand-pumped organ, performed by Christine Ott, when she's not playing ondes Martenot.

 

24 NOVEMBER 2022

Xuefei Yang Guitar Favourites
Xuefei Yang, guitar
Universal Music Group, China / Decca
Release: 24 November 2022
Classical guitarist Xuefei Yang announces the release of Guitar Favourites, her next album by UMG China on the Decca label. The album represents Xuefei's unlikely journey to become the finest Chinese guitarist on the world stage through a collection of much-loved tracks known to classical guitar lovers around the world. Xuefei has put together a personal selection of pieces showcasing her musical journey, including pieces she played as a young girl through to audience favourites she's performed countless times on stage over the years. The album also features Xuefei's first composition, Xinjiang Fantasy, a work based on traditional folksongs from the Xinjiang region in north-west China, and the world premiere recording of a piece by guitarist John C. Williams.

 

18 NOVEMBER 2022

The Young Chopin
Eric Zuber, piano
Azica Records ACD-71355
Release: 18 November 2022
pianist Eric Zuber, releases his debut album, The Young Chopin on Azica Records. The album is comprised of three pieces written by Frédérick Chopin in his early years, including Variations on 'Là ci darem la mano from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Op.2; Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante, Op. 22; and his Piano Concerto No. 1 in e minor, Op. 11, recorded with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra led by Wilbur Lin. Zuber describes his debut album, 'I thought that it would be interesting in this debut album to explore some of the repertoire that Chopin composed as a very young man. When he was flexing his pianistic muscles, so to speak, before he retreated to a life of mainly composition and teaching.' Written in 1827, Chopin's Variations on 'Là ci darem la mano' from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Op.2 features the melancholy mood associated with the Polish spirit after the 'November Uprising,' the failed attempt against Russian domination. Chopin's Andante spianato & Grande polonaise brillante, Op. 22 was written between the years of 1830 and 1834. Chopin first wrote the work for piano and orchestra and later wrote an Andante spianato in G for piano solo, adding this to the beginning of the original work. Lastly, Chopin wrote his Piano Concerto No. 1 in e minor, Op. 11 in 1830 and it premiered to critical acclaim in Warsaw at the farewell concert before the composer left Poland.

David Leisner: Letter to the World
Azica Records ACD-71353
Release: 18 November 2022
Featuring four song cycles – Confiding, Das Wunderbare Wesen, Simple Songs, and Of Darkness and Light – Letter to the World includes four vocal compositions from different stages of Leisner's career: two from the 1980's, one from 2002, and one from 2011. This portrait album of Leisner's oeuvre for voice and instruments features soprano Katherine Whyte, tenor Andrew Fuchs, baritone Michael Kelly, violinist Sarah Whitney, oboist Scott Bartucca, cellist Raman Ramikrishnan, Leisner on guitar, and pianists Lenore Fishman Davis and Dimitri Dover.  Of Leisner's vocal writing The Boston Globe raves, 'He shows imagination and taste in taking poems from disparate sources and putting them into cycles that trace emotional progress and develop dramatic shape. His prosody is excellent, and he sets words with an ear for sound, rhythm and sense… Best of all, Leisner has a gift for eloquently shaping a vocal line that is also grateful to sing.'  Letter to the World opens with Confiding, a cycle of ten songs written in 1985-86 and set to poems by women on various forms of confiding. The first and last songs act as prelude and postlude, while songs no. 2-5 trace the rise and fall of an intimate relationship, after which the 'I' of the poems turns for confiding to the guitar (no. 6), pauses for reevaluation (no. 7), then turns to imagination (no. 8), and finally to a higher power (no. 9). Confiding exists in versions for both high and medium voice with piano, as well as its original high voice and guitar version. It was premiered by baritone Sanford Sylvan and pianist Patty Thom, and is dedicated to Leisner's husband, Ralph Jackson. For the set of five songs, Das Wunderbare Wesen, Leisner chose excerpts from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The composer says, 'The songs emerged less out of deference to the melodic line and more in response to a structure established in the cello part, e.g., a repeated alternating metric pattern or a melodic theme that is repeated in the fashion of a passacaglia throughout a movement. Meanwhile, the melodic lines often tend not to repeat in traditional circular structures, but rather to spiral outward, relating motivically to what has gone before, yet opening up to different phrase patterns. This is echoed by the harmonic structures. Unlike functional harmony, which tends to travel in closed circles, these harmonies might, for example, change one note at a time, moving progressively away from the center.' Das Wunderbare Wesen was written in 2011, at the request of baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, to whom the work is dedicated, and commissioned by Eleanor Eisenmenger. Simple Songs, composed in 1982, sets to music six poems by Emily Dickinson. It is dedicated to baritone Sanford Sylvan. Each song illustrates its poem's meaning by example. In 'Madness,' for instance, the vocal line is a simple chromatic scale that descends at first, and then ascends, but the notes are often displaced to another octave, which embodies the line, 'Much Madness is divinest Sense.' The fifth song, 'Humility,' is the chronicle of a brief love affair between a bee and a rose. Toward the end, when 'their Moment consummated,' the voices join together in the same key, and then drift apart again. Just after the 9/11 tragedy, Leisner found a special resonance in the works of great American poet Wendell Berry. He says, 'When the Stones River Players of Middle Tennessee State University commissioned me that year for a work for tenor, violin, oboe and piano, I turned to some of these poems that spoke to both the moment and to the ages. The resulting piece, Of Darkness and Light, is a set of five songs that are joined into one large movement. The work begins with a violin-and-oboe arabesque that opens into the first song. Then comes a spare fragment of a song, a kind of meditation, which is followed by the third song of terror, as 'the earth is poisoned with narrow lives'. This leads to the anxiety of the fourth song, with its 10/8 and 13/8 meters restlessly alternating. The second song/fragment appears in a reprise and leads to the final song, an anthem of hope amid the rubble – a discovery of solace in 'The Peace of Wild Things.''

Bach: Concertos italiens
Alexandre Tharaud, piano
harmonia mundi HMM931871
Release: 18 November 2022

J S Bach: Cantatas for bass
Peter Kooy, La Chapelle Royale / Philippe Herreweghe
harmonia mundi HMM931365
Release: 18 November 2022

Berlioz: Harold en Italie; Les Nuits d'Eté
Timothy Ridout, Michael Spyres, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg / John Nelson
Erato 5054197196850
Release: 18 November 2022
Erato's multi-award-winning Berlioz cycle (Les Troyens, Damnation de Faust) with conductor John Nelson and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg continues with the composer's orchestral song cycle on a libretto by Théophile Gautier, Les Nuits d'Été, sung by recent Gramophone-Award-winning baritenor Michael Spyres – the first ever of the original 1856 version recorded by one single voice (bass, tenor and baritone). Outstanding British viola player Timothy Ridout also features in Berlioz's Harold en Italie.

Eternal Heaven: Handel – Opera Arias
Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford, Iestyn Davies, Ensemble Jupiter
Warner Classics 5054197196782
Release: 18 November 2022
Lutenist Thomas Dunford's first project for Warner Classics is a complete Handel programme with his Ensemble Jupiter, and  his longstanding musical partners Lea Desandre and lestyn Davies. The album stems from Dunford's desire to bring together these two sublime voices and tell a love story through Handel's most beautiful spiritual music. During the pandemic, Thomas and Lea went through Handel's entire English-language oeuvre to build a narrative Dunford has dubbed 'a Baroque West Side Story'. The album features arias from Semele, Theodora, Saul, Susanna, Esther, and more.

Trumpet concertos
Lucienne Renaudin Vary, trumpet; Luzerner Sinfonieorchester / Michael Sanderling
Warner Classics 190296334269
Release: 18 November 2022
For her fourth Warner Classics album, trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary has chosen four of her favourite concertos, composed by Haydn, Hummel, Neruda and Arutunian. Joining them on the programme is a three-minute 'concerto' by big-band maestro Harry James and a brief solo improvisation by Lucienne herself. 'The concertos I've chosen are part of me,' writes Lucienne. 'Getting to record this album with the fantastic Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Michael Sanderling is a dream come true.'

Andreas Ihlebæk: Nowhere Everything
Andreas Ihlebæk
NXN Recordings NXN1007
Release: 18 November 2022
Nowhere Everything is the new album by internationally renowned artist Andreas Ihlebæk following Northern Lullabies (NXN8001) and I will Build you a House (NXN1004) on NXN Recordings. Andreas has been praised for his musical storytelling and the new album is a modern fairytale told by piano, strings and voices. After releasing two solo piano albums he now re-ignites the sound from his debut album The Guest and invites Swedish violinist and singer annasara and singers Sisi and Noziswe to enrich his piano sounds. You'll hear elements of neo-classical, folk and soul beautifully mixed together.

A Breath Between the Strings - Music by Gordon Jacob, James Moody, Tony Kinsey
Gianluca Littera, harmonica; Quartetto Energie Nove
Dynamic CDS7965
Release: 18 November 2022
The three British composers in this programme all found very different ways to integrate the harmonica with that most aristocratic of ensembles, the string quartet. Gordon Jacob's Divertimento is a delicious musical tableau, full of his characteristic melodic ease and playfulness. James Moody was devoted to the harmonica, for which he wrote a number of works, and his Quintet has a Classical structure that includes both highly virtuosic and deeply introspective episodes. Renowned as a jazz drummer, Tony Kinsey adopted a late-Romantic stance in his Quintet but also looked to Gershwin and Piazzolla, ending the work with the blues and an unforgettably catchy riff.

Vive Verdi! French Rarities and Discoveries
Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Ludovic Tézier, Jacobo Ochoa, Pietro Bolognini, Pilar Mezzadri Corona, Orchestra Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Chorus of Teatro Regio di Parma, Francesco Maria Parazzoli / Roberto Abbado
Dynamic CDS7941
Release: 18 November 2022
The premiere of Nabucco at La Scala, Milan in 1842 was a huge success for Verdi and soon led to foreign performances of the work. For its appearance in Brussels under the name Nabuchodonosor Verdi fashioned an orchestral Divertissement which was inserted into Act III; the composer's score of this, performed here, has only very recently been rediscovered. Macbeth is one of his psychologically penetrating masterpieces and for its Parisian staging in 1865 it underwent considerable revision, notably to make its dramatic development more incisive. When Il trovatore was performed in Paris as Le Trouvère Verdi added lively local colour as new additions to the score.

Icons: Philip Glass, John Adams, John Corigliano
Robert McDuffie, violin; Elizabeth Pridgen, piano
Orange Mountain Music OMM0162
Release: 18 November 2022
Orange Mountain Music proudly presents the release of the new album Icons: Philip Glass, John Adams, & John Corigliano by renowned violin virtuoso Robert McDuffie and pianist Elizabeth Pridgen. Long champions of new music, McDuffie and Pridgen fix a spotlight on three masterpieces of the violin/piano repertoire, by three of the most celebrated American composers of the past half century. Joy and expertise are in abundance in these recordings – the end result is a contextualizing of three works by these great masters – each tremendously different composers from one another, united in the artistry of Robert McDuffie and Elizabeth Pridgen.

Legends - Gwendolyn Masin
Kirill Troussov, Alexandra Troussova, Rachel Harnisch, Jan Philip Schulze, Jiska Lambrecht, Markus Fleck, Martin Moriarty, Patrick Moriarty, Vera Kooper
Orchid Classics ORC100210
Release: 18 November 2022
Following the success of her Orchid albums Flame and West Side Story, violinist Gwendolyn Masin returns with Legends, a fascinating and unique programme in which family ties and teaching lineages overlap in a mosaic of musicians, showcasing neglected repertoire and figures in the process. Throughout, the implications of the word 'legend' are felt. Iconic figures and works rub shoulders with those who unjustly remain in an almost mythical realm: Irene Wienawska (aka Poldowksi), her father Henryk Wieniawski and uncle Józef Wieniawski, Henryk's student Ysaÿe, and Ysaÿe's student Enescu. This recording of Ysaÿe's single-movement String Quintet in B minor is especially remarkable as it is relatively new on the recording scene; it received its Swiss premiere in May 2022 as part of Masin's GAIA Music Festival, and this particular version has never been recorded before.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Live, Vol 3
Renée Flynn, Roy Henderson, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra / Ralph Vaughan Williams
SOMM Recordings ARIADNE5019-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 18 November 2022
SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams' birth with Vaughan Williams Live, Volume 3, featuring signature works conducted by the composer including the 1943 world premiere of his Fifth Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. All performances on this double-CD set have been expertly restored and remastered by Lani Spahr. Recorded during the BBC Proms, the Fifth Symphony is among live performances recorded off the air by engineer Kenneth Leech held in the British Library. Begun under the shadow of mounting fears of war in Europe, it is illuminated by Vaughan Williams' relationship with his second wife-to-be, Ursula Wood and served, as biographer Simon Heffer's booklet note says, as 'a reminder of the pre-war England in which the composer's soul and creative spirit remained'. Also from the Leech Collection, the London Symphony Orchestra's 1946 Proms account of A London Symphony (No.2), is an 'historic performance of one of his greatest and most enduring works'. Newly re-mastered for reissue with this celebratory set, the LPO also features in the Fifth Symphony from 1952, coupled with a 1936 Dona Nobis Pacem by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists, soprano Renée Flynn and baritone Roy Henderson.

I Vow to Thee, My Country - Choral music by Gustav Holst
Joshua Ryan, Richard Horne, Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea / William Vann
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD279
Release: 18 November 2022
SOMM Recordings announces the release of I Vow to Thee, My Country, believed to be the first recording to feature all of Gustav Holst's sacred choral music, by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea directed by William Vann, with organist Joshua Ryan and Richard Horne on tubular and bass bells. A prolific composer best known for his orchestral spectacular The Planets, Holst was an expressive and sincere composer and arranger of religious music despite his professed agnosticism. Included are his only setting of the Anglican Service for Evening Prayer, Nunc Dimittis, and his substantial Two Psalms and Four Festival Choruses, whose inspirations range from the Bible, Byzantine liturgy, 16th-century sources (not least Bach), and Welsh hymns. The 12 other featured songs see Holst setting an impressive array of centuries-spanning texts, and include the striking eight-part setting of Ave Maria for unaccompanied female voices, the ecstatic Not Unto Us, O Lord, premiered by the Royal Hospital Chelsea and William Vann in 2020, and the disc's anthemic title song, its melody borrowed from The Planets' 'Jupiter'.

Stephen Dodgson: The Peasant Poet – Songs, Vol 1
Ailish Tynan, Katie Bray, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams, Christopher Glynn, Mark Eden, Ian Wilson
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0659
Release: 18 November 2022
SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major three-volume series devoted to the rich and varied songs of Stephen Dodgson on the eve of the 10th anniversary of his death in 2013, aged 89. Volume 1, The Peasant Poet, features tenor James Gilchrist, baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Ailish Tynan and mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, accompanied by Christopher Glynn (piano), Mark Eden (guitar) and Ian Wilson (recorder). Son of the Symbolist painter John Arthur Dodgson and a distant cousin of Lewis Carroll, Stephen Dodgson was a prolific composer with a notable focus on works for guitar, harpsichord and recorder. Although neglected, his more than 100 songs are a substantial and defining part of his output. Composed in 1961, 'The Peasant Poet' from Four Poems of John Clare, settings of the troubled and travailed poet, gives Volume 1 its title. Contrastingly, 1950's Tideways sets four poems by the idiosyncratic Ezra Pound.

Fritz Kreisler: The Bell Telephone Hour Recordings, Vol 2
Donald Voorhees, Fritz Kreisler, Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra
Biddulph Recordings 85020-2
Release: 18 November 2022
This CD is the second volume featuring broadcast recordings of Fritz Kreisler made on The Bell Telephone Hour from 1944-50. This CD contains a number of short encore pieces for which the violinist was so renowned. Along with such perennial favorites such as Massenet's 'Meditation' from Thais and the Albeniz Tango, this CD includes several selections that the violinist never recorded commercially. New to the Kreisler discography are: Corelli's 'La Folia' Sonata, the Rimsky-Korsakov Fantasy on Russian Themes, the Chausson Poeme, and two Rachmaninoff pieces: an arrangement of the principal theme from the slow movement from the Second Piano Concerto and the Prelude in G minor. The pristine source material captures Kreisler's magnificently expressive tone with vivid presence. Works by Arcangelo Corelli, Antonín Dvořák, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jules Massenet, Ethelbert Nevin, Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel and Ernest Chausson.

States of Play: Solos & Duos by John McDonald and Robert Carl
Robert Black, Scott Woolweaver, John McDonald
Bridge Records BRIDGE 9564
Release: 18 November 2022
'States of Play', solos and duos by Robert Carl and John McDonald, features bassist Robert Black, violist Scott Woolweaver, and John McDonald, playing the keyboard parts of the solos and duos with the string players. The recording is a retrospective of joint projects undertaken over the past couple of decades by Carl and McDonald. McDonald writes that 'as longtime creative friends and mutual admirers, it seemed natural to team up here with Robert, Robert, and Scott for some 'excavating' as well as some new discovering. 'States of Play' thus represents this rediscovery-by-excavating, primarily through Robert Carl's music written between 1987 and 2018. Following Robert's invitation to contribute some music of my own, I've offered two piano pieces to this States of Play lineup that were both completed during 2016 and 2017.' A special collaboration!

The Silver Swan - Songs by Eric Thiman and Michael Head
Emily Gray and Nicole Johnson
Convivium Records CR075
Release: 18 November 2022
'Singers of English Song have a vast treasury in which to find their repertoire. Michael Head's songs are generally well known, but many of Eric Thiman's songs are rarely performed and have never been recorded commercially. These beautiful performances by Emily Gray and Nicole Johnson should help to end their obscurity.' - Dorothy Webster

Brian Knowles: Christmas Tidings
Rebecca Taylor, Celestia Singers & Brass / David Ogden
Convivium Records CR077
Release: 18 November 2022
'Brian Knowles has a wonderful gift of melody. All his pieces are full of character showcasing his gift for marrying text and music to create songs that are a joy to sing and a delight to listen to. This album contains pieces in a variety of different styles and moods, attractive and deeply moving new carols full of invention and insight and others that bring a welcome freshness and life to traditional texts. No doubt, it will enrich and invigorate your Christmas for years to come.' - David Ogden

All Angels - Choral Works by George Arthur
Rupert Gough, The Choir of Royal Holloway / Cecily Beer
Convivium Records CR078
Release: 18 November 2022
Explore this new album of choral works by British composer, George Arthur, performed by The Choir of Royal Holloway. George is a multi award-winning composer, published by Universal Editions, Music Sales, Shorter House and the Guild of Church Musicians. He has been commissioned by various cathedrals and chapel choirs at home and overseas and his music is regularly performed around the world. He has had works broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and on BBC television, most notably for the WW1 Commonwealth commemoration service, live from Glasgow Cathedral.

Bernard Parmegiani: Stries
Colette Broeckaert, Sebastian Berweck, Martin Lorenz
Mode Records MOD-CD-328
Release: 18 November 2022
Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is 'Stries' for the unusual combination of three live synthesizer players and tape. Until recently, 'Stries' had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label. 'Stries' (1980) is a work in three parts based on the tapes of Parmegiani's 'Violostries' for violin & tape from 1963. The tape part is derived completely from recordings of the violin which Parmegiani masterfully alters to create an at times extremely dense, at other times pointillist piece of music.

Passion for Ukraine - works by Ukrainian composers for voice and piano
Lena Belkina, Violina Petrychenko
Solo Musica SM418
Release: 18 November 2022
The Ukrainian folk song is unquestionably a unique phenomenon. No nation in history has amassed such a wealth of songs as those created by the Ukrainian people. UNESCO has an impressive audio library of folk songs from all over the world. The Ukrainian contribution amounts to some 15,500 songs and is far and away the biggest collection in the library. Folk music in the Ukrainian language originated in the 9th century at the time when Kyivan Rus was founded; the authors of the texts of most songs have long since been forgotten. Over the years, many composers researched and arranged them, principally for voice and piano, and transformed them into 'Romances', art songs, like German Lieder. The programme includes 15 songs: three romances by four composers and three folk songs. Each work has accompanied the artist's life in one way or another, so it has a special meaning for Lena Belkina. Many of the works on this album are being recorded for the first time – and this is a great opportunity to discover Ukrainian music, its character, its temperament, its melodic language and the influence of time upon it. The programme is emotional and multi-faceted and would not have sounded so authentic without the pianist Violina Petrychenko. She is making Ukrainian piano music known around the world, recording composers like Kosenko, Revutskyi, Barvinskyi and other artists little known in the wider world. This duet is a union of opposites that are brought together to complement one another, to reflect personal strength and passion for music. The artists united by a common goal – showing Ukrainian art full of love for their country to the whole world. Music by Gregory Alchevskiy, Kyrylo Stetsenko, Mykhailo Zherbin and Illia Razumeiko.

Silver Bells
Johann Strauss Orchestra / André Rieu
Rieu Productions
Release: 18 November 2022
The holiday season wouldn't be perfect without the delightful music of André Rieu! The 'King of Waltz' is thrilled to announce his brand-new Christmas album, Silver Bells. The CD and Bonus DVD is the dream gift to give and receive this holiday season, bringing new joy and light to Rieu fans around the world. Recorded live in his hometown Maastricht, the Bonus DVD illustrates the unique atmosphere of his traditional Christmas concerts.

Paul Bowles: A Picnic Cantata, libretto by James Schuyler
Amanda Lynn Bottoms, Amy Owens, Chelsea Shephard, Naomi Louisa O'Connell, Barry Centanni,
Michael Barrett, and Steven Blier
NYFOS Records
Release: 18 November 2022
New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) releases Paul Bowles' A Picnic Cantata on its in-house label NYFOS Records on Friday, November 18, 2022. Recorded at Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center on February 22 and 23, 2017, A Picnic Cantata features sopranos Amy Owens and Chelsea Shephard, mezzo-sopranos Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Naomi Louisa O'Connell, and percussionist Barry Centanni, together with NYFOS Artistic Director Steven Blier and co-founder Michael Barrett on the piano. A Picnic Cantata is the result of a one-time collaboration between the piano-duo team of Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, the composer Paul Bowles, and the poet James Schuyler. When the two pianists received a commission for a new vocal work from the arts patroness Alice Esty, they tapped Bowles to compose the music and Schuyler to write the libretto. Originally premiered at New York's Town Hall in 1953, A Picnic Cantata was well-received, but never published. The seven-movement work balances sensuality with innocence and lightness with hints of foreboding. In its hyper-realistic world, a picnic basket seems to hold the entire contents of Zabar's and a car materializes on cue, as four friends-two sopranos and two altos-magically gather together. Bowles' music dips into the exotic sounds of Morocco and Ceylon, Poulenc-style post-impressionism, and pure American tunefulness to paint the journey, and Schuyler's libretto melds the directness of Gertrude Stein with the fantasy of Maurice Sendak, allowing simple things to become paradoxical and mysterious. Having wanted to make a studio recording of the work for over three decades, Mr Blier said, 'Paul Bowles' A Picnic Cantata has been something of a NYFOS signature since the early 1990s. Alternatively spiky and lyrical, utterly unpredictable, and oddly graceful, Bowles' music won me over. Coming home to Paul Bowles' music and James Schuyler's words has been a pleasure and something of a revelation. In the 25 years since we first encountered A Picnic Cantata, we've learned more about both the composer and the poet. Its colors seem more vibrant than ever.'

La Notte: Concertos & Pastorales for Christmas Night
Bojan Čičić (violin) / Illyria Consort
Delphian Records DCD34278
Release: 18 November 2022
Bojan Čičić - the man whose fingers never rest - brings us a feast of 17th-century musical styles from Catholic Europe - a time when the introduction of 'rustic' effects into instrumental music changed the sound of Christmas forever. Brimming with joy and energy, the Illyria Consort's unusual combination of instruments in this recording bring to mind the vivid theatricality of shepherds and their milieu. With a number of premiere recordings - including Vivaldi's Concerto 'Il riposo per il santissimo Natale' in a new reconstructed version - we hope it's a refreshing instrumental Christmas album that listeners will reach for every year.

No Choice But Love: Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community
Eric Ferring, tenor; Madeline Slettedahl, piano
Lexicon Classics
Release: 18 November 2022
A double album highlighting diverse LGBTQIA+ stories with works by Ben Moore, Manuel de Falla, Jake Heggie, Francis Poulenc, Ethel Smyth, Jennifer Higdon, Willie Alexander III, Mari Esabel Valverde, Benjamin Britten and Ricky Ian Gordon. The two-CD length album seeks to highlight diverse LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives, through revelatory performances of important songs by some of today's leading composers, including the world premiere recording of Ben Moore's Love Remained in a new version for tenor, and the commissioned title work, No Choice but Love; Manuel de Falla's Preludios and Oración de las madres que tienen a sus hijos en brazos; Jake Heggie's Friendly Persuasions; Poulenc's Tel jour, telle nuit; Ethel Smyth's On the Road; Jennifer Higdon's Lilacs; the world premiere recordings of Willie Alexander III's Sure On This Shining Night and Mari Esabel Valverde's To digte af Tove Ditlevsen; Benjamin Britten's Canticle I; and Ricky Ian Gordon's Prayer and Joy. Ferring performs a recital of these works at his alma mater, Drake University, as part of their acclaimed Jordan Concert Series on 14 October 2022. Ferring expresses, 'As members of that community, Madeline and I wanted to pay homage to the beautiful, difficult history of the LGBT+ community within the classical music world by featuring the many talented living and passed LGBT+ composers. We believe that music is a means of expression, an alternative lens through which to interpret reality, and a healing force. We know that we must use our voices to be advocates for those whose voices are ignored or can't be heard. We as artists must utilize our gifts to be catalysts for change, empowering our networks, and inspiring them to do what they never thought possible.'

Music for Lady Louise - Blow, Purcell, Lully, Locke
Ensemble Leviathan / Lucile Tessier
harmonia mundi HMN916119
Release: 18 November 2022
Louise de Penancoët de Keroualle (Lady Louise), a spy in the pay of Louis XIV, was the mistress of Charles II. Charged with keeping England under the influence of the Sun King, she forged close links between musicians on either side of the Channel. These political intentions generated a repertory as rich and brilliant as it was expressive. It is a genuine rediscovery that we owe to Ensemble Leviathan and Lucile Tessier.

Schubert: Schwanengesang
Andrè Schuen, Daniel Heide
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948633135
Release: 18 November 2022
After receiving huge praise for his debut album on Deutsche Grammophon, baritone Andrè Schuen continues his Schubert journey. Schubert's enigmatic final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, is the subject of Andrè Schuen and his longstanding accompanist Daniel Heide's second release for DG. Schuen calls Schwanengesang 'my greatest love among the Schubert lieder. Especially the Heine settings; they move me the most!'  His admiration for the cycle dates back to a time before he had even become a professional singer: 'It's one of the first lied compositions I got to know. I remember a recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that I played over and over again.'

Beethoven - Schumann - Franck
Renaud Capuçon, violin; Martha Argerich, piano
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 18 November 2022
Pianist Martha Argerich joined violinist Renaud Capuçon on stage for a recital at the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival in April 2022, and their extraordinary rapport was evident in a performance dedicated to their friend and pianist colleague, Nicholas Angelich, who had passed away just days earlier. Having first met over thirty years ago, when he was a young violinist and she was already a legendary pianist, Capuçon and Argerich are now a well-established duo. They know one another so well that, whenever they go out on stage, 'there is no fear', says Capuçon. 'It's as if we just hold hands and leap.' Captured live, their program included three major works for violin and piano, all in the key of A: Schumann's Sonata No 1 Op 105, Beethoven's Sonata No 9 Op 47, 'Kreutzer' and Franck's Sonata.

 

14 NOVEMBER 2022

Alessandro Stradella: Doriclea Act III
Estevan Velardi, conductor
Concerto Classics (digital only)
Release: 14 November 2022
Act I and Act II are already available.

 

11 NOVEMBER 2022

Arc II: Ravel, Brahms, Shostakovich
Orion Weiss, piano
First Hand Records FHR127
Release: 11 November 2022
pianist Orion Weiss releases his new album, Arc II: Ravel, Brahms, Shostakovich, on First Hand Records. Featuring performances of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Schumann and Chorale Preludes Nos. 10 & 11, and Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 2, Arc II is the second album of a three-part series and strives to understand the varying ways composers comprehend grief, loss, and death. In this combination of works, Weiss follows the paths these composers walked in their own grief as their tracks lead us from death back towards life, from horror to hope.  The first release of Orion Weiss's Arc trilogy – Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin – was released in March 2022 on First Hand Records and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913 – the precipice before World War I. The three musical stories on Arc I, described by The Guardian as 'complex and poetic material,' are Granados' Goyescas, Janáček's In the Mists, and Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9 'Black Mass,' each struggling with the same impossible awareness of what was coming for the world. The series closes with Arc III: Schubert, Debussy, Brahms, Dohnányi, and Talma – works composed during times of joy – forthcoming on First Hand Records. 'As we grieve what was lost, music born of suffering can bring us courage and succor,' says Orion Weiss. 'As we envisage our ascent, music from times of joyful creation can create a road map leading us out and up. The final album in the trilogy, Arc III, is filled with young composers, post-war music, and music of celebration. It is my message of faith in humans – our resilience, our rebound, our irrepressibility.' The first work on Arc II is Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917). Le Tombeau de Couperin is built out of loops and is unlike anything else in Ravel's piano oeuvre. Weiss writes in the liner notes, 'The momentum of these pieces isn't that of machines or modernity. Rather, these are the dances and spinning-wheels of the lost past. They grasp at the bygone refinement and grace longed for in the new century. In addition to all that Ravel experienced during the first World War – the terror of the battles of Verdun, the death of so many friends, his own debilitating illness – he lost his beloved mother, 'his only reason for living'. The music he synthesized out of all that grief is music of resonant contradiction: new and ancient, exotic and formal, joyful and haunting, meticulous yet filled with life. When asked why these musical tombs (for Couperin and for the friends he lost in the war) weren't explicitly elegiac, Ravel responded: 'The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.' This cathartic music would be the last that he wrote for solo piano.' Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9 (1854) presents a radiant portrait of Brahms' inner life. Weiss explains, 'Just 20 years old, he was introduced to (and all but adopted by) the Schumann family four short months before Robert's attempted suicide and institutionalization… Turning the theme and turning it again, each of the 16 variations refracts a single facet of his world through the prism of sudden loss. The variations move one to the other with the tumbling logic of emotion: shocked stillness follows tumultuous anger, consolation follows mourning, and the sweetness of happy reminiscence echoes off into searching oblivion… Of the Variations, Clara Schumann said, 'He sought to comfort me, he composed variations on that wonderfully heartfelt theme that means so much to me, just as last year when I composed variations for my beloved Robert.'' Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, Op. 61 (1943) was dedicated to his piano teacher and friend, Leonid Nikolayev, who perished that year in the mass evacuation from Leningrad. Shostakovich had miraculously survived 'The Great Terror,' Stalin's 1930's attack on the Russian people, though imprisonments and killings in that purge had claimed the lives of many of his friends and family members. Weiss describes, 'The music of the Piano Sonata is emotional, romantic, wild, and raw.' The final work of the album is Johannes Brahms's 11 Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 (1896). 'More than 40 years after Op. 9, Brahms was at the end of his life. Sick, weak, worried for the future of music, and bereft of his life-long friend Clara, his music took on increasingly religious themes. These organ settings of centuries-old Lutheran hymns (transcribed for piano by his longtime admirer Ferrucio Busoni) tighten the thread between himself and Bach, between himself and his faith. Brahms' compositional epilogue dates from immediately after Clara's funeral; the Chorale Preludes, grieving yet heartbreakingly accepting and courageous, were the last notes he ever wrote. 'Now I have nobody left to lose.' (Johannes Brahms, after the death of Clara Schumann),' shares Weiss. Of his Arc album series, Weiss explains, 'The arc of this recital trilogy is inverted, like a rainbow's reflection in water. Arc I's first steps head downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding to despair. The bottom of the journey, Arc II, is Earth's center, grief, loss, the lowest we can reach. The return trip, Arc III, is one of excitement and renewal, filled with the joy of rebirth and anticipation of a better future.'

Schubert: The Complete Sonatas and Major Piano Works, Vol 7 - The Wanderer
Mathieu Gaudet, piano
Analekta
Release: 11 November 2022
Pianist Mathieu Gaudet unveiled a first excerpt from his new album, The Wanderer - Complete Sonatas and Major Works for Piano by Schubert, to be released on October 28. This seventh volume of Mathieu Gaudet's major project, Schubert's Complete Sonatas and Major Piano Works, now turns to the theme of travel. The pianist presents a magnificent interpretation of the Fantasy in C major, D 760, the Sonata No 13 in A minor, D 784, and the Sonata in E major, D 157. Majestic, brilliant, powerful, virtuosic, exciting; a panoply of superlatives comes to mind when considering the summit that is the Fantasy in C major, D 760 of 1822, commonly known as Wanderer Fantasy. Transcending the work's seemingly unbridled energy are the intimacy and tenderness that suffuse it and even moments of unprecedented dramatic tension. This fantastic, almost supernatural work was to have a great influence on the Romantic composers. The Sonata No. 13 in A Minor, D. 784 is the second of three sonatas in the same key; a dark and arid work, bare, rough, yet highly strung, oscillating between confessions of great sincerity whispered in the ear and incredibly powerful explosions of pain. Finally, the Sonata in E major, D. 157, is the very first of Schubert's twenty sonatas and dates from 1815. It thus represents the first step in a long and rich journey.

Carols from King's College, Cambridge (re-release)
Sir David Willcocks, Philip Ledger
Warner Classics
Release: 11 November 2022
The annual broadcast of 'Carols from King's' has become a Christmastime staple for many, and this EMI recording from the 1970s is one of the most iconic. A wonderful collection of 25 of the most popular carols for the Christmas season, performed by the world-famous Choir of King's College, Cambridge, under the baton of the legendary Sir David Willcocks and Phillip Ledger. The tracklist includes favourites such as The First Noel, In the Bleak Midwinter, Sussex Carol, and 'Once In Royal David's City', among many others.

Mihailo Trandafilovski: Polychromy
Peter Sheppard Skærved, Roger Heaton, Mihailo Trandafilovski, Linda Merrick, Roderick Chadwick, Neil Heyde, Saki Kato, Hugh Millington
Metier MSV 28629
Release: 11 November 2022
This album, featuring several of the UK's most accomplished performers, explores the Macedonian composer's search for 'chroma' (colour) in both harmonic and formal structures, traditional and experimental sonorities and in a need for deeply dedicated performances of physical directness. The composer's challenging quest has produced a program of works with interweaving strands of expression, some of which were written during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Mihailo Trandafilovski is a performer-composer in the mould of Telemann, Bartók, Joachim and Liszt. Like them, it is quite impossible to separate his compositional and instrumental imaginations, and he exhibits a swirling yet sold inter-dependence between the energies of each. His contribution to the violin is extraordinary; his violin-piano duos (sonatas in all but name), concerti, violin duos, chamber works and pedagogical works are gifts for audiences and players alike. Previous recordings of his works have attracted glowing reviews around the world.

Prokofiev: Ballet Suites from Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet
Ian Scott, clarinet; Jonathan Higgins, piano
Divine Art DDA 25232
Release: 11 November 2022
Of the major works of Sergei Prokofiev, none (apart perhaps from Peter and the Wolf) have become so well loved by a wide audience as the ballets Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet. From the stage productions, to the orchestral suites, to the piano versions, many of these pieces are universally recognised. In the 1950s, four pieces from each ballet were arranged for clarinet and piano by Bronislav Prorvich, a clarinettist with the Bolshoi Theatre. Strangely, so far as we know, these sparkling arrangements have never previously been recorded. Ian Scott and his producer Malcolm McMillan have added a further 12 movements from the ballets, many of which strongly featured the clarinet in the original orchestral version. This has resulted in a lovely collection of pieces that are at once very familiar but also heard in a completely new light.

Pictures of Light: Music by William Baines
Duncan Honeybourne, piano; Gordon Pullin, tenor
Divine Art DDA 25234
Release: 11 November 2022
William Baines is one of those exceptionally gifted composers whose music still remains little known to the general music-loving public. Deeply rooted in Nature, it shows influences from Debussy, Scriabin, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel and has totally assimilated those exemplars into truly mature and distinguished works all his own. This album includes a number of impressionist piano solos and also the first recording (and first performance) of the Five Songs, presented by veteran tenor Gordon Pullin, who has long been associated with the music of Baines. Duncan Honeybourne has become one of the most sought after of British pianists with a sparkling discography and is totally at home in this picturesque music. This album is produced also in memory of Baines on the centenary of his death. The album concludes with 'At the Grave of William Baines' by fellow Yorkshireman Robin Walker – a fitting tribute by a living composer with similar abilities to draw inspiration from the world around him.

The Whistling Book: English Music for Recorder and Piano
John Turner, recorder; Peter Lawson, piano
Divine Art DDA 21241
Release: 11 November 2022
This album derives from a 1998 release from Forsyth Brothers (Manchester) featuring works published in their Recorder Catalogue. It was then called 'John and Peter's Whistling Book'. For this new version, remastered in 2022, several extra tracks have been added. The album features the recorder at its most scintillatingly bright – most of the music here, though very recent, is melodic, tuneful, often in dance form, and witty – for example Bullard's suite inspired by favorite foods from around the world. Two small forays into modernism are provided by superb pieces by Richard Whalley and Kevin Malone. John Turner is one of the world's most respected and skilful recorderists, with a long history of recordings, publications and premieres, including regular appearances with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Early Music Consort with David Munrow, English Chamber Orchestra and Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Peter Lawson has also enjoyed a long and illustrious career; he taught at Chetham's School of Music for almost 40 years and has a large and impressive discography to his name.

Claudio Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 11 and 12; Concerto Grosso; Three Fragments on BACH
Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra / Neil Thomson
Naxos 8574406
Release: 11 November 2022
Claudio Santoro's prolific output includes a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely recognised as the most significant of its kind from Brazil. All of the works in this programme come from Santoro's remarkable final decade, in which he allied more traditional and eclectic styles to his earlier experiments. Both the Concerto Grosso and the Three Fragments on BACH were written for student orchestras, but are nonetheless substantial pieces which show his command of writing for strings. The Eleventh Symphony is one of the densest and most dramatic of the cycle, its finale exploding into an evocation of the opening of Brahms' First Symphony, while the Twelfth Symphony is an unusual 'sinfonia concertante' for nine soloists and orchestra.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Dances and Ballet Music – Étienne Marcel; Henry VIII; Airs de ballet de Parysatis; Samson et Dalila
Residentie Orkest The Hague / Jun Märkl
Naxos 8574463
Release: 11 November 2022
This album presents a selection of Saint-Saëns' incidental music and music from his operas. From Samson et Dalila – the only one of Saint-Saëns' operas to remain in the repertory – we hear two memorable and adrenalin-fuelled dances including the famous Bacchanale. Henry VIII drew from the composer music of regal solemnity with plenty of colourful scoring, praised by Gounod. The lukewarm reception to Étienne Marcel came as a bitter disappointment to Saint-Saëns but the customary ballet includes a strong element of delightful 14th-century pastiche. The incidental music to the play Parysatis received tumultuous acclaim at its premiere in 1902 and includes the delightful Airs de ballet flecked by the use of crotales (antique finger-cymbals).

Polish Accordion Concertos - Marcin Błażewicz, Mikołaj Majkusiak, Bronisław Przybylski
Klaudiusz Baran, accordion; Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Michał Klauza
Naxos 8574431
Release: 11 November 2022
Since the 1960s the Polish accordion concerto has enjoyed increasing popularity and in recent years no one has inspired more composers to write for the instrument than Klaudiusz Baran. The three most important Polish concertos are showcased in this album. Marcin Błażewicz's concerto possesses a fascinating wealth of colours with spectacular passages and melodic arabesques cast in a richly communicative language. Mikołaj Majkusiak's youthful Concerto Classico is a virtuosic synthesis of old and contemporary forms, while in 1973 Bronisław Przybylski wrote a swashbuckling concerto full of the folkloric influence of Polish dances.

Maria Kliegel – Anniversary Edition
Maria Kliegel, cello; various artists
Naxos 8578370-72 (3 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
Maria Kliegel celebrates her 70th birthday in 2022 and this collection brings together some of her most outstanding recordings, personally selected by Kliegel from her vast Naxos discography. Known as 'La Cellissima', Maria Kliegel's playing is characterised by a warmth, sensitivity and refinement that complements everything she performs. Combining the best from her teachers János Starker and Mstislav Rostropovich, and working alongside excellent orchestras and pianists, Kliegel's inspirational joie de vivre radiates from all of these performances. From her GRAMMY-nominated Bach Cello Suites to a Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto ranked among the top 50 recordings of the 20th century by Scala, this collection is a major celebration of Maria Kliegel's fluent virtuosity and irreplaceable musicianship.

Works for Pianos and Orchestra - Aryeh Levanon, Frank Martin, Francis Poulenc, Dmitry Shostakovich
MultiPiano Ensemble; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Dmitry Yablonsky
Naxos 8573802
Release: 11 November 2022
Concertante orchestral works for more than one keyboard instrument saw a revival after the First World War with the neo-Baroque trends of the time helping to revitalise the neglected concerto grosso genre. Recorded here in a new version with three pianos, Martin's Petite symphonie concertante reflects the dark tensions of the Second World War, while Poulenc's delightful Concerto for Two Pianos is infused with the spirit of Mozart in its rich and eclectic stylistic tapestry. Shostakovich's Concertino, in a new orchestral version, shifts between superficial Soviet entertainment and heartfelt expressiveness, and the songs quoted in Aryeh Levanon's Land of Four Languages symbolise a hope for peace and harmony in Israel.

German Baroque Trumpet Concertos
Thomas Reiner, trumpet; Interpreti Veneziani
Naxos 8551419
Release: 11 November 2022
Baroque works for oboe have long been fertile ground for transcription to the trumpet and there are several examples here of this refashioning. The sequence of concertos and sonatas include examples from Handel's Italian years, and from Johann Gottfried Stölzel, who was strongly influenced by Vivaldi. Telemann's marvellously inventive Concerto in D major is performed on the modern flugelhorn. In addition, there is the only known surviving work from Johann Michael Fasch, younger brother of the more famous Johann Friedrich.

Classic Meets Movie: Shaken Not Stirred
Anna Scheps, piano
Naxos 8551468-69 (2 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
From the late Romanticism of the music from Pearl Harbour to the delicacy and refinement of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Anna Scheps brings the full resources of the piano to bear on some of the most beautiful and rousing film scores of the last half century. Her arrangements for piano exude eloquent virtuosity and Lisztian rhapsodic lyricism as well as razor-sharp dynamism in the case of Mission: Impossible. She also includes the evocative sound world of Isaac Albéniz and the sparkling elegance of Scarlatti sonatas to create an album of ambitious bravura and poetry.

Joseph Haydn: Die Schöpfung
Hans-Christoph Rademann, Gaechinger Cantorey, Katharina Konradi, Julian Habermann, Tobias Berndt
Accentus Music ACC30564 (2 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
Along with Handel's Messiah, which was greatly admired by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), the oratorio The Creation is one of the few works of this genre written before 1800 that from the outset has enjoyed uninterrupted popularity with audiences and choirs alike. In this timeless classic dating from 1798, Haydn creates a musical world with such a variety of different expressive means that its radiant charisma is irresistible. Hans-Christoph Rademann describes it with the words: 'If it is possible to convey our gratitude for God's glorious creation through music, then I believe that Josef Haydn has succeeded brilliantly with this oratorio. I see Haydn's Creation as a reminder to preserve our earth. Out of the note C he creates a resonant world for us.'

Martha Argerich Live, Vol 9: Beethoven, Berlin Broadcasts 1967, Warsaw Broadcast 1965, Ludwigsburg Broadcast 1967
Martha Argerich, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande / Charles Dutoit
Doremi DHR-81856 (2 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
The eminent Martha Argerich is one of the most loved and admired classical pianists of all time. She quickly gained and maintained worldwide reputation for her exciting performances. This set is the 9th volume of Doremi's special series of live performances and broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Martha Argerich.

Lukas Lauermann: Interploitation
Col Legno COL15018
Release: 11 November 2022
The nine tracks arose from the creative approach of intervening in existing recordings in order to create new pieces. In this sense, the focus of this album lies not in the recording of new cello parts but the rework on existing tracks. The recordings were made in connection with the composition of the film music for the documentary 'Alpenland' (Robert Schabus, A 2022, 88 min.). The subject of this film is the question of the effects and interactions of human intervention in nature. In 'Interploitation' this theme finds a figurative equivalent: the polyphonic cello pieces of the film music were broken down into individual tracks, passages and individual tones were cut out and transferred to samplers or tapes. As a result, their original sound structure is completely dissolved and their parameters are intervened with the help of effect pedals: pitches, speed and timbre are changed, artificial spaces are created, elements are given a rhythm or repeatedly processed, from which new 'artefacts' ultimately arise. In the working process, new, independent instrumental pieces have emerged from this, whose musical levels interact. Just as the syllables of the three words do, which are the basic structure of the content and at the same time give the title: Interference - Intervention - Exploitation.

Longing - chamber music by Maria Lithell Flygh
Various Artists
Daphne Records DAPHNE1075
Release: 11 November 2022
'It's hard to pinpoint what makes my heart sing when I read a poem, but that's what it takes to get me composing. Another source of inspiration is to picture the musicians and singers who will be performing the piece, which is the case for the material on this album. The pandemic brought certain things home to us: what we truly long for. Encounters with other people, experiencing music and other art forms in groups, having good health, being together. While reading Nya dikter by Lotta Lotass, I realized that an undercurrent of longing ran throughout the poems. The images of chained circus elephants she chose to include in her collection reinforced this feeling and made me want to create music that combined the sense of longing and melancholy present in Swedish folk music with my own, more contemporary, expression.' - Maria Lithell Flygh

J S Bach: Orchestral Suites, transcribed for piano duet by Eleonor Bindman
Eleonor Bindman, Susan Sobolewski
Grand Piano GP915
Release: 11 November 2022
Eleonor Bindman's new arrangement of Bach's Orchestral Suites for piano duet follows her widely admired recording of the six Brandenburg Concertos (GP777-78). Once again, the transcription reimagines Bach's writing using the modern piano, in this case a Bösendorfer. Bindman and her Duo Vivace partner, Susan Sobolewski, draw upon the suite's dance movements to suggest how Bach might have distributed the material, ordering them for maximum contrast, and succeeding in conveying the music's vitality and beauty in a new medium.

Jaromír Weinberger Piano Music
Gottlieb Wallisch
Grand Piano GP887
Release: 11 November 2022
The international success of Weinberger's opera Schwanda the Bagpiper in 1927 has obscured a sequence of piano works written when the composer was still in his teens. The Second and Third Piano Sonatas form a commanding pair, both written in 1915 – the former autobiographical, playful and dark – the latter neo-Classical with Francophile elements. Elsewhere one can admire his use of 16th-century dance forms, his melodic gifts in the Valses Nobles, and his technical command of preludes and fugues in Gravures. The three arrangements from Schwanda show his imperishable use of Bohemian dance forms.

The Age of the Russian Avant-Garde: Futurists and Traditionalists
Olga Solovieva, Olga Andryushchenko, Paul Stewart, Giorgio Koukl
Grand Piano GP896X (8 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
Modernity in Russian music emerged despite its struggles with the Soviet regime in the early 20th century, with the mystical vision of Scriabin's musical legacy providing a foundation on which to build. In these acclaimed albums we discover Medtner's life affirming Sonatas, and hear Lourié's journey from Impressionism to pioneering Cubist conceptions. Mosolov's works are bold and complex, while Roslavets new tonal system brings 'fire and ice', and Stanchinsky's sophisticated virtuosity anticipates many aspects of 20th-century style. These remarkable works represent a time of profound change in Russian culture that is still being discovered and assessed today.  Music by Alexey Stanchinsky, Nikolay Andreyevich Roslavets, Nikolay Medtner, Arthur Vincent Lourié and Alexander Mosolov.

Duo Dialog plays Astor Piazzolla
Dan Larsson, clarinet; Magnus Grönlund, guitar
Proprius PRCD2087
Release: 11 November 2022
Duo Dialog consists of guitarist Magnus Grönlund and clarinettist Dan Larsson. They have for a long time developed repertoire and interplay for the clarinet and guitar. A real favorite is the Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla is of course one of the most important composers in modern history and well represented on many CDs, but when it comes to performances on clarinet and guitar, his music is not so commonly used. To Duo Dialog, which is one of Sweden's most diligent chamber ensembles, the combination of clarinet and guitar is a fantastic and obvious way to present Piazzolla's chamber music. The guitar with its wealth of colors and tones and the clarinet with its great dynamic possibilities, together they have the opportunity to present Piazzolla's music in the best way. This CD contains Piazzolla's chamber music in its original as well as in transcribed forms. Great effort has been put into correct transcriptions from the original instruments to clarinet and guitar. Of course the guitar has an obvious place in this repertoire, but in order to be able to use the clarinet in the best way and be faithful to the original, several different clarinets have been used; A-clarinet, Bb-clarinet, C-clarinet and basset clarinet. The presentation of the music on this CD has the ambition to act as a 'mosaic'. Apart from the introductory 'Tango-suite', which is presented in its entirety, pieces from different compositions are mixed. The clarinet takes over after the guitar and vice versa, intertwining in joyful play, until they finish off in beautiful harmony. We hope that this CD will be an interesting, exciting and important part of the presentation of one of the greatest composers of our time. We also hope that it will inspire other musicians and music students to approach Piazzolla's music from a slightly different angle. Let the clarinet and the guitar guide you to Astor Piazzolla!

Reencuentros - Cecilia Duarte
Cecilia Duarte, Vincent A Pequefio, Israel Alcala, William Carlton Galvez, Jésus Pacheco
Reference Recordings FR-748
Release: 11 November 2022
Reference Recordings is proud to announce Cecilia Duarte's first solo album, Reencuentros (pronounced reenkwentros), produced by multipletime Producer of the Year GRAMMY® winner, Blanton Alspaugh. Cecilia is best known as a classical and opera singer. This album is a departure, containing twelve romantic boleros from multiple countries. Sung in Spanish, these Latin popular standards are truly art songs from the mid 20th century. Cecilia is accompanied by Trio Chapultepec: Vincent A Pequeño, Israel Alcala and William Carlton Galvez, joined by Jesús Pacheco on percussion. Reencuentros was recorded in December 2020 at Wire Road Studios, by engineer Andrew Bradley. Cecilia Duarte writes this about the origin of Reencuentros: 'This album is a reencounter with my past, a remembrance of the moments when I listened to my mother sing many of the songs compiled here, and a reflection of who I am as an artist today ... Reencuentros represents where I come from and the stories that formed me. It is important for me to share this legacy of beautiful music, only a small token of the artistic richness of Latin American music.'

Teodoro Anzellotti: Origami
Winter & Winter 9102852
Release: 11 November 2022
Since its birth 200 years ago, the accordion has experienced a wild odyssey through the most diverse (musical) worlds. Teodoro Anzellotti plays a decisive role in its integration into the world of new music. Anzellotti records five works for accordion solo at WDR, which were written on his skin. The pieces reveal the enormous range of the instrument among others composed by Georges Aperghis, awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2022. Anzellotti, born in Italy, raised and residing in Germany, performs as a soloist at the most important festivals and music centers throughout the world. He is engaged by prestigious orchestras as a soloist, winner of international competitions and inseparable from the appearance of the accordion in the classical musical life. Music by Georges Aperghis, Johannes Boris Borowski, Vykintas Baltakas, Anna Korsun and Miroslav Srnka.

Globe, Travel, Homeland - piano ensemble works written by living composers
Sang-Hie Lee, Martha Thomas, Kevin von Kampen, Zack Hale
Ravello Records RR8076
Release: 11 November 2022
The piano is the powerhouse of musical instruments: with its vast tonal range and its ability to simultaneously supply chords and melodies, it generally takes the dominating place in virtually any setup. So what happens if you compose and play music for two of these behemoths? Pianists Sang-Hie Lee and Martha Thomas answer this question on their aptly-titled new album Globe, Travel, Homeland. Their touchstone? A selection of new two-piano duos by living composers, tonally residing somewhere between Prokofiev and Messiaen. Few instrumental setups are as complex as this one, but Lee and Thomas navigate its challenges with great aplomb, to the point where the music feels less like a duo and more like a transcendental conversation between kindred spirits. As it should.  Music by Eun Hye Park, Daniel Perlongo, Michael Sidney Timpson, Chan Hae Lee and Robert Paterson.

Caritas - Music of love, hope, charity and consolation
The Choir of Bath Abbey / Huw Williams; Shean Bowers, organ; Olly Chubb, trumpet
Regent Records REGCD569
Release: 11 November 2022
A beautiful collection of choral works celebrating love, hope, and charity through music that consoles and uplifts. Recorded in February 2022, this is the first recording made by the Choir of Bath Abbey, under their director, Huw Williams, since resuming singing after over eighteen months of lockdown, and features music which provides solace for those suffering challenge and loss. The glorious singing of the Abbey's boys, girls and lay clerks again resonates through the hallowed walls of this historic and beautiful building. In addition to some favourite works intended for Remembrance Sunday in November, there is an inspiring range of comforting pieces for other occasions.The recording includes the first recordings of Judith Bingham's 'The sleeping soul' - commissioned by Bath Abbey - and 'Lord, you have been my dwelling place', by Huw Williams.

Andrew Lewinter: Chamber Works for Horn, Oboe, Strings & Piano
John Dee, oboe; Bernhard David Scully, horn; Casey Robards piano; Jupiter String Quartet: Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, cello
Navona Records NV6471
Release: 11 November 2022
Tonality is slowly but steadily making its way into the toolbox of contemporary music again. Accomplished orchestral horn player Andrew Lewinter, who returned to composing in 2016 after a long hiatus, thankfully discovered that very toolbox, and the result can be heard on Andrew Lewinter: Chamber Works. Two quintets and one trio in classical instrumentation, and the neo-Romantic tonal language to match: it's a difficult feat to pull off. Lewinter, however, diversifies with minimalist elements and, drawing from his considerable experience as an orchestral performer, imbues his chamber works with symphonic richness. It's the secret ingredient, and it works.

Beethoven: The last 3 piano sonatas, Opp 109, 110, 111
Anne Queffélec, piano
Mirare MIR634
Release: 11 November 2022
'To echo Beethoven's own words: 'Music is the only incorporeal introduction to the world ofknowledge ... a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy ... reaching beyond even the starry sky to the original source.' That is indeed where the epiphanies of the ultima verba uttered by the last three sonatas take us: on a journey of initiation that could not be undertaken in reverse. Let us listen to it ... The rest is silence.' – Anne Queffélec

American Stories
Anthony McGill, clarinet; Pacifica Quartet
Cedille Records CDR 90000 216
Release: 11 November 2022
Clarinetist Anthony McGill, the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize recipient and first African-American principal player of the New York Philharmonic, and the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet perform works by four living American composers that depict distinctive and deeply felt narratives on their new album American Stories, which includes first recordings of Richard Danielpour's Four Angels, James Lee III's Quintet, and Ben Shirley's High Sierra Sonata, plus Valerie Coleman's Shotgun Houses.  'As an artist, you don't often get to put together a collection of living composers that you love,' McGill writes in the album booklet. 'I am in awe of every piece on this album and how each communicates with the other.' Music such as this, McGill, writes, 'opens a pathway for us to empathize with each other and be present in our shared humanity.' Reflecting on the project, the Pacifica Quartet writes, 'Each new musical creation contributes a fresh voice and a unique viewpoint to our [nation's] story, while ineluctably dealing with the past and shining a light towards the future.'

Tonči Huljić: Mediterranean Pop Mass
Mediterranean Choir & Orchestra, Hana Huljić, Lorena Bucan, Karlo Vudric
Navona Records NV6473
Release: 11 November 2022
The essence of Tonči Huljić's music is eclecticism, his Western melodic style fused with the rich instrumentalism of the Mediterranean and the world resulting in a completely new spirit. This Mediterranean Pop Mass, recorded in Split, Croatia, thoughtfully blends traditional orchestral and modern sounds in exciting ways, infusing iconic classical works with groove, reignited passion, and an appreciation of the conventions of today's musical idioms. Featuring an orchestra, choir, modern rhythm section, and soloists Hana Huljic, Lorena Bucan, Karlo Vudric, Huljic conjures an atmosphere like no other in his compositions, a satisfying listening experience for anyone who appreciates where music has been, and where it is going.

John Metcalfe: Carols Without Words
Platoon
Release: 11 November 2022
Metcalfe composed ten stunning new orchestral arrangements of holiday classics, incorporating his signature blend of instrumental melodies and ambient electronica, and recorded them at Abbey Road Studios in September 2022. The selected carols include classics such as Silent Night, Coventry Carol, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, and more, closing with an upbeat version of 16th-century carol Gaudete, featuring a virtuosic violin solo played by Britten Sinfonia leader Thomas Gould. Graphic designer and Art Director of The New York Times Magazine, Matt Wiley, designed the accompanying artwork. Metcalfe listened to dozens of carols before settling on a shortlist that spans the centuries. 'It was a little bit like a luthier choosing a piece of wood,' he says, 'I wanted a range of reflective, happy, sad and celebratory music – the way that we might feel during a holiday. Each carol has its own merit but together they offer variety.' He was keen that the music should not become a Christmas pastiche. To that end, there are no sleigh bells here: 'I didn't want this album to be too spangly,' he explains, 'there's a little bit of tambourine, but otherwise I've treated the melodies as I would any other arrangement.' While John Williams's arrangement of Carol of the Bells for 1990s Home Alone features choristers and punchy brass, John Metcalfe's 2022 version which opens the album gives the main action to the strings. That's not surprising: the composer is a viola player with decades of experience in string quartets and arranging string parts (and others) for bands including Blur, The Pretenders, and Coldplay. Similarly, New Zealander John Metcalfe realizes that the holidays are not always happy for everyone, nor are they as snowy or cold in some parts of the world as many of the carols describe. He says, 'Christmas inspires lots of different emotions – it can be a very painful time for some people. Reimagining carols without lyrics makes them more accessible. The focus here is the melody.'

Matthew Kaner: Chamber Music
Mark Simpson, Guy Johnston, Benjamin Baker & Daniel Lebhardt, Goldfield Ensemble
Delphian Records DCD34231
Release: 11 November 2022
Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner's compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work. Extended solo works for basset clarinet and for cello are presented by stellar soloists Mark Simpson and Guy Johnson respectively. Violin-and-piano duo Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt, fresh from their triumphant Delphian debut '1942': Prokofiev – Copland – Poulenc, are joined by cellist Matthias Balzat in Kaner's evocative and playful Piano Trio, while clarinettist Kate Romano leads the Goldfield Ensemble in a nocturnal diptych for clarinet quintet.

Venables, Howells: Requiem
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas
Delphian Records DCD34252
Release: 11 November 2022
Conductor Benjamin Nicholas draws parallels between the familiar English choral sound of Howells and that of contemporary composer Ian Venables. Venables' Requiem has already been warmly received by critics in a 2020 recording with just organ accompaniment. Now, Nicholas and his Merton College choir present it in an orchestrated version made specially for this recording. The Howells items here are also premiere recordings: new instrumental accompaniments to two of his Four Anthems, in arrangements by Howells scholars Howard Eckdahl and Jonathan Clinch, illuminate and intensify his rich choral writing like back-lighting on a stained-glass window, and they are complemented by the first recording of Howells' original orchestration of The House of the Mind – a chance to hear one of his major underperformed works, introspective yet dramatic.

Between Light & Shadows
Isiah Rizzo
Azul Music AMDA1785
Release: 11 November 2022
Presenting a style that adopts simple and minimalist performances, the Brazilian composer and pianist reaches his second album with original instrumental music.

My Nirvana
Redi Hasa, cello
Decca Records 4802788
Release: 11 November 2022
Cellist Redi Hasa reworks the music of the great band who inspired him. When Tirana heard Nirvana, the country was suffering the consequences of civil war. The mighty magnet of 'Nevermind' pulled out all the good iron from the ruins of a regime that had been banning Western music for half a century. Many years have passed since then, and now Redi comes up playing 'his' Nirvana, turning their barbed wire melodies into a majestically human sound.

Johannes Brahms: Complete Liebeslieder Walzer, Op 52 & 65; Hungarian Dances
RIAS Kammerchor Berlin / Justin Doyle, Angela Gassenhuber & Philip Mayers, piano
harmonia mundi HMM902616
Release: 11 November 2022
In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instils a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances – also eminently popular in their inspiration.

Peter Gregson
Quartets: One – Four
Deutsche Grammophon 500083 (2 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
This deluxe release follows the success of Peter Gregson's Quartets 1 & 2 and features the newly released Quartets 3 & 4 from the renowned composer and cellist.

Eventless Plot - Memory Loss
Moving Furniture Records MFRC006
Release: 11 November 2022
With Memory Loss we welcome the Greek contemporary band Eventless Plot to the contemporary series. On this album they present work inspired by how music can help people struggling with Alzheimer's disease in retrieving memories, but also create new ones.

Frans de Waard & Martijn Comes - Equal Weights
Moving Furniture Records MFR102
Release: 11 November 2022
Equal Weights is the second release by Frans de Waard & Martijn Comes. Despite the exquisite corpse approach, the duo created a strong cohesive work. The CD comes in a beautiful designed art book from the hand of Dutch artist Bas Mantel.

Matthew Locke: The Little Consort
Fretwork
Signum Records SIGCD728
Release: 11 November 2022
The viol consort Fretwork return for the second instalment of their cycle of works by the English Baroque composer Matthew Locke. He was born 400 years ago in 1622, and whilst he is often ranked as one of England's finest composers, Locke's music remains neglected. But in Fretwork's series of recordings his forceful musical personality and luxuriant technique shine through. Accompanying Fretwork on continuo are David Miller (archlute and theorbo) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord). The cover of the album bears an inscription in the walls by the choir stall of Exeter Cathedral, thought to have been carved by the composer during his time as a member of the choir there.

Forza Azzurri! Music by Dall'Abaco, Brescianello, Sammartini, Vivaldi and Zavateri
La Serenissima / Adrian Chandler
Signum Records SIGCD705
Release: 11 November 2022
Looking at the dearth of Italian Baroque instrumental music on record today, one could be forgiven for thinking that Vivaldi faced little competition during his lifetime. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Many other composers fulfilled the demands of the regional courts and churches throughout Italy. On this disc, early-music ensemble La Serenissima perform works by Lorenzo Gaetano Zavateri, Giuseppe Sammartini, Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco and Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello, alongside works by Vivaldi.

7 NOVEMBER 2022

Shostakovich: 24 Preludes & Fugues, Op 87
Hannes Minnaar, piano
Challenge Classics CC72907 (SACD)
Release: 7 November 2022
Following his Diapason d'Or account of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Hannes Minnaar confronts the 'Bachian' masterpiece of the 20th Century: Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues Op 87. After Bach's Goldberg Variations, which won him worldwide honours (including a Diapason d'Or), Hannes Minnaar challenges and confronts what has become a 'classic' of the 20th century repertoire: Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, composed in 1951. Here again, the qualities of his pianism, for which he is recognised as one of the leading musicians of our time, come under the spotlight: the diversity of touch and the suppleness between tension and tranquillity to characterise every Prelude and Fugue, the precision of tone, the lack of any affectation, a natural finesse in phrasing and articulation, and a familiarity with the score going hand in hand with a freshness that conjures a sense of improvisation. Here we encounter a new landmark in the crowded field of interpretations of this wonderful music.

6 NOVEMBER 2022

Robert Groslot: Concerto for Bass Guitar and Orchestra
Thomas Fiorini, Brussels Philharmonic / Robert Groslot
Antarctica AR035
Release: 6 November 2022
Robert Groslot's Concerto for Bass Guitar and Orchestra represents the next step in the evolution of the bass guitar. Groslot's composition pushes the instrument to its technical limits, while creating a unique symbiosis between the soloist and the orchestra. Although he may not be the first composer to write for the bass guitar in a symphonic setting, Groslot brings a level of artistry and sophistication to the composition that will continue and accelerate the legitimation of the bass guitar within contemporary classical
music. 'The idea of a concerto for bass guitar is something that I have been dreaming of for decades. Since its invention, the bass guitar has firmly established itself as an essential and integral part of practically every genre of music. The bass guitar, as we now know it, was invented and produced by Leo Fender starting in 1951. The more portable bass guitar, in comparison to the large and unwieldy double bass, was capable of playing at higher volumes via amplification and satisfied the new sonic demands created by the widespread use of electrification in popular music. By increasing the overall scale of the
electric guitar and only using the lowest four strings (E, A, D, G), Fender gave birth to a new instrument. Traditional double bassists could quickly adapt, with the added benefit of more accurate intonation due to the frets. Hence the original name: The Precision Bass. At the same time, guitarists could also become bass players when called upon. As a result, many of the early bass guitarists began their musical life as guitar players, with the most well-known example being Paul McCartney of The Beatles. The fact that the bass guitar had no direct lineage like the evolution of the piano or violin over time, led to a variety of disparate playing styles without any fundamental methodology. Unlike the more traditional instruments, the bass guitar does not sit upon a foundation of centuries of proven methods and established schools of playing. The evolution of the bass guitar has been a patchwork of trial and error by active musicians. This has led to a plethora of personal approaches and hybrid-styles, effectively leading to the rapid evolution of bass guitar technique. Given its relatively young history, it is remarkable how the bass guitar has grown from being an instrument taken up out of necessity, or as an afterthought, to being as respected and vital to modern music as any of the older, more established instruments.' - Thomas Fiorini

 

4 NOVEMBER 2022

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Sonatas K279-284 & 309
Angela Hewitt, piano
Hyperion CDA68411/2 (2 CDs)
Available: 4 November 2022
With Mozart Piano Sonatas K279-284 & 309, Angela Hewitt embarks on an important (and rewarding) new series. The seven sonatas released in this first set date from Mozart's late teens - early works, certainly, but far from immature - and anybody who may previously have underestimated this marvellous music should not hesitate to acquire the persuasive performances on offer in Hyperion's November Record of the Month, performances which will have listeners eagerly awaiting the rest of the survey.  'Endless hours of joy and wonder' is how Angela Hewitt sums up the insights and rewards of playing and recording Mozart's piano sonatas, and a similar experience awaits listeners to these remarkable accounts, the first release in a complete cycle.

A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888
Steven Isserlis, cello; Connie Shih, piano
Hyperion CDA68394
Available: 4 November 2022
Treasures from A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888 are revealed by Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih. These are years which saw a welcome expansion in the repertoire for cello and piano, and if most of the composers here - Bruch, Strauss, Dvořák - are well known, others will come as agreeable discoveries. (Luise Adolpha Le Beau, anyone?) With its attractive programme of works exploring some of the byways of the time, this release will appeal irresistibly to all cello lovers.

Pedro de Cristo (c1550-1618): Magnificat, Marian Antiphons & Missa Salve regina
Cupertinos / Luís Toscano
Hyperion CDA68393
Available: 4 November 2022
Under the direction of Luís Toscano, the vocal ensemble Cupertinos once again demonstrates a natural authority in its core repertoire: music from Portugal's Golden Age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The composer may be a less familiar name than his great contemporaries Duarte Lobo and Manuel Cardoso, but a wonderful Magnificat, Marian Antiphons & Missa Salve regina by Pedro de Cristo offer a compelling introduction to a rich musical legacy.

Lipinski: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 & Moniuszko: Bajka
Oh! Orchestra / Dirk Vermeulen
NIFCCD NIFCCD143
Release: 4 November 2022
The musical landscape in Poland during the first half of the nineteenth century was particularly enriched by the output of Stanislaw Moniuszko and Karol Lipinski. Each of them boasts achievements in a different field: Moniuszko specialised in opera and song, Lipinski in instrumental music, particularly for the violin. Karol Lipinski (1790– 1861) was one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his time. His masterful playing was distinguished by its deep, resonant and singing tone, considerable dynamic variety to the sound and impeccable intonation. It was considered at the time that he was a match for the Italian violinist, Niccolò Paganini. Lipinski's symphonies date from the earlier period in his oeuvre. Both symphonies are characterised by rich melodic inventiveness, a dance-like quality, and simple harmonies. They were both written during the early Romantic era, but
in formal-expressive terms they are closer to classicism than romanticism. The symphonies hold an important place in Lipinski's output and, as juvenilia. In his mature period, Lipinski's work was dominated by compositions for solo violin and violin with orchestra. The 'Polish Paganini' wrote them in order to ensure himself of concert repertoire, hence these compositions place considerable technical demands on the performer. Considered the father of Polish opera, Stanislaw Moniuszko was also a talented symphonic composer. Evidence to that effect includes the orchestral sections of his operas, and above all the concert overture Bajka (Fairytale); regarded as Moniuszko's most outstanding orchestral work. Bajka certainly has plenty to recommend it: rich melodic inventiveness, the skilful modifying of thematic material and dynamic narration. {oh!} Orchestra was founded in 2012 in Katowice by a group of early music instrumentalists and enthusiasts. During the last decade the Orchestra has earned the reputation of one of Poland's best early music ensembles. It appears in major European venues such as Theater an der Wien, Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Auditorium Opéra de Dijon, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Cologne's
Philharmonie, as well as at leading festivals, including Berlin's Barocktage, Leipzig's Bachfest, the Händel- Festspiele in Halle, Tage Alter Musik Herne, and the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival. In its regular collaboration with the Fryderyk Chopin Institute (NIFC), the Orchestra focuses on historically informed performances of Polish music of the Classical and Romantic periods. Along with outstanding soloists, {oh!} appears annually at the successive editions of the 'Chopin and his Europe' festival, as well as recording Polish music on CDs.

Wagner By Arrangement
Toccata Classics TOCC 0673
Release: 4 November 2022
You can be sure that if you encounter a familiar name in the Toccata catalogue, the music will be in an unfamiliar configuration. The name here that everyone knows is that of Richard Wagner, but – necessity being the mother of invention – the English conductor Ben Woodward has arranged the full-symphonic textures of some of Wagner's operas for eighteen-part chamber orchestra so as to bring them within range of the forces available to Regents Opera in London, arrangements which should, indeed, put them with the reach of smaller companies everywhere. Presented in five substantial excerpts – from Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdammerung and Tristan und Isolde – this new 'room-sized' Wagner enhances the sense of scale of the originals with a striking degree of clarity. The singers are Catharine Woodward, soprano (singing Brünnhilde and Isolde), Philip Modinos, tenor (Siegfried), Holden Madagame, tenor (Mime), Edwin Kaye, bass (Hagen), and Keel Watson, bass baritone (Wotan).

George Enescu: The Unknown Enescu, Volume Two
Toccata Classics TOCC 0647
Release: 4 November 2022
Although Enescu gave opus numbers to only 33 of his works, he left an enormous number of pieces in varying stages of composition, from sketches and draft outlines to isolated movements and some scores that are almost complete. Working with a handful of composers and musicologists – fellow Romanians with specialist knowledge of Enescu's style – the violinist Sherban Lupu has produced performing editions of a number of previously unknown works, heard on this album in the context of other Enescu rarities. One of these 'rescued' pieces survives as sketches for a work for violin and piano called Impressions roumaines. Another, hiding behind the modest title of Caprice roumain, is nothing less than a major violin concerto. It was previously recorded, a quarter-century ago, by Electrecord in Romania, and this release, as far as we're aware, is the first on an internationally distributed western label. In it Sherban Lupu is joined by another Toccata stalwart, Ian Hobson, conducting the Illinois-based Sinfonia da Camera, and also accompanying him in Marcel Stern's violin-and-piano arrangement of the Romanian Rhapsody No 1; the pianist in the other work is Viorela Ciucur.

Thomas de Hartman: Orchestral Music, Volume Two
Toccata Classics TOCC 0676
Release: 4 November 2022
The music of Ukrainian-born Thomas de Hartmann (1884–1956) is only now beginning to be rediscovered, almost seven decades after his death. Nimbus Alliance launched the process with recordings of his chamber and piano music and songs last year, and then Toccata Classics took up the baton with a first release of his orchestral music, on TOCC 0633, revealing a major late-Romantic voice, downstream from Tchaikovsky, a student of Arensky and Taneyev, contemporary of Rachmaninov, and alert to the discoveries of Stravinsky and Prokofiev. The more important of the two works receiving their first recordings here is de Hartmann's Symphonie-Poème No 1, a musical cousin of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony; it occupies a vast canvas, lasting over an hour, and requires a correspondingly huge orchestra, generating a monumental sense of scale from essentially balletic material. The lighter Fantaisie-Concerto for double bass and orchestra revisits the easier-going tone of the works on the first volume: it moves from tangy dissonance via a tuneful slow movement to a perky, folk-inspired finale. As before, the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine is conducted by Theodore Kuchar; the bass soloist is Leon Bosch.

Friedrich Lux: Organ Works, Volume One
Toccata Classics TOCC 0663
Release: 4 November 2022
Friedrich Lux (1820–95) was one of those musicians who formed the fabric of musical life in nineteenth-century Germany; though he worked away from the major cities, as conductor, teacher, organist, organiser and composer, he was an indispensable element of the communities in which he worked. His large body of organ music, as good as unknown before now, brings together elements of the musical language of Bach, Mendelssohn and Schumann, in works that range from the intimate to the grandiose. In the first volume of a series which will be as complete as we can make it (some works have not yet been traced), Jan Lehtola – playing an organ by Martti Porthan in Raahe Church, Finland – offers a representative selection of his works, sacred and secular.

Sensations
Gautier Capucon, Jérôme Ducros, Capucelli, Fatma Said, Orchestre de Bretagne / Johanna Malangré
Erato 019029615713
Release: 4 November 2022
The follow-up to Gautier Capuocon's best-selling album Emotions, Sensations features a rich mix of popular music spanning classical (Smetana's Moldau), film (John Williams' Schindler's List), and well-known French songs ('La Vie en Rose'). Recorded with the Orchestra National de Bretagne, conducted by Johanna Malanré, other guest stars include long-standing partner Jérôme Ducros on piano, who also arranged several tracks on the album; trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary; and soprano Fatma Said. Capucon is also joined by cellists from his class at the Louis Vuitton Foundation on a number of tracks.

My Christmas
Diana Damrau, Hannover Orchestra / Riccardo Minasi
Erato 5054197286124
Release: 4 November 2022
The perfect Christmas gift, the internationally acclaimed German soprano Diana Damrau releases a collection of sacred music and Christmas songs recorded with the Hannover Orchestra under conductor Riccardo Minasi and Richard Whilds. Both classy and classical, the album features well-known hits such as 'Stille Nacht' ('Silent Night') alongside classical standards such as 'Flößt mein Heiland, flößt dein Namen' from Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Identity - Franck, Takemitsu, Ravel, Debussy
Kenji Miura, piano
Warner Classics 0190296154560
Release: 4 November 2022
Japanese pianist Kenji Miura rose to prominence in 2019 as winner of the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris, endorsed by Martha Argerich and Betrand Chamayou, chair and vice-chair of the jury. Miura says his debut album is 'a reflection of my own personal struggle with identity'. In tribute to the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition, it favours works by French composers – Franck (born in Belgium), Debussy, Ravel and Benjamin Godard (1849-1895) – complemented with two pieces by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a musical allusion to his birthplace.

Echo
Ruby Hughes, Huw Watkins
BIS BIS2568 (SACD)
Release: 4 November 2022
Huw Watkins' song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the centre of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centred on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire programme, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows. Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach's solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten's folksong arrangements and his realisations of Bach's Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realisations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten's version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers' shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the programme full circle.

Beethoven-Liszt: Symphony No 3 'Eroica'; Mozart-Alkan: Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor
Paul Wee, piano
BIS BIS2615 (SACD)
Release: 4 November 2022
This recording brings together two of the greatest works of the Classical era in transcriptions for solo piano by two of the greatest pianist-composers of the Romantic era, resulting in two of the most thrilling experiences that nineteenth-century pianism has to offer. Successfully marrying the unique characteristics of the piano to the defining features of Beethoven's orchestral writing, Franz Liszt is showed here at his most colouristic. He vividly captures the rapid scene shifts and mood changes of Beethoven's Eroica and exploits not only the piano's ability both to whisper and to roar, but also the power and intensity of silence. In Mozart's 20th piano concerto, Charles-Valentin Alkan takes on a different challenge as he masterfully weaves the orchestral and solo piano parts into a single tapestry that brims from start to finish with piano writing of startling inventiveness and originality. These two pianistic tours de force are presented here by Paul Wee – also a barrister specialising in commercial law at Essex Court Chambers in London – whose astonishing technique and passion for nineteenth-century pianism have been highlighted on acclaimed recordings dedicated to music by Alkan and transcriptions by Thalberg.

Castrapolis: Neapolitan Cantatas and Arias
Nicolò Balducci, counter-tenor; Anna Paradiso, harpsichord; Dolci Affetti / Dan Laurin, recorder
BIS BIS2585
Release: 4 November 2022
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Naples' fame as a musical centre attracted travellers, composers, instrumentalists and virtuoso singers alike. Among the aspiring musicians, the most highly-trained and sought-after were the castrati, promising boys aged between 8 and 12 who were subjected to an operation intended to preserve the exceptionally pure timbre of their treble voice. Forever virginal beings whose superhuman voices mesmerized their listeners they were nicknamed angiolilli, 'little angels', and sang in the most important churches and theatres of 'Castrapolis', a term coined to describe the southern capital and its high concentration of castrato sopranos. Nicolò Balducci is one of the rapidly rising countertenors and sopranists of his generation. Together with the ensemble Dolci Affetti, directed by the renowned recorder player Dan Laurin, he here performs arias and cantatas by Hasse, Porsile, Sarro and Alessandro Scarlatti. All four composers were associated with Naples and knew how to highlight these extraordinary voices, at a time when opera and the chamber cantata represented the most fashionable musical genres both in Italy and abroad. The program is completed with a concerto for harpsichord by Domenico Auletta, with Anna Paradiso performing the solo part.

Beethoven: The 5 Piano Concertos
Haochen Zhang, The Philadelphia Orchestra / Nathalie Stutzmann
BIS BIS2581 (3 SACDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven's preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. With his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, he not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which was to remain a reference point well into the twentieth century. After the first two concertos, which still closely follow the models of Haydn and Mozart, Concerto No. 3 marks a profound stylistic change. In the piano part, Beethoven pushes the instrument to its limits, leading commentators to remark that he was writing for the piano of the future. This trend continued and reached its fullness in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, which today rank among the great composer's most admired works. In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. He now performs the five Beethoven concertos supported by the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra under its principal guest conductor, the charismatic Nathalie Stutzmann.

Veni: Songs of Christmas II
The Norwegian Solists' Choir / Grete Pedersen
BIS BIS2511 (SACD)
Release: 4 November 2022
December is a time of anticipation. We wait and we hope – veni, come! The songs on this album encompass many nuances and moods – from joy and jubilant celebration to deep melancholy and longing. They move between folk tunes, English carols and traditional Christmas songs from different times and parts of the world, between Bach and Ives, Bulgaria and Norway. Several of the songs refer to the passing of the year, the cycle of nature and rhythms of daily life: lullabies for peace of mind and comfort, and songs about surrendering ourselves to the unfathomable and unknowable in the midst of our everyday concerns: the stars will always shine in the sky – and dawn will come. In others, we meet the little child born in a stable – vulnerable and yet immensely powerful. In the nine years following the release of 'Rós – Songs of Christmas' [BIS-2029], the Norwegian Soloists' Choir's annual Christmas concerts under the leadership of Grete Pedersen have become a cherished tradition in their native country. They are joined on this recording by folk musicians Sondre Meisfjord and Marco Ambrosini and by their long-standing collaborator, the fiddler and composer Gjermund Larsen, who also appeared on the choir's previous Christmas album.

Double Concertos for Bass Instruments
Rick Stotijn, Johannes Rostamo, Olivier Thiery, Bram van Sambeek, Camerata RCO
BIS BIS2509 (SACD)
Release: 4 November 2022
The concerto, with its soloist thrilling and moving an audience with the support of an orchestra, has been one of the most popular musical forms for over 300 years. Now imagine a concerto for two instruments: twice the virtuosity and twice the expression! While Antonio Vivaldi was one of the first composers to investigate the possibilities of this format in his more than 500 concertos, he didn't compose a single one for double bass. This recording rectifies Vivaldi's omission and offers arrangements of two of his double concertos as well as one of his best-loved arias: Vedrò con mio diletto from the opera Il Giustino. A little more than century later, Giovanni Bottesini, the Paganini of the double bass, captivated first Europe and then the rest of the world, displaying a dazzling virtuosity in his numerous compositions that highlight the unique qualities of the instrument. For his second disc on the BIS label, Rick Stotijn, a tireless advocate of his instrument and its endless possibilities, has joined forces with his friends Johannes Rostamo, Olivier Thiery and Bram van Sambeek. Supported by Camerata RCO, a string ensemble from the Amsterdam Concertgebouworkest, they perform concertante works from these two Italian composers: Doppio espressivo!

Mahler: Symphonies Nos 1–9
Chor & Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Mariss Jansons
BR Klassik 900719 (12 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
In the complete edition compiled by BR-KLASSIK, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of its long-time principal conductor Mariss Jansons explores Mahler's symphonic œuvre. This complete recording of Mahler's impressive symphonies is further enhanced by revealing rehearsal recordings and interesting interviews. In his nine symphonies, Gustav Mahler built up an entire world for himself and his listeners. More than almost any other composer, he tried in his symphonic works to get to the very bottom of the cycle of life, that eternal process of becoming and expiring – so what better complete set of symphonies to express the finest qualities of a modern-day conductor and the unique sound of a leading orchestra? In addition to the recordings of Mahler's nine symphonies, this 12-CD box set from BR-KLASSIK also includes 2 bonus CDs with revealing rehearsal recordings of the third (2010) and fifth symphonies (2016), a concert guide to the seventh, and interviews with Jansons on the fourth (2010) and seventh symphonies (2007). Jansons' fascination with Mahler's music is vividly conveyed in his comments during rehearsals and in the interviews.

Bohuslav Martinů: Larmes de couteau 'Knife Tears'; Comedy on the Bridge
Esther Dierkes, Elena Tsallagova, Björn Bürger, Adam Palka, Maria Riccarda Wesseling, Stine Marie Fischer, Andrew Bogard, Michael Smallwood, Saatsorchester Stuttgart / Cornelius Meister
Capriccio C5477
Release: 4 November 2022
Martinů was a musical chameleon. On the one hand, there's a unique character to his output; on the other, he would adopt and adapt to just about any style that happened to be in fashion or to his liking. These two one-act operas, recorded for the first time in their respective versions, are a case in point. There's the sensational Knife Tears (in its original French version), in which Martinů sets an absurdist libretto to the sounds of Le Jazz Hot, Stravinsky, and anything in between. This is juxtaposed with his Comedy on the Bridge in the English version that helped the work enjoy brief fame and which stands in complete contrast (if anything more in the style of Hanns Eisler) despite being separated by only seven years.

Bruckner: Symphony No 4 in E flat major (1876 Version)
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Markus Poschner
Capriccio C8084
Release: 4 November 2022
Continuing their exhaustive survey of Anton Bruckner's symphonies in all their versions, Markus Poschner and his team now tackle the original 1876 version of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony, arguably his most popular symphony. '1876? Surely you mean 1874!' the Bruckner specialist might comment. Well, recent research has revealed that Bruckner was still adjusting details of the work by that date, but not so substantially that the changes amounted to a separate version; nor, for that matter, the 1878 second 'standard' version. Paul Hawkshaw's liner notes detail all the differences for those who are interested in the subject – but, of course, one can also simply enjoy the immediate freshness of Bruckner's expansive first ideas.

Vocal Soloists for Capriccio's 40 Year Anniversary
Jochen Kowlaski, Cecilia Bartoli, Alfredo Kraus, Gwyneth Jones, Ramon Vargas, Anne Schwanewilms, Peter Schreier, Renate Behle, Lucia Aliberti, Renato Bruson, Anja Silja, Bo Skovhus, Sumi Jo
Capriccio C7410 (10 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
The first three collections celebrating the Capriccio label's 40th anniversary focused respectively on sacred, orchestral and chamber/solo music. This fourth and final Anniversary Box Set features singing stars from the label's history. For example, there's that pioneer of 'counter-tenorism', Jochen Kowalski. We also hear unexpected works from icons such as Peter Schreier (with lute accompaniment) and Hermann Prey (singing operetta), Italian fare from Alfredo Kraus and Ramón Vargas, and Cecilia Bartoli – discovered and first recorded by Capriccio – in her first and presumably only Wagner role! There are also the opera rarities that helped Capriccio establish a name for itself, with casts that would have turned heads even in the finest opera houses.

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf: Christmas Cantatas
Beate Mordal, Elvira Bill, Georg Poplutz, Matthias Vieweg, Andrey Akhmetov, Kölner Akademie / Michael Alexander Willens
cpo 555524-2
Release: 4 November 2022
In the 18th century, 'well-stocked' church music was a natural tradition throughout central Germany: church services were embellished along the ecclesiastical year with cantatas appropriate to the liturgy for the glory of God, but also for the joy and 'spiritual edification' of the visitors. From this treasure of hitherto unknown Christmas music, four cantatas by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf are presented for the first time on this recording. Wolf worked as court kapellmeister in Weimar, and the fact that Goethe rejected him as 'self-indulgent' should not prevent us from admiring him as a very important composer of the transition. Musically, Wolf was greatly influenced by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the empfindsamer Stil and by the works of the Berlin Kapellmeister Carl Heinrich Graun. He was also a prolific composer whose works were received with admiration by his contemporaries. The four cantatas show elements of the early classical and sensitive styles; the cantata choruses are often homophonic and songlike, polyphonic sections rather rare. All the cantatas prove to be individually conceived works that testify to the composer's mastery. Beautiful sounding arias, the naturalness of their expression and the dramatic compression in the individual movements are still convincing today. At the same time, the cantatas bear witness to the high quality of Protestant church music in the period after Johann Sebastian Bach and illustrate the high value of music within the liturgy. Today they can be a welcome addition to the repertoire for the Christmas season.

Johann Mattheson: Boris Goudenow
Olivier Gourdy, Julie Goussot, Sreten Manojlovic, Yevhen Rakhmanin, Flore Van Meerssche, Alice Lackner, Eric Price, Joan Folque, THERESIA / Andrea Marchiol
cpo 555502-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
The story of how Johann Mattheson's political comedy 'Boris Goudenow' came into being reads in large parts more exciting than many a mystery script: written in 1710 for the Hamburg Opera at the Gänsemarkt, the work was suddenly withdrawn by the composer. The score fell into oblivion, eventually ended up in the Hamburg City Library, and was long considered lost after World War II. It was not until the end of the 20th century that the opera was tracked down in Armenia and returned to Hamburg, where the premiere finally took place in 2005 after a delay of almost 300 years. The place of action is the Moscow Kremlin. The opera's plot revolves around the story of how the Russian prince Boris Goudenov rises to power through intrigue and becomes Russian tsar. The new Innsbruck production, under the musical direction of renowned Italian harpsichordist and conductor Andrea Marchiol, makes this baroque gem resound anew.

Paul Wranitzky: Symphonies Opp. 37, 50 & 51
NDR Radiophilharmonie / Rolf Gupta
cpo 777943-2
Release: 4 November 2022
According to current research, Paul Wranitzky composed at least 47 symphonies for which sources have been preserved. The symphonies Opp. 50 and 51 belong to Wranitzky's last series of symphonies. They were published in late 1804 by Wranitzky's main publisher, André, in Offenbach. The Symphony in D major, Op. 37, was published by the same publisher in November 1799. All three works recognizably follow Haydn's model in structure, movement types, and thematic formation, though not without setting individual accents. For example, the opening and closing movements are not thematic in the true sense of the word; Wranitzky treats his motivic material more like a musical construction kit; identical material is used in different places with different functions. The motivic material is deliberately kept simple, but possesses enough specificity to give the individual movements motivic coherence.

Berthold Damcke: Piano Trios Nos 1 & 2; Chamber Works
Ilona Then-Bergh, Wen-Sinn Yang, Michael Schäfer
cpo 555521-2 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
First the discovery of his works in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, then the new edition of the chamber music works in the Kammermusikverlag from 2020 and finally the contact to the three performers who were very interested in recording these works. Thus, with these first recordings, some 160 years after the composition of these works, one can finally get a listening impression of the chamber music of Berthold Damcke: a German composer, pianist, conductor, music educator and critic, and newspaper correspondent. Born in Hanover, he studied theology and later music in Frankfurt am Main. In 1845 Damcke went to St. Petersburg. From 1859 he lived and worked in Paris, where he was a correspondent, among other things. The 2 piano trios at the center of this production are works that were very much heard in Paris at the time, or in its salons. The Revue et Gazette described the music as 'the best chamber music'. Liszt spoke of Damcke as one of the most sought-after composition teachers in Paris. Berlioz called him a 'great musician, an artist.' The recorded works are well worth rediscovering and performing.

César Franck: Complete Organ Works
Carsten Wiebusch
cpo 555477-2 (4 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
At the center of the perception of César Franck as an organ composer are the twelve large-scale works, which are counted among the most radiant contributions to the organ literature. However, it should not be forgotten that with the collection 'L'Organiste' he wrote 63 shorter, but compositionally very elaborate pieces, which due to their vignette-like, compact facture do not reach the complexity of his 'large' organ works, but are nevertheless very remarkable: Each one of the pieces has a signature all its own, and is in no way inferior to Franck's extensive organ works in terms of harmonic complexity and focus of expression. It is thanks to our interpreter, i.e. Carsten Wiebusch's knowledgeable and tasteful arrangement of this collection originally composed by Franck for harmonium, that these miniatures can fully unfold their coloristic potential on the organ. And last but not least, there was the fascinating task of selecting the appropriate instruments for a Franck complete recording. What today appears so clearly arranged on 4 CDs with three organs is the result of a thought process lasting several years, during which many instruments were considered, tested and discarded again in order to impressively reproduce the versatility of Franck's music.

Rued Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 'Cliffside Pastorals'
Berliner Philharmoniker / Sakari Oramo
Dacapo 6220644 (SACD)
Release: 4 November 2022
Despite being at odds with his fellow human beings for most of his life, and regarded by many as merely eccentric, Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893–1952) believed that his time would come, and so it has proved. His First Symphony reveals the teenage composer celebrating his love of beauty and harmony in the most hedonistic terms. This recording sees the symphony return to its first home, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, the orchestra who premiered the work in 1913 and the first to recognize it as a masterpiece.

Fikta
Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, accordion; Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason, Elja Ensemble, Thórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir, Katerina Anagnostidou, Mikkel Schou
Dacapo 8226720
Release: 4 November 2022
The accordion was one of the first instruments to become common in Iceland in the nineteenth century. In recent years, Iceland has produced several out-standing accordionists, including Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. This disc contains music by three generations of Icelandic composers, written between 1972 and 2020, including two works created especially for Ásgeirsson himself.

A Shropshire Lad: English Songs Orchestrated and Performed by Roderick Williams
Roderick Williams, baritone; Hallé Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder
Hallé CDHLL7559
Release: 4 November 2022
This album represents the culmination of what leading British baritone Roderick Williams described as 'a dream come true'. It features premiere recordings of his orchestrations of songs by Vaughan Williams and other composers associated with him and is released to commemorate those who perished in WWI. Featuring orchestrations by Williams of his favourite songs from the 20th-Century English repertoire this album contains works by Vaughan Williams and composers associated with him. It includes specially commissioned new arrangements of songs by women composers Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring and Rebecca Clarke. The album features the work of composers who were killed in the First World War, George Butterworth, William Denis Browne and Ernest Farrar and is released to coincide with Remembrance Day. These songs portray the composers' evocative responses to the poetry they set, and Williams's orchestrations further convey the songs meaning through highly effective use of orchestral instruments and textures.

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 2 in C minor 'Resurrection'
Giulia Montanari, Bettina Ranch, Lukáš Vasilek, Prager Philharmonischer Chor, Essener Philharmoniker / Tomáš Netopil
Oehms Classics OC1717
Release: 4 November 2022
This is the third volume in the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra's series of Mahler symphonies, conducted by Tomáš Netopil. Since winning the 1st Sir Georg Solti Conductors Competition at Frankfurt in 2002, Netopil has become one of the most sought-after conductors of the younger generation. Now celebrating his ninth season as general music director of the Aalto Musiktheater and Philharmonie Essen, he gave an acclaimed performance of Mahler's Second Symphony at the Aalto Theater in Essen in May 2022.

Hungarian Pictures
Salaputia Brass Quintett: Isabel Martínez García, Matthias Kamleiter, Rafael Sars, Markus Czieharz, Philip Pineda Resch
Oehms Classics OC488
Release: 4 November 2022
When we consider the great musical nations of the world, Hungary perhaps does not come to mind first. But the more we think about it, the higher the country rises in such a ranking. For Salaputia Brass, Hungary has played a leading role since the 20th century. It has established itself not only as a goldmine for instrumentalists, but has also produced many (contemporary) compositions for the developing genre of brass chamber music. This album brings together an overview of contemporary Hungarian music.

Ravel 2
Valses nobles et sentimentales, Menuet antique, Frontispice, Shéhérazade Ouverture, Ma mère l'Oye (Complete Ballet)
Basque National Orchestra / Robert Trevino
Ondine ODE1416-2
Release: 4 November 2022
Robert Trevino's first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) received an excellent response. The programme in this second volume is perhaps more 'French' in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of Ravel's most popular orchestral works, this album includes some rarities, including Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) in its complete ballet version, as well as one world première recording: Pierre Boulez's orchestration of Ravel's World War I era piano work, Frontispice.

Alfred Momotenko: Creator of Angels (Choral Works)
Latvian Radio Choir / Sigvards Kļava
Ondine ODE1413-2
Release: 4 November 2022
Latvian Radio Choir's new album conducted by Sigvards Kļava marks the international debut of composer Alfred Momotenko (b. 1970). Momotenko was born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1970. He studied at the Sochi College of Arts and later percussion at the Moscow State University of Culture and Art. In 1990, the political situation having changed, Momotenko moved to the Netherlands where he continued his studies at the Brabant Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Momotenko's timeless choral works continue the centuries old great tradition of choral works combining them with contemporary language, a blend most recently exemplified by the likes of Alfred Schnittke.

Parsifal Suite
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Gourlay
Orchid Classics ORC100207
Release: 4 November 2022
On this first recording, Andrew Gourlay conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in his new Parsifal Suite, a deftly constructed concert piece of orchestral highlights from Wagner's Parsifal, published by Schott Music. Gourlay has sought to encapsulate Parsifal's main orchestral elements into a seamless suite, resulting in a sumptuous 45-minute work that allows Wagner's exquisite music to be enjoyed in a new way.

El cielo y sus estrellas: Galant Cathedral Music from New Spain
Molly Netter, Eleanor Ranney-Mendoza, José Hernández Pastor, David Trillo, Laura Quesada, Camerata Antonio Soler / Javier José Mendoza
Orchid Classics ORC100208
Release: 4 November 2022
Camerata Antonio Soler and its conductor Javier José Mendoza draw us into the heady world of 18th-century music from 'New Spain' – which encompassed parts of the Spanish Empire including present-day Mexico and Cuba. This elegant 'galant' repertoire includes non-liturgical Christian works performed by the cathedral choirs of the time, written by composers including Davide Perez, Luis Misón and José Herrando, all of whom made their careers on the Iberian Peninsula. We also hear from two Italians who served as chapel masters in present-day Mexico: Santiago Billoni and Ignacio Jerusalem. The cultural and ceremonial life of New Spain is vividly evoked by these works, which, though devotional, show the influence of the dramatic theatrical and secular music of the time. The album also features three secular sinfonías from the Iberian peninsula, written in the tradition of the Italian opera overture. Camerata Antonio Soler is joined for this sumptuous recording by sopranos Molly Netter and Eleanor Ranney-Mendoza, countertenor José Hernández Pastor, tenor David Trillo, and flautist Laura Quesada.

Händel: Xerxes
Fritz Wunderlich, Ingeborg Hallstein, Naan Pöld, Hertha Töpper, Jean Cook, Karl Christian Kohn, Max Proebstl, Bavarian Radio Choir, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Rafael Kubelík
Orfeo C230063 (3 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Re-release of C476983. This 1962 production of Xerxes was based on Rudolf Steglich's 1958 edition, which closely follows the autograph score housed in the British Museum and uses a new German translation. The roles of Xerxes and Arsamenes, originally written for castrato sopranos, are here taken by tenor voices. As regards the orchestral direction, Rafael Kubelík favours a reserved, rather than overblown, string sound and adopts discreet vibrato, Baroque terraced dynamics and tempo relationships that avoid extremes. For today's listeners, therefore, his interpretation falls midway between the productions based on Oskar Hagen's arrangement, which largely reflected a romantic interpretation of the Baroque, and the current period-sonority versions. The star cast features Fritz Wunderlich, Naan Pöld, Hertha Töpper, Jean Cook, Ingeborg Hallstein, Carl Christian Kohn and Max Pröbstl, demonstrating how high the standards of opera production were at the time.

Soiréestücke - Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Niels W Gade
Lauri Sallinen, Anna Kuvaja
Alba Records ABCD512
Release: 4 November 2022
Lauri Sallinen and pianist Anna Kuvaja have released their first collaboration of intimate chamber music for the covid era. The record contains music by Robert & Clara Schumann and Niels W Gade. The record's name Soiréestücke pertains to the enlightenment era tradition of bringing music back from churches and courts to the safety and intimacy of homes and salons.

Finnish Impressions - Hannikainen, Sibelius, Leiviskä, Dostal
Terhi Dostal, piano
Alba Records ABCD514
Release: 4 November 2022
Terhi Dostals 'Finnish Impressions' includes music by: Jean Sibelius, Ilmari Hannikainen, Helvi Leiviskä and the artist herself, Terhi Dostal. This release contains several first recordings.

Four Impulses
4th Line Horn Quartet
Alba Records ABCD516
Release: 4 November 2022
4th Line Horn Quartet's first release is a cross-section of Nordic compositions for the horn quartet and the first release in Finland with art music composed for the horn quartet. 4th Line Horn Quartet was formed in 2016 by Finnish top female horn players. All players work in Finland's biggest orchestras. The quartet was inspired to compile a Nordic publication of quartet works by Daniel Kjellesvik's Fire Impulser, which is where the name of the publication comes from. Music by Johan Kvandal, Atso Almila, Daniel Kjellesvik, Mathew Whittal, Terje Lerstad and Erkki Melartin.

Bach: Cello Suites 1-3
Jukka Harju, french horn
Alba Records ABCD517
Release: 4 November 2022
Cello Suites 1-3 is the newest available interpretation of Cello Suites on French horn. Not any public critics are available yet, but so far the reception has been highly positive: 'Hit on the bullseye: Admirable control of the instrument and an interpretation that is worth cellists to listen to, too.'

Marguerite Long, Vol. 2 - Chopin, Debussy, Milhaud & Ravel
Philippe Gaubert, Pedro de Freitas Branco, Darius Milhaud, Georges Tzipine, Marguerite Long
APR APR_6039 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Undoubtedly the foremost French female pianist of the 20th century, Marguerite Long (1874–1966) prided herself on her personal friendships with some of the foremost composers of her day – Debussy, Fauré and Ravel. She championed their works, premiering Ravel's G major piano concerto, and was to write books on the interpretation of each of them. This addition to our continuing French Piano School series is the second of two APR volumes, together containing her complete recordings of French repertoire, and of honorary Frenchman, Chopin. Of particular significance here are the premiere recordings of the Ravel G major and Milhaud 1st concertos - both works dedicated to her - and also the first ever recording of Chopin's 2nd Concerto, made in 1929, which has not previously been reissued.

Classics of American Romanticism - George Frederick Bristow: Symphony No 4 'Arcadian'; William Henry Fry: Niagara Symphony
The Orchestra Now / Leon Botstein
Bridge Records BRIDGE 9572
Release: 4 November 2022
George Frederick Bristow and William Henry Fry constituted the first generation of major, native-born composers of instrumental music in the United States. Both were fierce proponents for American music as composers, writers, and performers. Of particular note: Bristow's Symphony No. 4 the 'Arcadian' is recorded here in its entirety for the first time. The 1967 recording made by Karl Krueger with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra made large cuts in the first and last movements, reducing the length of the piece by at least ten minutes.

Storyteller - Viet Cuong, Gustav Mahler, Todd Goodman, Anna Baadsvik, Claude Debussy, Eric Whitacre, Allen Vizzutti
Justin Benavidez, Patrick Dunnigan, Richard Clary, David Plack, Deloise Lima, Florida State University Wind Ensemble, Florda State University Wind Orchestra, Florida State University Symphonic Band
Bridge Records BRIDGE 9571
Release: 4 November 2022
Tuba virtuoso Justin Benavidez is heard in three new tuba concertos, two recent solos, and stunning transcriptions of works by Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy. Benavidez is currently Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Florida State University and performs as principal tuba of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. In the summer he is on the faculty at the Round Top Music Festival in Texas. With his playing noted for its 'tremendous virtuosity and stylistic versatility,' Benavidez has performed in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has been featured numerous times on APM's Performance Today radio program. His debut solo album, Emblems, won Silver Medals in the Classical Album and Instrumental Solo Album categories of the Global Music Awards. The International Tuba Euphonium Association Journal described it as 'an impressive and highly entertaining record' on which Benavidez 'shreds with enthusiasm, exuberance, and precision.'

Vrolige tider - Times of Unrest - String Quartet Project - Haydn, Hanne Tofte Jespersen, Britten
Kristine Schneider, Mads Haugsted Hansen, Daniel Eklund, Lea Brøndal
Danacord DACOCD945
Release: 4 November 2022
In 2018, Aksel Nielsen, cellist and a chairman of the Chamber music society BRAGE in Randers, started a dialogue with composer Hanne Tofte Jespersen about a new string quartet. He wished to commission her to write a quartet for BRAGE. They both liked the idea of the new work to be composed for a historical theme which would also be relevant for a present audience, incl. youth. They soon agreed on a context of a late Haydn quartet from the 1790s and Benjamin Britten's first string quartet from 1941. BRAGE invited Nordic String Quartet to take up the task and involved four other chamber music societies in the project. Neither Aksel nor Hanne had imagined how relevant it would prove to call the project TIMES OF UNREST. She completed her quartet in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic causing lockdown of any cultural events. The first performances in November 2020 took place just before the second coronavirus lockdown. By the time of recording and release of this album, there is once more a most unfortunate war on the European continent, not to mention the climate related Times of Unrest all over the good Planet Earth. The musical works of this project express both unrest, threat, hope and even vision of peace.

Rarities of Piano Music at 'Schloss vor Husum' from the Festival 3-5 June 2022
Marie-Catherine Girod, Clare Hammond, Artur Pizarro, Marc-André Hamelin, Billy Eidi, Kotaro Fukuma
Danacord DACOCD949
Release: 4 November 2022
Founded in 1987 the annual Rarities of Piano Music Festival in the North German town of Husum is a major event. Danacord is proud to release the recording from the extra festival from 3-5 June 2022. Due to Covid-19 the planned 2020 festival had to be cancelled and an extra short three day festival came in June this year. As a theme the music was all around Alkan. Listen to Marc-André Hamelin, Artur Pizzaro, Claire Hammond and other fine pianists performing rare piano music. All lovers of piano music will want this release, not only because of the first class pianism from truly outstanding performers, but also because the quality of the often unknown and rare romantic piano music is of such invaluable substance. Critics greeted all previous CD releases with enthusiasm. Music by Charles-Valentin Alkan, Reynaldo Hahn, Mel Bonis, E.T.A Hoffmann, William Alwyn, William Bolcom, Alfredo Napoleão, Déodat de Sévérac, Jeanne Barbillion, Fanny Hensel, William Grant Still, and Frederico Longás.

The History of the Russian Guitar, Vol 1
Mårten Falk, guitar
DB Productions DBCD206
Release: 4 November 2022
One of Sweden's most prominent and active guitarists, Mårten Falk, now extends his vaste discography by this first volume of 'The History of the Russian Guitar' with music for 7-string guitar. Forgotten music by 'the first generations': works by early 19th century composer von Held through Sychra, Vysotsky and Aksionov until late romantic Morkov are brought back to life on this melancholy album. Music by Semion Aksionov, Ignaz von Held, Vladimir Morkov, Andrei Sychra and Mikhail Vysotsky.

Mark Abel: Spectrum
Isabel Bayrakdarian, Carol Rosenberger, Hila Plitmann, Dominic Cheli, Trio Barclay, Kindra Scharich, Adam Millstein, David Samuel, Jeff Garza, Max Opferkuch, Christy Kim, Jeffrey LaDeur
Delos DE3592 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Acclaimed American composer Mark Abel's sixth album for Delos extends his growing command of chamber writing while also delivering three major new vocal works. Celebrated sopranos Isabel Bayrakdarian (four times a Juno Award winner) and Hila Plitmann (a pair of Grammys and a longtime Abel collaborator) are joined by mezzo Kindra Scharich in presenting the song cycles Trois Femmes du Cinema and 1966, and debuting Two Scenes from 'The Book of Esther,' a provocative excerpt from an opera in development. The album's impressive array of instrumentalists includes pianist Carol Rosenberger (making the final recording of her epic career); fellow pianists Dominic Cheli, Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur; Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel; Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim and young cello star Jonah Kim.

The Destined Knot - music by Luca Marenzio
Fieri Consort
Fieri Records FIER004TDK
Release: 4 November 2022
This epic tale of lovers tossed by fate and fortune was once famous throughout Europe, inspiring hundreds of composers like Luca Marenzio. His seventh book of madrigals (1595) draws its texts from Guarini's tragicomedy play Il pastor fido (the faithful shepherd) and travels through all the trials and torments of love. These madrigals have been selected from Marenzio's sixth, seventh (1595) and eighth (1598) books of five-voice madrigals and placed in the order in which their texts appear in the play. As Marenzio's madrigals do not tell the complete story of Guarini's play, we have filled in some of the gaps along the way with the help of artist Eleanor Meredith. This visualisation will cross the language barrier, helping to communicate the story. Eleanor Meredith is an artist from the wilds of West Lothian, Scotland. Eleanor teaches on the illustration BA at Norwich University of Arts, and runs workshops at The BFI Animation Academy, The Apple store, V & A Museum, Ravensbourne College and the National Portrait Gallery. She has exhibited throughout the UK including at the Royal Scottish Academy, Brixton Village and Bankside Gallery. She has collaborated on projects with the Scottish Ensemble, Air Studio, Sinfonia Viva, Edinburgh Hogmanay and the Italian Sagra Osei festival. Over the past 10 years, Fieri Consort have explored music from different corners of the European renaissance. The pioneering approach to harmony, word-painting and texture taken by those sixteenth-century composers has proved an inspiration for our projects which mix the past with the present.

Die Kunst des Sterbens – Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying)
Ensemble il capriccio, Franz Vitzthum
Genuin Classics GEN22800
Release: 4 November 2022
During the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, death was part of everyday life. The ensemble il capriccio and the countertenor Franz Vitzthum offer the Thomaskantor's musical perspective on life and death on their new GENUIN CD. The texts of the recorded arias and chorale arrangements by Bach deal with death, eternity and the promise of eternal life. The musicians juxtapose the works, some of which have been carefully arranged, with selected sections from the Art of Fugue. The result is an artistic and moving musical tapestry, interpreted by Franz Vitzthum and the ensemble il capriccio with intensity and sensitivity.  Music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach.

Rather Romantic: Beautiful Memories Told by the Euphonium
Duo GIOVIVO
Genuin Classics GEN22791
Release: 4 November 2022
Music by Jules Massenet, Ludwig van Beethoven, Erik Satie, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gabriel Fauré, Fritz Kreisler, Antonín Dvořák, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Gaetano Donizetti.

Die Auferweckung des Lazarus (The Raising of Lazarus) - Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach & Johann Gottfried Herder
Gellert Ensemble / Andreas Mitschke
Genuin Classics GEN22802
Release: 4 November 2022
On their first Genuin Classics CD, the young musicians of the Gellert Ensemble from Central Germany bring an absolute repertoire rarity to life. Under its conductor Andreas Mitschke, the ensemble has produced the oratorio The Raising of Lazarus by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, the so-called 'Bückeburg Bach', on the Leipzig label. Bach wrote his dramatic work together with the Sturm und Drang poet Johann Gottfried Herder, a colorful and nuanced portrait based on the unbelievable story from the New Testament. The Gellert Ensemble presents historical performance practice at the highest level in an impressive, spirited performance!

Breathe - Works by Sebastian Fagerlund, Uroš Rojko, Jukka Tiensuu, Friedrich Goldmann, René Kuwan and Georg Katzer
Trio Klangspektrum
Genuin Classics GEN22803
Release: 4 November 2022
An unusual trio, winners of the German Music Competition in the 'New Music' category, presents the new Genuin Classics CD Breathe. Paula Breland (clarinet), Jennifer Aßmus (violoncello) and Anna-Katharina Schau (accordion) make up the trio [ k l aːŋʃpɛktrʊm ] – a confluence of instruments that, despite their significant differences, are nevertheless all 'breathing' instruments. This is reflected both in the organic music-making style of the young musicians and in their selection of lively works of contemporary music. The program includes music by Katzer, Kuwan, Goldmann, Tiensuu, Rojko, and Fagerlund – examples of how new music can narrate stories passionately and sensually.

Grenzschatten (Marginal Shadows) - lieder by Christian FP Kram
Mareike Schellenberger, Christopher Jung, Jan Roelof Wolthuis, Olivier Lechardeur
Genuin Classics GEN22561
Release: 4 November 2022
Composer Christian FP Kram devotes himself to an almost forgotten genre: he writes piano lieder - intimate, lyrical, pointed miniatures of text and music. Mareike Schellenberger (mezzo-soprano) and Christopher Jung (baritone), as well as the pianists Jan Roelof Wolthuis and Olivier Lechardeur, present five of his song cycles, almost all of which are world premiere recordings on a new GENUIN CD. Among them are songs based on texts by Hermann Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sargon Boulus, Katerĭna Rudčenková and Kevin Perryman. Kram's songs are fascinating soundscapes: compositionally differentiated, but always in their creator's original and concise musical language.

Georg Friedrich Händel: Neun Deutsche Arien ('Nine German Arias')
Eilika Wünsch, Raúl Teo Arias, Johann-Sebastian Sommer, Bernhard Wünsch
Hänssler Classic HC22009
Release: 4 November 2022
A stroke of luck for us: the cycle of 'Nine German Arias' is a real gem. It is perfect in its form down to the last detail, thrifty and yet striking in its use of resources, and a compositional masterpiece. As a rule, a large choir and full orchestra fortissimo makes a much more immediate impression than an aria with only four executants. The present CD is a new production by artistic husband and wife Eilika and Bernhard Wunsch. They have devoted themselves since 2011 to the genre of the Lied in particular and established the Musikhaus am Biel stein, near Gottingen in central Germany, in 2019. It is there - in their in-house studio - that they deepen their involvement in Lieder and in vocal and chamber music in general. The year 2019 thus saw the birth of an exceptionally successful concert series that soon earned the reputation of 'hidden treasure' worth discovering. In their concerts, EiIika and Bernhard Wunsch revive the 19th-century tradition of inviting musicians into their own home and playing rarely heard works while cladding well known compositions in new garb, arranging songs for participation by one or two instrumentalists. The concept of bringing the audience in close touch with the personal and social aspects of composers' and lyricists' Iives is one that has won over many new listeners to classical music.

Carl Friedrich Abel: Cello Concertos
Bruno Delepelaire, Berliner Barock Solisten, Christoph Hartmann, Kristof Polonek
Hänssler Classic HC22022
Release: 4 November 2022
It is a constant source of amazement that to this very day, musical gems even by famous composers often fail to receive the exposure they deserve or have even - despite modern digital access - been unjustly consigned to oblivion. The four works by Carl Friedrich Abel presented here are just such treasures, and two of them - the Sinfonie Concertanti WKO 42 and 43 - are released on record for the very first time to mark the composer's tercentenary in 2023. The reason for this is surely that Abel's activity and fame as a gambist and as a composer for his instrument has obscured the fact that he wrote these four important concertante works for the violoncello. The present recording seeks to help restore the reputation that these works deserve.

Christmas Oratorios & Concertos
Various Artists
Hänssler Classic HC22034 (6 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
World-famous and also lesser-known Christmas oratorios and concerts with outstanding performers, choirs and orchestras.  Music by Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Arnold Matthias Brunckhorst, Georg Friedrich Telemann, Otto Nicolai, Heinrich Schütz, Cammille Saint-Saëns, Christian Heinrich Rinck, Johann Nikolaus Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach and Jeremiah Clarke.

Frédéric Chopin: Études
Xi Zhai
Hänssler Classic HC22049
Release: 4 November 2022
Chopin shaped his two extended cycles of etudes into a pianistic cosmos that has a unique place in the literature for piano. The etudes for solo piano feature many technical possibilities composed with an accomplished sense of style. However, the main focus in each of the compositions is musical expression. Mechanical passages are nowhere to be found. The rich timbres of Chopin's virtuosity thus emerge as the basis for a nuanced tonal world blending Romantic sensibility with a manneristic stylistic approach. All in all: Chopin's etudes constitute a separate musical domain. They go beyond their own limits, reflecting on numerous other works by the composer in order to establish themselves as 'styIistically anchored piIIars' within his piano aesthetics. Chopin redefined the genre. Without his pianistic and tonal innovations, the originality of later etudes - one need only think of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Debussy and Ligeti - would probably be unimaginable.

Pavel Šporcl - Homage to Jan Kubelik
Pavel Šporcl, violin; Prague Symphony Orchestra / Tomáš Brauner
Hänssler Classic HC22065
Release: 4 November 2022
Kubelik's star began to wane in the years before World War I. Some felt he had gone off the boil but it was more a question of his pubIic turning to new idols, Elman and Vecsey. In 1915 he retired to take composition seriously, not resuming his concert career until 1920. He toured Britain 20 times from 1900 to 1934 (packing the Royal Albert Hall with 7,000 people in 1926) and the U.S. many times up to 1938 (6,000 heard him at the New York Hippodrome in 1920-21). He commanded a wide range of music and in Central Europe he is remembered as a great musician. He died in Prague on 5 December 1940. The main fruits of Kubelik's five-year break were his first three Violin Concertos, pubIished in Prague in 1920. Of the eventual series of six, Pavel Sporcl says: 'They are technically very demanding and musically extremely interesting.' The First Concerto in C major, which he plays here, is a melodious Late Romantic work, well tailored to a front- line virtuoso's strengths, and it should not have fallen out of the repertoire. Kubelik emerged from his purdah to premiere it at the Grosse Musikvereinssaal in Vienna on 29 January 1917, Nedbal conducting the Tonkunstler Orchestra.

La Valse
Sächsische Bläserphilharmonie (Saxon Wind Philharmonic) / Peter Sommerer
Hänssler Classic HC22068
Release: 4 November 2022
Maurice Ravel was interested not only in the Spanish bolero but also in the Viennese waltz. In March 1920 he completed the score of the work he consistently called La Valse, about which he Iater said in an interview 'It is a dancing, spinning, almost hallucinating ecstasy, an increasingly passionate and exhausting whirl of dancers carried away in exuberance.' But there are also some grotesque distortions. They remind us that, in addition to the sonic glorification of the Belle Epoque, this composition also represents dancing on a volcano that had already fizzled out by then.  Music by Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré and César Franck.

Schubert 2020-2028: The String Quartets Project II
Alinde Quartett
Hänssler Classic HC22011
Release: 4 November 2022
Looking ahead to 2028 and the 200th anniversary of the composer's death, the Alinde Quartet will annually release a disc of Schubert string quartets for the next eight years, alongside a specially commissioned work. Finding the ideal sound world for Schubert's quartets is by no means easy, yet the Alinde strikes a near-ideal balance between internal clarity and textural warmth, shone through by sparkling intonation. Music by  Franz Schubert and S J Hanke.

Robert Schumann: Complete Works for Piano
Florian Uhlig
Hänssler Classic HC22074 (19 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Florian Uhlig has taken more than a decade to bring out Schumann's solo piano music on a totaI of nineteen CDs in sixteen volumes. Now the compendium is also available in the form of a box set as a complete edition. This edition does not simply work through the complete works, but puts them into biographical and thematic contexts.

Johannes Brahms: Complete Symphonies
Münchner Philharmoniker / Rudolf Kempe
Profil PH20037 (3 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
For a long time Johannes Brahms was considered the epitome of conservatism who, contrary to the disciples of Wagner and Liszt, fell back on old forms, which allegedly had no power anymore. Indeed, Brahms was an expert on music of the past, going back tiII the polyphonic composers of the 16th century. He made use of old patterns such as the variation and the interrelated passacaglia. He adopted the traditional four-movement symphony and its juxtaposition, respected the pattern of the sonata form and did hardly go beyond Beethoven when it came to instrumentation. However, the perception of Brahms as a 'reactionary', as it was initially argued by Nietzsche and later by the circle of Wagner and Richard Strauss, is unsustainable. No one less than Arnold Schoenberg has recognised the fundamentally different, which divided the composer Brahms, particularly as composer of symphonies, from the masters of the classical sonata and symphony in his famous paper 'Brahms, der Fortschrittl iche' (Brahms the progressive)

Anton Bruckner: Symphonies 4 & 5
Münchner Philharmoniker / Rudolf Kempe
Profil PH20038 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Rudolf Kempe - born 4 June 1910 in Dresden-Niederpoyritz died 12 May 1976 in Zurich. From the age of 13 Rudolf Kempe received his musical education at the Orchestra School of the Dresden Staatskapelle. He took up his first post, as an oboist, in Dortmund in 1928 and only four months Iater was engaged as solo oboist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, He made his conducting debut with an amateur Leipzig orchestra in 1934. After taking a Figaro rehearsal at short notice for general music director Paul Schmitz, he was offered a contract as solo repetiteur and conductor at Leipzig Opera in addition to his orchestral position. In 1939 he was called up for military service. Between 1945 and 1948 he conducted in Chemnitz, then was conductor and deputy to general music director Hermann Abendroth at the German National Theatre in Weimar. In 1949 Joseph KeiIberth appointed him StaatskapeIImeister and his deputy at Dresden State Opera. In 1950 Kempe succeeded KeiIberth as general music director of Dresden State Opera and Orchestra. Although he Ieft Dresden in summer 19 53, his friendIy and fruitful colIaboration with the orchestra endured untiI the Iast year of his Iife. Rudolf Kempe was general music director of Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1952 to 1954, after which he increasingly made guest appearances in the world's great opera houses and with Ieading orchestras. He conducted at Bayreuth from 1960 to 1963. Appointed at the express request of his predecessor Sir Thomas Beecham, from 1961 to 1975 Kempe was music director of London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1965 to 1972 chief conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. In 1967 he took over the artistic direction of the Munich PhiIharmonic and also became music director of London's BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1975. Kempe died on 12 May 1976 in Zurich at the age of 66 . The Missa Solemnis which he had pIanned as the opening concert of the London Proms in JuIy 1976 was instead performed as his memorial concert.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Weihe des Hauses ('The Consecration of the House')
Evelin Novak, Klaus Mertens, Vocalconsort Berlin, Sächischer Kammerchor, Filharmonie Brno / Fabian Enders
Profil PH22012
Release: 4 November 2022
Carl Meisl's play The Consecration of the House, to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, was performed in Vienna on October 3, 1822 on the occasion of the reopening of the Theater in der Josefstadt. Its theme is the reawakening of art after times of crisis. Beethoven's music to August von Kotzebue's text The Ruins of Athens (1812) served as the basis for the work, and was adapted to Meisl's text as well as expanded to include new music by the composer. Beethoven seems to have started composing for the upcoming performance only in September 1822, writing new music for those of Meisl's texts for which nothing suitable could be found in The Ruins of Athens. The dance with chorus 'Wo sich die Pulse jugendlich jagen' is listed separately as WoO (work without opus number) 98, as is the March, op. 114, which was reworked for the play. The overture achieved a high degree of popularity. Its prominent position as a separate opus (124) between the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony reveals that Beethoven likely approved its use as a concert overture.

Clara Haskil - Piano Concertos & Sonatas - Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann
Festival Strings Lucerne, Wiener Symphoniker, Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux, Arthur Grumiaux, Igor Markevitch, Ferenc Fricsay
Profil PH22053 (6 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
'The artist, marked by a physical ailment which she bravely resisted, was, with aII due reverence, confined to the prison of her decrepitude. Highly concentrated, aImost detached from the world, Clara Haskil with great purity and artistry all those works of the Classical and Romanticism that she was physically equal to.' - Joachim Kaiser

The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Vadym Kholodenko, piano
Quartz QTZ2149
Release: 4 November 2022
'Recordings usually start to live their own lives after their release. However, this one happened to be very special since it acquired its very meaning long before getting to the publishing phase. Recorded in September 2021, this project survived February 24, 2022 - the date marking for me the end of a fragile balance between humanity and medieval darkness. This recording is dedicated to the people of a free and independent Ukraine, whose unshakable spirit will never be defeated.' - Vadym Kholodenko. Music by Beethoven, Rzewski and Kurbatov.

Glazunov: Piano Sonatas Nos 1 & 2; Three Miniatures for piano
Nikolay Medvedev, piano
Quartz QTZ2150
Release: 4 November 2022
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was undoubtedly the most gifted Russian composer of his generation – that is to say, those born during the 1860s – and his profound musical aptitude led him to take full advantage of the educational facilities underpinning the burgeoning interest in the arts that grew exponentially in Russia during the second half of the 19th-century. Being composed consecutively, the differences in Glazunov's Sonatas are fascinating. Their individual tonal bases are exactly opposite: B flat minor and E minor – these keys could not be further apart. It may possibly have been the case that their appearance inspired Igor Stravinsky's early Sonata in F sharp minor of 1903 through its acceptance of traditional structures – but Stravinsky's Sonata is in four movements, whereas both of Glazunov's Sonatas are in three. Whatever the contemporaneous background to Glazunov's Sonatas, they are excellent examples of his superlative compositional gifts.

A Celebration of British Folksong
Trinity Boys Choir, Laetitia Fédérici, David Swinson
Rondeau Production ROP8003
Release: 4 November 2022
In the late Victorian period, many folk songs were rediscovered in England - their influence on British music of the last century plays a remarkable role: Many British composers of the 20th century, including Benjamin Britten, for example, took up the folk song as a medium and rearranged it. In this recording, the Trinity Boys Choir sings a selection of such newly arranged English folk songs. The special feature here is that the choir performs in this recording as a pure children's choir. The resulting bright, bell-like sound is unique. Music by David de Warrenne, Benjamin Britten, Peter White and Grayston Ives.

Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem
Viktorija Kaminskaite, Marie Henriette Reinhold, André Khamasmie, Wolf Matthias Friedrich, Leipziger Universitätschor, Mendelssohnorchester Leipzig / David Timm
Rondeau Production ROP6196
Release: 4 November 2022
The mantra of historical performance practice has long since prevailed in classical music. Hardly any listener is left amazed by the sound of the harpsichord in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or the bright cornetts in Monteverdi's works. When it comes to Giuseppe Verdi's works, this aspect is relatively new since, by the end of the 19th century, the modern orchestra had supposedly become firmly established. With the Mendelssohn Orchestra, which specializes in historical performance practice, David Timm has an ensemble at his disposal that can recreate the timbres intended by the composer down to the last detail. Therefore, this recording of the Requiem is particularly captivating due to the mixture of youthful choral voices, great vocal soloists and an instrumentation as Verdi had in mind.

Mozart: Requiem; Antonio Salieri: De Profundis; Georg Joseph Vogler: Funeral Music for Louis XVI
Chisa Tanigaki, Rebekka Stolz, Fabian Kelly, Christian Wagner, Gutenberg-Kammerchor, Neumeyer Consort / Felix Koch
Rondeau Production ROP6211
Release: 4 November 2022
Hardly any other work presents such fascinating conundrums as the Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart himself died while working on the piece, and it was completed by his student, Franz Xaver Süßmayr. But the Amen fugue after the Lacrymosa ends after 14 bars. Birger Petersen has completed the fugue for this recording in the style of Mozart. Premiere recordings of Vogler's Trauermusik and Salieri's De Profundis complement the repertoire of this exciting new CD.

Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich (1803-1836): Lieder & Elegies
Klaus Mertens, Volodymyr Lavrynenko
Rondeau Production ROP6244
Release: 4 November 2022
Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich, born in Brugg in 1803, is probably the most important Early Romantic composer in Switzerland. However, he shares with many of his colleagues the fate of being forgotten after his death in 1836. Today, more than 700 works are kept in the manuscript archive of the Basel University Library. Thanks to the International Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich Society based in Brugg, this legacy has been rediscovered since 2017, edited piece by piece and performed in concerts. Bass-baritone Klaus Mertens follows in Fröhlich's footsteps and, together with lied pianist Volodymyr Lavrynenko, takes an exciting look at Fröhlich's extensive lied oeuvre: Eight Canzonettas on poems by Goethe and Uhland, among others, as well as the Declamatory Songs, in which the performers feel the composer's emotional vibrations, are framed by three elegies for solo piano with a haunting tonal language and sometimes astonishing twists.

Frédéric Chopin: 1st Piano Concerto Op. 11 in E Minor and Mazurkas
Margarita Höhenrieder, Orchestra La Scintilla / Riccardo Minasi
Solo Musica SM400
Release: 4 November 2022
For years, Margarita Höhenrieder was searching for the authentic sound of Frédéric Chopin's piano works. Which instrument of its time most convincingly reflected Chopin's music? Chopin himself had given the answer in 1831: 'Pleyel's instruments are the non plus ultra'! The choice for the recording therefore fell on a Pleyel fortepiano, built around 1855 in Paris and expertly restored using historical materials and methods. It is absolutely identical in construction to the instrument Chopin owned and thus represents an authentic sound testimony. The recording location was also of particular importance: the Mazurkas on the CD were recorded on this instrument, in a room comparable to a salon from around the middle of the 19th century. The orchestra 'La Scintilla ' also played on period instruments under the direction of Riccardo Minasi. The recording of the E minor concerto with the historical version by Jan Ekier then took place on another Pleyel of about the same year of construction, in the acoustically outstanding Oberstrass church in Zurich. Margarita Höhenrieder's careful recreation of the authentic Chopin sound gives the listener highly interesting insights into music.

Two Sides
Barokkbandið Brák
Sono Lumimus SLE-70026 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Tvær hliðar/Two Sides presents two contrasting sides of our music-making. On the first CD we perform our core repertoire of Italian and Swedish Baroque music, but Barokkbandið Brák also seeks to expand the repertoire for historical instruments by commissioning new works by up and coming Icelandic composers, and the second CD showcases new Icelandic music written specially for the ensemble. All of these works share the same sound world as all the music is performed on historical instruments from the baroque era Barokkbandið Brák was founded in 2015 by Icelandic violinists Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir, Guðbjörg Hlín Guðmundsdóttir and Laufey Jensdóttir. The ensemble mainly consists of Icelandic musicians who all share a passion for historically informed performance of Renaissance and Baroque music and seek to bring the music from this period to a wide audience in Iceland and abroad. Since its founding the group has held numerous concerts in Iceland with great success. Most of Brák's performances have been recorded and broadcasted by the Icelandic National Radio (RÚV). Brák has been regularly nominated for the yearly Icelandic Music Awards, and in 2020 won the award for 'Concert of the Year'. Barokkbandið Brák constantly seeks new concepts and frequently collaborates with renowned singers, dancers and instrumentalists from all over Europe to expand the range of possibilities.

Hugi Gudmundsson: Windbells
Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra
Sono Luminus DSL-92259 (1 Blu-ray Audio and 1 CD)
Release: 4 November 2022
The title piece, Equilibrium IV: Windbells, was the seed this whole album grew from. It was premièred under rather unusual circumstances at the 2005 World Expo in Japan in a venue that more closely resembled a stadium than a concert stage for classical music. I was an integral part of the performance due to the interactive electronics in the piece. We had practiced that I would maintain eye contact with the musicians during performances, just a few meters from the stage. However, the mixer I was operating at the concert was housed in something that resembled an air traffic control tower some 100 meters away from the stage. Or at least it felt that way. From my perspective, the musicians were like tiny ants in one corner of the enormous stage and they could not see me at all. Despite these outlandish circumstances, we somehow managed to perform the piece. It has since become one of my most performed chamber pieces and has received several awards and recognitions. It has never been recorded in a studio up until now. So, after a recent performance with Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, where it received very warm reviews, we decid- ed it was time to do something about it. That snowballed into what is now this album.

Artur Schnabel: Complete Vocal Works
Sara Couden, contralto; Jenny Lin, piano
Steinway & Sons STNS30208
Release: 4 November 2022
Pianist Jenny Lin is joined by contralto Sara Couden on this album of Artur Schnabel's Complete Vocal Music, a follow up to her 2019 release, Schnabel's Complete Piano Works for Solo Piano.

Joachim Raff: Piano Four-Hands Sonatas
Solveig Wikman, Bertil Wikman
Sterling Records CDA1850
Release: 4 November 2022
It was common practice in the nineteenth century for major orchestral and chamber works to be made available in piano four-hand reductions, as concert and recital-going was still a novelty and many middle-class homes had a piano, and these editions made such large works accessible to a much wider piano-playing public. What was less common was that Raff prepared his own piano four-hand arrangements, as often this time-consuming task was farmed out by composers and publishers to separate arrangers. However, Raff was also a skilled arranger himself. In addition to the original works mentioned above, he wrote a further eight works for piano four-hands which were either early pieces based on the melodies of other composers or more straightforward arrangements and transcriptions of the works of others, made at the request of publishers. The Piano Four-Hands Sonata in E minor Op. 73b was arranged from the Violin Sonata No. 1, probably early in 1854 shortly after Raff finished work on the Sonata itself, but was not published by Schuberth until 1867, eight years after the original work, which had become the most successful of his five violin sonatas. The second work in the series, the Piano Four-Hands Sonata in A major Op. 90b, is an arrangement of the String Quartet No. 2, and was probably made immediately after Raff finished the Quartet in May 1857. The Quartet was published in 1862, but the Sonata remained in manuscript during Raff's lifetime. Publication never took place however, possibly because his death in June the next year intervened, and so it was not until the composer's bicentenary year that Edition Nordstern published a first edition in 2022.

Paul Carr: I Offer You Love
Paul Turner, Sam Hanson, Chris Avison, Chorus Angelorum / Gavin Carr
Stone Records 5060192781205
Release: 4 November 2022
This album is a collection of short works for choir by English composer Paul Carr, many of which were composed during the Coronavirus Lockdowns. Some were composed as gifts for friends that have played an important role in his life as a composer, some were just composed because he felt the need. The title of the album, 'I Offer You Love', comes from Mahatma Gandhi's popular Prayer for Peace which he wrote for Dallas Chamber Choir, and is an apt title setting the mood of the disc as a whole. This is quiet music of love and reflection - music for the soul.

Paul Carr: Four New Seasons & Saxophone Concerto
Rob Burton, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Chorus / Gavin Carr
Stone Records 5060192781212
Release: 4 November 2022
English composer Paul Carr has been inspired by Vivaldi's iconic Concertos for Violin, The Four Seasons, since he studied it as a schoolboy, and has loved it ever since. There have been many incarnations of this work in various forms, but few using the original Vivaldi as a basis for a choral work. Having thought about a choral setting for many years, he finally took the plunge, taking twelve poems that suited the varying moods of the original Vivaldi (each Season being made up of three movements) and composed a set of Four New Seasons using Vivaldi's original harmonic structure as a basis, and including some of his more recognisable thematic material within the orchestration. It's an homage to Vivaldi, but it also sits very within Paul's own soundworld. The Saxophone Concerto was originally written as an Oboe Concerto for Nicholas Daniel, which he both premiered and recorded. It was his suggestion that Paul might also remodel it for Soprano Saxophone for the brilliant young saxophonist, Rob Burton. It was originally composed on the island of Mallorca where he was living at the time. It is an expressive and lyrical work full of warmth and optimism, but with an emotionally powerful slow movement at its core, 'The unusual quietness of snow', an expression of love and deepest loss, as a late snow fell silently in the last few days of Winter.

Vincenzo & Michelangelo Galilei: Music for Lute
Christian Zimmermann
Tactus TC520004
Release: 4 November 2022
The German musician Christian Zimmermann, on two historical copies of Renaissance instruments, is delivering to us this interesting anthology dedicated to the lute works by the Galilei family: Vincenzo and Michelangelo, respectively father and brother of the famous Galileo. Vincenzo, also harpsichordist, gamba violist and theorist, introduced both his sons to the art of music and, although we have news that Galileo himself was an excellent lutist, no traces of his compositions remains, while his father and brother were authors of various collections printed from 1563 to 1620. Michelangelo even became lutist at the court of Maximilian i, elector and duke of Munich. The music proposed by Zimmermann consists of a varied overview of the musical forms dedicated to the lute in the Renaissance era: fantasias, ricercars, galiardes, counterpoints, currents, saltarelli, toccatas, in addition to the inevitable 'aria di ruggiero', the famous instrumental bass coming from the lyrics of the Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto.

Tomaso Pegolotti: Trattenimenti armonici da camera
Opera Qvinta
Tactus TC661604
Release: 4 November 2022
This album is dedicated to Tomaso Pegolotti, a character who held the double role of notary public and musician in the land of the Estense dukedom between Modena and Reggio Emilia. In fact, his father Livio initiated him into both the study of music and law and thanks to his commitment and his talent, Tomaso had a brilliant career in both professions. The collection of the Trattenimenti armonici da camera [...] opera prima, dedicated to Prince Foresto d'Este in 1698, contains his entire instrumental production, as the planned second work was finally never terminated due to Pegolotti's involvement in some unexpected political clash also connected to one of his judicial publications. The collection consists of twelve sonatas from which can be deduced that the author possessed considerable technical skills on the violin. The Opera Quinta ensemble led by Fabrizio Longo (former protagonist of other important productions by Tactus: TC 630201, TC 670290 and TC 621602) is a solid reference in the musical practice of early and Baroque music.

Raffaele Calace: Complete guitar works
Roberto Guarnieri
Tactus TC860303
Release: 4 November 2022
In Raffaele Calace's considerable musical production – approximately 200 opus numbers – 9 pieces are for solo guitar, obviously not including his single composition for Hawaiian guitar, Piccolo fiore op. 168. This statistical datum takes on a greater importance if we consider that Calace's other solo pieces were all for the two main instruments to which he devoted his existence, the mandolin and the cantabile lute: for these instruments he composed respectively 30 and 26 works, in addition to his handbooks, which are a fundamental point of reference for the modern teaching of these instruments. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to consider this production unworthy of interest: it shows us the taste and charm of a period, and offers us compositions that are refined and far from commonplace. These pieces convey the emotions and intimacy of the romanticism that could be felt in drawing-room music, during the so-called 'periodiche', the musical gatherings in the Neapolitan middle-class homes. The young guitarist Roberto Guarnieri plays Calace's music on a precious 1936 'Mozzani' guitar part of the collection of the Modenese luthier Lorenzo Frignani.

George Frideric Handel: Ballo per Orchestra
Capriccio Barock Orchester; Dominik Kiefer, leader
Tudor TUD7197
Release: 4 November 2022
Some three hundred compositions by Handel such as Overtures, dances and short instrumental interludes titled Ritornello, Sinfonia or Sarabande are hardly ever perceived as a separate category, despite appearing in his most important compositions. Such observations provided the basis for this concept album. The predominant instruments of the first Suite are the horns, which originally play an important role in the Overture to Handel's great success Samson and the operas Giulio Cesare and Ariodante. In the second group, launched by the Overture to the early opera Teseo, various solo instruments are highlighted: horn, recorder and in particular the traverse flute. The last cycle focuses on the virtuoso trumpet.

Tudor Church Music – The Easter Liturgy of the Church of England
The London Ambrosian Singers / John McCarthy
Tudor TUD7210
Release: 4 November 2022
To be exact, we should include in the Tudor Church music only the period prior to 1549 and consider Robert Fayrfax (1464–1521) and Hugh Aston (died 1522) as the first Tudor composers. They were succeeded by a great master – John Taverner; only a small number of works with English texts in his hand are extant. Then came Thomas Tallis, who composed works for the reformed Church, but he left also compositions intended for the Catholic service. Peter Philips, another major figure, could not bring himself to accept the Reform and left England. William Byrd enjoyed such popularity that he was able to write music for the Catholic Church under the aegies of the liberal Elizabeth I without ever being bothered. With Orlando Gibbons the composers began to write more for the Church of England. Thomas Tomkins may be considered as the last of those com posers coming under the heading 'Tudor Church Music'.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giovanni Battista Martini, Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel: Piano Concertos
Yorck Kronenberg, piano; Capriccio Barock Orchester; Dominik Kiefer, leader
Tudor TUD7211
Release: 4 November 2022
These three piano concertos provide new insights: two discoveries from the classical era that alter our perspective on the seemingly familiar. Giovanni Battista Martini was a leading music theoretician of his time. His compositions caused a sensation. His many pupils included Johann Christian Bach. Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel sought musical instruction from him. His piano concerto is particularly remarkable for its song ful lyricism, whose expressiveness is far ahead of what was customary at the time. Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel worked as a court musician, and from 1802 directed the court music in Aschaffenburg. We know of contacts with Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. The piano concerto in D major is characterized by clear structure and instrumental virtuosity. The piano concerto in D minor K466 is one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's greatest works. Comparing it to the now almost forgotten concertos by Sterkel and Martini yields an added prespective: it is a psychological drama, in which we encounter Mozart's matchless genius.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Recomposed
Heinz Holliger, Sarah Wegener, Marcus Weiss, Ueli Wiget, WDR Sinfonieorchester
Wergo WER73872 (3 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970) was one of the most distinctive composers in the musical avant-garde after the Second World War. While Karlheinz Stockhausen served as a kind of 'generator' in Cologne during the 1950s and 60s, inventing completely new sounds and techniques, Zimmermann was in many ways his opposite, a 'transformer' who redefined previously existing material by placing it in new contexts and collage-like structures, anticipating the ideas of the Postmodernists. This new release from WERGO presents a fresh perspective onthe composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, whose tragic suicide shortly after the completion of 'Stille und Umkehr' shocked the musical world. His fascinating instrumental effects and his embrace of popular and traditional music make his works feel much more at home in our contemporary world than they did in the cultural atmosphere of his time, with its faith with technology and progress.

Nikolai Kapustin: New Memories
A Bu, piano
Wergo WER74052
Release: 4 November 2022
The Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (1937-2020), who died at the beginning of the pandemic-related cultural hiatus which has been unique with regard to world history, was able to experience considerable appreciation in his last two decades, which recently gained more and more momentum. Coming from the best Soviet aristocracy of piano teaching - Kapustin was a pupil of a pupil of Horowitz's teacher Blumenfeld and then studied with the great Alexander Goldenweiser until 1961 -, he was denied great recognition in the Soviet Union. As with many great piano composers since Chopin, the cycle of concert etudes from the middle of his life is particularly suitable for an introduction to this world of works. Kapustin's typical reference to jazz, which probably kept him from greater success in the Soviet years, is based on the highly individual, deliberate adaptation of stylistic elements. He got to know jazz greats such as Ellington, Basie, Cole, Garner, Peterson and others through records and the radio and picked out what suited him. The extremely sensitive, not monotonously hammering as is so often the case, approach of the Chinese pianist A Bu, who is also trained in jazz, is pleasing with regard to interpretation, and he demonstrates his affinity for Kapustin's music through two samples of his own work.

The Alexandra Palace Organ – Complete HMV Recordings
Walter G Alcock, George D Cunningham, Marcel Dupré, Herbert Ellingford, Reginald Goss-Custard, George Thalben-Ball
Willowhayne Records Musiqua MUSHOS0121 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
This release showcases the talent of some of the world's most brilliant organists from the first half of the 20th century. The Henry Willis organ of the Alexandra Palace was a masterpiece of organ building and HMV used it for the records on this release fresh from the 1929 rebuild in 1930/1. Marcel Dupré plays mainly the works of J.S. Bach. The legendary George D. Cunningham features the music of Elgar, Bach and Widor. There is more Bach, Karg-Elert and plenty of transcriptions performed by the other artists. For the first time, the original 78rpm records are presented here complete. Some are very rare and all have been painstakingly restored using state-of-the-art digital equipment. Every effort has been made not to 'over-cook' the processing so that the sound retains treble and sparkle, so you can hear the voicing of the organ and the Palace's 'then' unique acoustic clarity. Music by Edward MacDowell, Montague Phillips, Charles-Marie Widor, Johann Sebastian Bach, Trinoe, H A Wheeldon, Camille Saint-Saëns, John Ireland, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Richard Wagner, Edward Elgar, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, César Franck and Jean Sibelius.

Nickos Harizanos: The Storyteller
Carla Rees, Wilfrido Terrazas, Natalia Pérez Turner
Willowhayne Records Phasma Music PHASMA-MUSIC050
Release: 4 November 2022
The exceptional album The Storyteller includes premiere recordings of works by the distinguished Greek composer Nickos Harizanos. 'The album consists of works written for my favourite instrument Αυλός (Avlos) / Flute (Baroque Flute, Concert Flute, Alto and Bass Flute) which have been composed within a period of twelve years. All these years I have had the privilege and happiness to work with the great soloists and friends Carla, Wilfrido and Natalia who performed and premiered these works. Some of the works are dedicated to them and have been published by Tetractys and Musica Ferrum Editions in London. Some of them are very demanding and virtuosic; some others explore new sound worlds, such as Onwards to Primitiveness (for Baroque Flute and Tape) while in other works there are passages using microtonal pitches and extended techniques. The piece Voices in the air is originally written for Great bass recorder, dedicated, and premiered by Sylvia Hinz. The compositions have been performed in the UK, Mexico, Germany and Greece and have been recorded in London and Athens (Studio of CMRC/ΚΣΥΜΕ).' - © Nickos Harizanos

Koben Sprengers: Meditations for String Quartet
Koben Sprengers, Ma'at Ensemble
Yarlung Records YAR84154 (2 CDs)
Release: 4 November 2022
Marcus Aurelius, warrior emperor, philosopher and poet during the Second Century AD, reminds us that people with enormous power do not always fall victim to their own vanity. Total power may usually corrupt totally, but not always. I find this heartening, especially in 2022 during another time of war, where titanic egos guiding powerful militaries battle each other with real life consequences for ordinary people and elites alike. Aurelius was indeed a bloodily victorious commander of Roman legions, defeating numerous enemies on the battle field during his reign. But the emperor continued his introspective journey throughout most of his life, honing his 'inner world,' to use a modern phrase, as he tried to maintain a balance between being the most powerful person on the planet and a man answerable to his own conscience and higher philosophy. Brussels-based classical, jazz and new-age composer Koben Sprengers notes that Aurelius' 'Meditations', as they are popularly known, were written not for publication but 'for himself, as a sort of diary or personal notebook; to frequently remind himself of the important lessons and wisdom he had learned from the ancient philosophers. Since his writings were aimed at himself, I found that these paragraphs had a very intimate, familiar voice to them. Like a grandfather patiently explaining something to his overly curious grandchild, almost soothing….' I hope Marcus Aurelius' stable intelligent voice and vision, as portrayed in his own words and through music composed by the young firebrand Koben Sprengers, gives you solace and inspiration during this remarkable and troubling period of history. - Bob Attiyeh, producer

Martin Stock, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Magic Flute (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 4 November 2022
The Magic Flute has never been seen and heard quite like this – a reinvention of Mozart's famous opera as a captivating visionary fantasy adventure to fascinate and thrill the audience, by Executive Producer Roland Emmerich. The soundtrack is an invigorating juxtaposition of Mozart's arias and the complementary orchestral score by German composer Martin Stock, a former student of Ennio Morricone.

Akira Kosemura: A Mother's Touch (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
UMG Japan/Decca (digital only)
Release: 4 November 2022
Akira Kosemura's soundtrack to the new film, A Mother's Touch, is based on the true story of a mother and son - who became the world's first deafblind university professor, Satoshi Fukushima. The film portrays the journey of a blind boy and his mother, who devotes her life to giving him hope, even when he begins to also lose his hearing.

The Quarantine at the Core of our Hearts
Chris Chafe, Constantin Basica, Henrik von Coler, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, Juan Parra, Klaus Scheuermann, Nolan Miranda
Ravello Records  RR8078 (digital only)
Release: 4 November 2022
Cultural pessimists might argue that we've never lived in an age as isolated and atomized as this one, and a certain recent pandemic certainly didn't help. Cultural optimists on the other hand might quote German poet Hölderlin: 'But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.' Whatever the truth may be, the collective minds behind The Quarantine at the Core of our Hearts elegantly disregarded rumination, and instead chose to act. At a time when government regulations prohibited concerts and rehearsals, these six international aficionados of electroacoustic composition decided that now was a good time to harness the powers of modern technology, and to get together for a virtual jam session. The result is an hour-long cerebral meditation on forced isolation – and its eventual overcoming.

Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836)
31 études from the Cours complet pour l'enseignement du fortepiano
Clare Hammond, piano
BIS Records BIS 2603
Release: 4 November 2022
Clare Hammond releases her sixth disc for BIS Records with études by visionary composer Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836). Eight years younger than Mozart, Montgeroult pioneered a Romantic style that was decades ahead of her time. She was renowned as one of the greatest improvisers in Europe and has been described as 'the missing link between Mozart and Chopin'. Neglected because of her gender, it is only recently that her music has been revived. Born into an aristocratic family, Montgeroult fled France during the Revolution and was involved with exiled political factions in the UK. On her return, she joined a diplomatic envoy to Naples, to be abducted by Austrian soldiers en route and imprisoned. She regained her freedom, but was then put on trial by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. Montgeroult only managed to avoid execution by improvising a set of variations on the Marseillaise that moved the judges to tears. Montgeroult wrote these études between 1788 and 1812, initially for her pupil Johann Baptist Cramer. Remarkably, they anticipate stylistic advances we associate more closely with the music of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and even Brahms. One of the first composers to appreciate the artistic potential of the étude, Montgeroult paved the way for the proliferation of concert études by the Romantic generation. Clare says 'when I first encountered these études I was astounded. Not only are they of similar quality to music by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann, they are stylistically so advanced as to call into question where the 'classical' and 'romantic' periods fall. I could not believe that she had written such superb and prescient music and yet I had never heard of her.'

Mozart: Duos for Violin and Viola, K 423-424; Pleyel: Three Grand Duets for Violin and Viola Op 69 No 1, 2 and 3
Claudio Cruz, Emmanuele Baldini
Azul Music AMDA1781
Release: 4 November 2022
Two of the greatest artists of the Brazilian classical music scene, in prodigious interpretations of pieces written for violin and viola.

Poulenc: Orchestral Works
BBC Concert Orchestra / Bramwell Tovey
Chandos Records
Release: 4 November 2022
Bramwell Tovey and the BBC Concert Orchestra revel in the charm, wit, and humour of some of Poulenc's finest orchestral pieces. Sadly, this proved to be Bramwell Tovey's final recording, and the album is dedicated to his memory.

Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 arranged for two pianos
Simon Callaghan and Hiroaki Takenouchi
Nimbus Records NI8110
Release: 4 November 2022
'There is a tradition of composers arranging their own music for two pianos  (Rachmaninoff did a lot), however he seems not to have arranged this particular Symphony Op 27 for two pianos! As it's such great music, we decided to do it ourselves.' - Hiro Takenouchi and Simon Callaghan

Schumann: Symphonies Nos 1-4
Staatskapelle Berlin / Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 4 November 2022
A couple of years after Daniel Barenboim's successful complete Brahms Symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin, he now presents a live recording of the four Schumann Symphonies with this orchestra recorded live in concerts in Berlin's world-famous Philharmonie and in the Staatsoper. The 2-CD and Blu-ray audio set is the only new release from Barenboim around his 80th birthday.

BACH: The Art of Life (Deluxe Edition)
Daniil Trifonov
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 4 November 2022
Daniil Trifonov's latest album, BACH: The Art of Life, explores the scientific, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of Johann Sebastian Bach's cosmos. This Deluxe Edition includes the 2-CD BACH: The Art of Life plus an exclusive Blu-ray recorded live at the legendary Berlin Philharmonie recital in October 2021.

Claude Debussy: La Mer, Première Suite d'Orchestre
Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth
harmonia mundi HMM905369
Release: 4 November 2022
La Mer is one of Debussy's most universally admired orchestral works. By contrast, his Première Suite pour orchestre was lost for more than a century, and came as a complete discovery in 2013 when Les Siècles made the world premiere recording, played on instruments of the period. Now here is a brand-new remastering.

Haydn: Piano Works Volumes 1 & 2
Peter Donohoe
Signum Records SIGCD726
Release: 4 November 2022
Since his success as joint winner of the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Peter Donohoe has gained international renown as one of the foremost pianists of our time. His musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique have won widespread critical acclaim.

Walton: String Quartet in A minor and Shostakovich: String Quartet No 3 in F, Op 73
Albion Quartet
Signum Records SIGCD727
Release: 4 November 2022
The concept of this album is to juxtapose two string quartets written in the same year in the immediate aftermath of war (1946) by composers inhabiting two entirely different social and political worlds: Walton in Britain and Shostakovich in the Soviet Union. Formed in 2016, the Albion Quartet comprises four of the UK's best young string players. Recent engagements include performances at the Louvre, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Hay Festival in the UK.

Dashing Vol 3 - Even more sounds of the season
Navona Records NV6472 (digital only)
Release: 4 November 2022
Navona Records presents Dashing Vol 3, a festive assortment of new works inspired by the signature sounds and staples of the holiday season. Comprising stories, nods to classic holiday tunes, and an underlying current of wistful nostalgia, this installment of the DASHING series keeps the spirit of holiday music alive with new compositions and arrangements of well-known favorites. Brought to life by a number of orchestras, chamber ensembles, and choirs, the works of new and returning composers to the series are sure to ignite the charm and congeniality of the holiday season, highlighting the many facets that the bright break of winter can bring. Includes music by John Wineglass, Carol Barnett, Richard E Brown, Gavin Brown, Christopher J Hoh, L Peter Deutsch and Heather Niemi Savage.

Fusion - Contemporary Music for Piano Duo
John Adams, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, Fang Man, John Fitz Rogers
Lomazov-Rackers Piano Duo - Marina Lomazov and Joseph Rackers
MSR Classics MS1804
Release: 4 November 2022
In selecting works for this album, we were guided by the idea that writing for two pianos provides composers with a special freedom to create textures and colors that go beyond the capacity of one instrument to evoke. The title of the album, Fusion, reflects the uniqueness of what is possible in the two-piano format, specifically the layering of voices that is prevalent in most of the music featured here. The repertoire also represents the wide range of styles in modern piano music during the past half-century; from the virtuosity of John Adams' work within repetitive patterns and Fang Man's use of Chinese modes and influence of Peking Opera, to the dialogue in the John Corigliano and John Fitz Rogers works, as well as the intensity of rhythm and range in Bolcom's Serpent's Kiss.

It's About Time - Music for Wind Ensemble and Jazz Soloists
Mildred J Hill, Guillermo Klein, Greg McLean, Dave Rivello, James Stephenson, New England Conservatory Symphonic Winds / William Drury
MSR Jazz MS1801
Release: 4 November 2022

 

28 OCTOBER 2022

Barry Schrader: Lost Analog
Bandcamp
Release: 28 October 2022
Barry Schrader's classic Buchla 200 synthesizer works from the 1970s and 1980s are released for the first time.  This album of definitive works of West Coast electronic music serve as a companion collection to Schrader's famous 'Lost Atlantis' album, widely regarded as a benchmark  for classical electronic music works.  The 'Lost Analog' album contains music from the film 'Death of the Red Planet', the complete versions of 'Bestiary'  and 'Classical Studies', and an electronic suite from 'Moon-Whales and Other Moon-Songs.'

Jesse Passenier: Fight for Light - Works for piano, mallets and orchestra
Kari Ikonen, piano; Vincent Houdijk, vibraphone, marimba; ADDA Simfònica / Josep Vicent
Navona Records NV6459
Release: 28 October 2022
On Fight for Light, Dutch composer Jesse Passenier explores the peripheries of jazz and classical, marrying the two genres together through symphonic music. The music presents a struggle for strength, goodness, and clarity, in which moments for great energy and urgency give way to quiet purity. Containing three works by Passenier: Piano Concerto No. 1 'Levensdrift' (a Dutch word meaning 'the primal urge to live'); Vibraphone & Marimba Concerto No. 1 'Becoming the Colour'; and Duo for Vibraphone & Piano 'Unraveling Confusion,' these pieces taken together as a whole reveal Passenier's breadth as a composer, offering a musical commentary on the realities we face in today's society.

Eclectic Sounds - L.V. Beethoven, Béla Bartók, Pantcho Vladigerov, Alexander Vladigerov
Alexander Tchobanov, piano
Navona Records NV6460
Release: 28 October 2022
What do Beethoven, Bartók and Bulgaria's national composer Vladigerov have in common? This is the question posed by Bulgarian pianist Alexander Tchobanov on his new album Eclectic Sounds – and what appears to be a harmless question soon turns into a mighty quest. Contrasting Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 30, a selection of beloved works by Bartók as well as two pieces composed by a Vladigerov – one by the father, one by his son -, the answer is quickly elucidated: the common denominator between these works is their inner drive, their lucidity, their monumental precision. Performed with an ambitious blend of vigor and exactitude, Tchobanov unveils their inner workings with previously-unheard, razor-sharp clarity.

Faces in the Mist - Choral music by Richard Peat
The Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge; The Girl Choristers of Ely Cathedral / Sarah MacDonald
Regent Records REGCD554
Release: 28 October 2022
This is the first recording dedicated to the choral works of Richard Peat, with a varied collection of sacred and secular pieces written during the last twenty years. Richard has a highly developed facility in composition and a unique voice. He has successfully submitted works to the John Armitage Memorial's anonymous annual Call for Music six times, many of which can be heard on this recording. This makes him the most performed composer in over twenty years of the Call for Music. Richard Peat's first publicly performed work, Tenebrae, was premièred by the Britten Sinfonia at the Sounds New festival in 1997 while he was still at school. In 2008 Richard studied with Peter Maxwell Davies on the Advanced Composition course at the Dartington International Summer School; he was selected again in 2021 to study with Nico Muhly. His music has been performed all over the world and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He has received awards from the John Armitage Memorial, Oxford festival of the Arts, the Isolda Composition Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, London New Wind Festival and Glasgow University.

Caleb Vaughn-Jones: Two Worlds Called Home
Caleb Vaughn-Jones, cello; Hsin-I Huang, piano; Bokani Dyer, piano
Ravello Records RR8071
Release: 28 October 2022
Two Worlds Called Home is inspired by composer Caleb Vaughn-Jones's nine-year journey as an American living abroad in South Africa. In 2011, Vaughn-Jones was a gifted cellist from Baltimore who felt a calling toward the unknown. He abandoned the traditional path of an American musician building a career and instead moved to Port Elizabeth, South Africa to teach music. In this album, Vaughn-Jones employs his skill as a cellist to express the joys and sacrifices he encountered on this incredible adventure. Ava's Lullaby, for example, was written for his daughter when pandemic restrictions kept him from returning to the United States. Lakutshon' ilanga (The Sun Never Sets), on the other hand, is an isiXhosa song written by Mackay Davashe during the Apartheid era that describes the endless search for a lost love. Joined by pianist Hsin-I Huang, Vaughn-Jones invites listeners on an unforgettable journey.

Thomas Quasthoff in Verbier (Volume 1)
Deutsche Grammophon (digital only)
Release: 28 October 2022
From the instant that Thomas Quasthoff began his first Verbier Festival performance in 2003, the incomparable bass-baritone knew that he had arrived at his musical home. Nearly twenty years later, this sublime debut - an assortment of orchestrated Schubert lieder - opens a release that highlights Quasthoff's incredible musicality against backdrops of instrumental accompaniment. Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), followed by J.S. Bach's Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen round out this highly-anticipated offering from Verbier Festival Gold.

Abel Korzeniowski: Till (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Mercury Soundtracks
Release: 28 October 2022
Till is an upcoming American biographical drama film telling the real-life story of Mamie Till-Mobley, an American educator and activist who pursued justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, in 1955. The film is directed by Chinonye Chukwu and stars Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, and Whoopi Goldberg. Till will be showing in select theaters on October 14th and everywhere on 28 October.

Lakota Music Project
South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO) and musicians from the Oglala Sioux and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribes
Innova Recordings
Release: 28 October 2022
The Lakota Music Project, a collaboration between South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO) and musicians from the Oglala Sioux and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribes, will release its first recording, the self-titled Lakota Music Project on innova Recordings. Years in the making, this groundbreaking collaboration melds two musical worlds: Native American music including intergenerational traditional songs and ceremonial works, and the tradition of American compositions born out of the European classical canon. Recorded on October 20–25, 2021 in the Mary W Sommervold Concert Hall of the Washington Pavilion, Lakota Music Project includes four commissioned works that create Lakota Music Project's core repertoire–Black Hills Olowan (Brent Michael Davids), Wind on Clear Lake (Jeffrey Paul II), Waktégli Olówaŋ (Victory Songs) for Solo Baritone and Orchestra (Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate), and Desert Wind (Jeffrey Paul II)–and one new arrangement of the traditional hymn Amazing Grace (Theodore Wiprud). Addressing ongoing racial tension in South Dakota and histories of oppression and erasure against Native Americans across the United States, the Lakota Music Project strives for reconciliation and imagines a new future for all people, one that is egalitarian, open, and authentic. Upon accepting his position at SDSO in 2004, Music Director Delta David Gier recalls, 'I came to South Dakota with a conviction that an orchestra should serve its unique community uniquely.' For Gier, this meant meeting with tribal elders and community members, hearing about the history of his new home, and learning about the communities, traditions, and tensions between Native Americans and whites within South Dakota. 'Early on, we learned this lesson that we needed to give up control of how we've always done things, and that is how we slowly built the impactful programming that has led us to where we are today.' First created between 2005 and 2008 through a collaboration between the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and leaders of the Lakota community, the first Lakota Music Project concerts in 2009 included the SDSO and the New Porcupine Singers (a renowned Lakota drumming group) performing songs from each culture based on archetypal themes of love, war, grief and celebration in six of South Dakota's nine reservations. This inaugural concert tour was successful, according to Gier, 'because of all the relationships that we had already established across the state. This wasn't just an outreach program, but true engagement developed over time through intercultural cooperation and sharing our stories and songs with each other.' Emmanuel Black Bear is the Keeper of the Drum for the Creekside Singers, featured in this recording. About the Lakota Music Project, Black Bear says, 'Every culture has music. If we can fuse our music together, we can be human together. I've been doing the Lakota Music Project for all of these years because I want to lessen racism and prejudice for my children and grandchildren.'

27 OCTOBER 2022

Nick Revel: Dream Collider
Sapphire Records Sapphire_NR_DC
Release: 27 October 2022
Following his debut album, Letters to My Future Self, Revel releases his new genre-bending collection of works, self-composed, performed, produced and engineered.  Viola player and composer Nick Revel, a founding member of the PUBLIQuartet, releases his second album. With styles leaning heavily on both pop-inspired electronic music and ambient-style film music, Revel leads the listener on a journey that questions the traditional sound of the viola. Revel describes his process of writing, producing, and creating this album during the pandemic, 'Born of my own emotional darkness and a yearning for joy during the height of the pandemic, this album provides a sonic fantasy of new worlds, a reprieve from suffering, and visions of realities beyond what is currently possible on Earth'. Dream Collider is comprised of 13 tracks, many of which accompanied by music videos that provide more context for Revel's experimental sounds including, Launch Pad, Contact, and USE HEADPHONES, an ASMR-inspired meta-creation for the Founders ensemble. His piece, The Fear, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in 2019 for young musicians of all playing levels. Many of the tracks featured are also high-profile competition-winning pieces, including Time Capsule, winner of the Catalyst Quartet's 2021 CQ Minute Emerging Composer's Competition and his FlyTrap was recently the winner of fivebyfive ensemble's 2020 call for scores. Additionally, Revel's piece Father and Daughter, a re-scoring of Michael Dudok de Wit's 2000 animated film, won the 2021 Red Jasper Competition shortlist.

 

21 OCTOBER 2022

The Future is Female Vol 2 The Dance
Sarah Cahill, piano
First Hand Records
Release: 21 October 2022
Cahill, who is described as 'a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde' by The New York Times, has embraced both new music and that of underrepresented and lesser known composers. Since 2018, the 'keen and captivating pianist' (Washington Post) has worked to explore, learn, and perform the music of dozens of women composers, including women composers of color, through her project, The Future is Female.  Embodied through flexible live performances at venues that include London's Barbican Conservatory and events like Newport Classical Music Festival, as well as a trilogy of studio recordings that began with The Future is Female Vol. 1 'In Nature' (released on First Hand Records in March 2022), The Future is Female has come to include more than 70 compositions that span centuries and highlight a variety of cultures. Through The Future is Female Vol. 2 The Dance, Cahill showcases the awe-inspiring range of artistry through her own refined musicality, in another collection of music by women whose work spans from the Baroque through to the present day.

David Eagle: As Mountain Winds
Aventa Ensemble; Land's End Ensemble; Turning Point Ensemble
CMC Centrediscs CMCCD 30722
Release: 21 October 2022
This recording focuses on a series of compositions from 2010 to 2020 by David Eagle, blending instruments and voice with live electroacoustic transformation. Three prominent new music ensembles of western Canada are featured: Aventa Ensemble of Victoria, Land's End Ensemble of Calgary, and Turning Point Ensemble of Vancouver with soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen. David Eagle composes chamber, orchestral, and electroacoustic music, and explores computer applications in composition and sonic arts. Also active as an interpreter of interactive works, he has developed various approaches focusing on sonic transformation through gesture. His music is performed across Canada and internationally.

Momentum
Miriam K Smith, cello; Sandra Wright Shen, piano
Azica Records
Release: 21 October 2022
American cello prodigy Miriam K Smith, praised for her 'polished, accurate playing' (American Record Guide), today releases her second commercial album, Momentum, on Azica Records. In collaboration with pianist and Steinway artist Sandra Wright Shen, the album features Prokofiev's Cello Sonata in C Major, Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, and Boulanger's Trois Pièces pour violoncelle et piano. Smith performs on an Italian cello by an unknown maker from the 18th century, graciously loaned by an anonymous donor and currently being investigated to determine its exact origin. Smith says, 'When a wave begins, it gathers momentum, so with this collection of music I see a gathering of energy into our modern era. I perceive this momentum in each of these composers' works propelling the arts forward in their time… And so, we continue today in the wave of momentum which began long ago.' The album opens with Prokofiev's Cello Sonata, written in 1949, only a few years after WWII. Smith shares, 'The sonata showcases the emotions that were felt after the war and the suspense of the years that will follow. Just a year before Prokofiev wrote this sonata, much of his music was banned by the Soviet government, but despite these troubling circumstances, he managed to compose a beautiful sonata filled with joyous and cheerful melodies.' Of Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, Smith explains, 'From my years of ballet training, I often approach a piece of music with dance in mind. Because Suite Italienne is a cello and piano version of the ballet Pulcinella, created by Stravinsky and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, it felt very natural… To me, each movement brings a different character with a different mood, and the finale brings all the characters together for a hymn-like opening and one last vivacious dance.' Originally composed for organ, Nadia Boulanger's Trois Pièces shares part of the brilliant composer's small but substantial oeuvre. Smith explains, 'It is bittersweet for me because Ms. Boulanger's compositional body of work is too small. Instead, she gave her life's work to teaching and thus her impact is much greater as she influenced so many composers and musicians… As I was considering the composers for this album, I found an interesting connection between them all. They all spent time in Paris. Boulanger was a Parisienne, but she was also a great supporter of Stravinsky. Prokofiev and Stravinsky both spent time outside Russia to escape the persecution of the regime. Prokofiev did return to his native land but it was a trying time for him under the Soviet government while Stravinsky remained in the United States following his time in France until his death.'

 

20 OCTOBER 2022

Avant-Garde Organ
Cláudio de Pina, organ
9Musas
Available: 20 October 2022
Features organ works of Ligeti, Cage, Kagel and La Monte Young never done before on a 230-year-old Portuguese historical organ. There are also improvisations and soundscapes made with extended techniques developed specially for this instrument.

 

14 OCTOBER 2022

Monica Pearce: Textile Fantasies
CMC Centrediscs CMCCD 30322
Release: 14 October 2022
While the lore around music tends to say that it tells a story, or that it exists as some sort of universal language, the truth of the matter is that music is a slippery artform and it's tough to find suitable metaphor for it, especially the more abstract it gets. The debut full-length from Brownsville, Texas-based Canadian composer Monica Pearce unveils a series of pieces united by a rare instance of such a metaphor. Textile Fantasies is a cycle of chamber works, for keyboard and percussion instruments, each of which is inspired by the particular texture of a specific fabric or pattern. In the these pieces, the connections to the subject matter in question can often be found close to the music's surface. However what really gives these relationships their depth and power is how they cross the boundaries of multiple senses, joining touch, sight, and sound.  The opening work, toile de jouy-winner of the Canadian Music Centre's Harry Freedman award-serves as a detailed illustration of just how her subject matter complements the music without encroaching or imposing an external narrative structure. Its titular fabric is an 18th-century decorative printed textile requiring considerable technical sophistication to reproduce its intricate (often pastoral) scenery. Pearce's work's dense (but frequently luminous) harpsichord writing is indeed quite demanding and florid. Interpreted by gifted keyboardist Wesley Shen, the work makes expert use of register and the distinctive tones the instrument provides. Meanwhile harpsichord's mechanical nature, and associations with 18th-century music make it an ideal medium to describe toile as a well. In the case of solo piano work houndstooth, the title seems to cheekily reference the black and white of the keyboard, while also alluding to the monochromaticism of its sound. The piece begins ambiguously, accenting its elusive phrases with wide-open spaces, but as the work (rendered here by its commissioner, veteran contemporary music pianist Barbara Pritchard) progresses, it increases in density, complexity and tension. Meanwhile, silks - performed by Cheryl Duvall - offers a contrasting vantage on solo piano writing, a rich, sensuous universe hovering between Feldmanesque expanses, and Scriabin's wild, eccentric romanticism.  The suite's ensemble works showcase Pearce's brilliant sense of orchestration. She coaxes textures from her instrumentation that are so vivid and so thoroughly unexpected that they resonate in the mind's ear long after the piece has finished. On the fittingly metallic percussion quartet chain maille (played by TORQ Percussion), it's her glistening quasi-unison passages, while on closing piece denim (featuring two toy pianos flanked by double percussion) she announces the work with bewildering  microtonal clatter. Over the course of Textile Fantasies' 70-minute duration, Pearce makes potent, quasi-synaesthetic connections between her inventive fine-spun textures and the specific material and tactile traits of the eight textiles, but those are not the only intriguing relationships she posits. She places propulsive virtuosity in conversation with a painterly approach to timbre and juxtaposes driving rhythm with textural abstraction, all the while weaving in refined melodic contours.

The Gift of the Magi - A Chamber Opera in 1 Act
Music: Richard E Brown; Libretto: Nancy Grobe
Bree Nichols, soprano; Pavol Kubáň, baritone; Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava / Jiří Petrdlík
Navona Records. NV6455
Release: 14 October 2022
Composer Richard E Brown and Navona Records present The Gift of the Magi, a chamber opera in one act that tells the beloved story - first published by O Henry in 1905 - of a young married couple who, despite being very poor, sacrifice their most cherished possessions to demonstrate their love for one another. This chamber opera adds even greater breadth to the composer's output, which has also included works for concert band and orchestra, instrumental solos and ensembles, church music, piano solos, and scores for ballet, opera, and musical theater. The virtuosic performances heard on The Gift of the Magi lend a moving emotional dimension to this heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of love and sacrifice.

Michael Kurek: Symphony No 2; Tales from the Realm of Faerie; and other works
European Recording Orchestra
Navona Records NV6458
Release: 14 October 2022
Navona Records presents Michael Kurek's SYMPHONY NO. 2: TALES FROM THE REALM OF FAERIE, a rich musical tapestry intertwining the colors and characteristics of many fantastical worlds the composer has entered and loved. Performed by the European Recording Orchestra, a certain spirit of unspoiled beauty, innocence, nobility, hope, and heroic goodness stretches across four movements, each giving the listener creative control of the worlds they conjure. With a well-balanced lineage of traditional compositional techniques running throughout his symphony and other works for choir to follow, Kurek presents a dynamic assortment of work that keeps the spirit and heritage of classical music alive.

David R Peoples: The Bleak Night
Ravello Records RR8073
Release: 14 October 2022
Deeply immersive electronic soundscapes and haunting harmonies stir the senses in The Bleak Night from composer David Peoples. Featuring percussion, synthesizer, electronics, and electrophonic orchestra with narration and the manipulation thereof, Peoples captivates the ear and mind with suspenseful ostinatos that melt into entrancing waves of sound. A soothing beginning dissolves into hair raising junctures in Rock Me to Sleep, subtle grooves emerge amidst an ethereal atmosphere in Shinytastic, and tensions build to a boiling point before gently floating back down in The Bleak Night.

(Re)Creation - Russian Piano Sonatas - Scriabin, Medtner and Rachmaninov
Marko Stuparević, piano
Navona Records NV6423
Release: 14 October 2022
(Re)Creation from Navona Records and pianist Marko Stuparević is centered on the acts of creation and re-creation, observed through three piano sonatas of three Russian composers: all pianists, contemporaries, and representatives of some of the most notable works of 20th century Russian piano music. Performed by the award-winning pianist, each sonata is rich with advanced compositional techniques and the individual ideologies of their composers, crafted with cyclical forms representing the circle of life. The works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner are on full display, born and immortalized into the never-ending life cycle they mirror.

Breakthrough
Jâca: Wesley Ferreira, clarinet; Jaxon Williams guitar
Navona Records NV6457
Release: 14 October 2022
The repertoire for clarinet and guitar has traditionally been very limited. Or at least it was, until creative clarinet-guitar duo Jâca entered the stage. Comprised of Canadian clarinetist Wesley Ferreira and American guitarist Jaxon Williams, this spirited duo explores and expands the vast potential of this rare combination of instruments on their aptly-named album Breakthrough. It would be easy enough to arrange certain musical evergreens for this setup, but being the accomplished musicians that they are, Ferreira and Williams instead choose a diverse range of new works by living composers – including themselves. The result, a wonderful blend of European and American folk traditions, leaves nothing to be desired.

Alejandro Karo: Mark
Emotional Melody....
Plaza Mayor Company Ltd
Available: 14 October 2022
Creative for film music, Alejandro Karo, try a new form of expression, a personal message, a personal composition like a score for a life. On eleven titles, with the same name, you have cello, strings and different figure of a new reel talent. 'For me, as a film music composer, is important to carry out this type of personal projects, because the way of working and producing this music is different from how you normally work music for film. This new album, besides being a dream that I have had for a long time, it is a gift for me as composer, because in MARK I can make music that is very personal tome and that I really enjoy composing.' Alejandro Karo

12 OCTOBER 2022

Lockdown Miniatures For Solo Guitar
Ole Martin Huser-Olsen
Aurora Records ACD5109
Available: 12 October 2022
Aurora Records is proud to present the debut album of the Norwegian guitarist Ole Martin Huser Olsen. The album was released on September 30th 2022. 'Lockdown Miniatures' describes an extraordinary time period of global lockdowns and crises. It is also a portrait of one of this generation's most intriguing guitarists. The debut album presents an 11-track album filled with contrasting miniatures for solo guitar. The pieces in this album are characterized by deep musical contrasts and have at first glance little in common other than the circumstances of their conception. Despite this, two, almost parallel musical directions gradually crystallize themselves. The first axis goes a return trip to Hamar. And the music on this journey embraces both the unfamiliar as well as the more recognizable. In other words, it gradually meets our expectations. Here Lauri Supponen's musical icon is left outside and alone in the end. Naturally. It is a different art form than the rest. It is anyway an epilogue. And a foreshadowing of future recordings. The second axis starts with Charlotte Piene's piece and ends with Lauri Supponen. The listening goes from the concrete and material to the gradually more abstract. Until we, in Supponen's icon and every-day confession, lies on the verge of the transcendental. Hopefully above. If so, Rui-Rahman's trip to Hamar might seem like a misunderstanding. Which it is. For the simple reason that he did not write that piece. It is the return, track 10, which is Jan Tariq's written piece. The prologue is Ole Martin´s own small trick, having transposed the whole piece a major third down to the open and resonant strings of the guitar. These two possible ways of giving ear to the structure of this recording can certainly be added to. The key has in any case been to show how the pieces converse with or contradict one another. As Joanna Rzadkowska's essay implies, this is an expression of new communities within the music. And these deep-seated contrasts should be unproblematic. For they are deeply human.

Trond Reinholdtsen: 'Spätstil'; Unsichtbare Musik
asamisimasa
Aurora Records ACD5108 (LP and digital only)
Available: 12 October 2022
Aurora Records is proud to present asamisimasa's latest album with two pieces by composer Trond Reinholdtsen – Unsichtbare Musik (Invisible Music) and Spätstil (Late Style). After almost twenty years of working together, this is their first collaborative release. Reinholdtsen is among Norway's most prominent composers of his generation and has a significant international position with a lengthy list of commissions on his resume. asamisimasa has premiered seven works by Reinholdtsen at festivals such as Donaueschingen, Ultima, Huddersfield, and Darmstadt. Being a prolific voice within the experimental opera and music theatre scene, Reinholdtsen has previously only released two works on CD. With this release asamisimasa wishes to shed a light on his instrumental chamber music. This is the ensemble's fifth portrait album, their second on Aurora Records. 'Unsichtbare Musik' was commissioned for a concert at the Berliner Philharmonie in 2009, and explores the relationship between language and music, between words and sonorous representation. The piece challenges both the act of listening, our perception of musical sounds, and the attempt to conceptualize musical impressions and experiences. Composed ten years later 'Spätstil' is based on the semantic analysis of 'Unsichtbare Musik' and the ensemble's performance history with this work. 'Spätstil' marks a clear, yet ironic distance from the previous piece through a dystopian self-criticism. The pieces have a unique sonorous sophistication and aims to inspire philosophical reflection as well as aesthetic pleasure. The aim is that the album can contribute to a reflection on music's conditions today by focusing on the solitary and secluded listening one does at home.

7 OCTOBER 2022

R‎alph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos 6 & 8
BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins
B‎BC Symphony Chorus
Roderick Williams, ‎baritone
Hyperion CDA68396
Available: 7 October 2022
'Essential listening' … 'unequivocally excellent': just two of the critical superlatives earned by Martyn Brabbins's magnificent RVW symphony cycle. Here, two late symphonies are coupled with a rare choral work from World War II and three unpublished folk-song settings for chorus and orchestra. The welcome opportunity to hear some lesser-known RVW has been a regular bonus of the ongoing cycle from Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and this next instalment is no exception. In Vaughan Williams Symphonies Nos 6 & 8, magisterial performances of the two symphonic masterworks are framed by a selection of miniatures - a rare outing for England, my England (a choral work from World War II) and three folk-song settings for chorus and orchestra.

Claude Debussy: Early and late piano pieces
Steven Osborne, piano
Hyperion CDA68390
Available: 7 October 2022
A programme which bridges Debussy's first and last works for piano. Steven Osborne is equally responsive to their very different musical moods.  If 'Clair de lune' is much the most familiar work in a programme of early and late piano pieces by Debussy, the rest of the recital is no less rewarding. Steven Osborne has long since proved his affinity with the music of the French master, and this album devoted to shorter works from either end of the composer's creative life is a worthy successor to the previous two.

G‎eorg Philipp Telemann: Fantasias for solo violin
Alina Ibragimova, violin
Hyperion CDA68384
Available: 7 October 2022
Alina Ibragimova again demonstrates just what can be accomplished on the four strings of a solo violin.  Telemann's Fantasias for solo violin are the ideal choice for anybody who has ever been left in open-mouthed astonishment by Alina Ibragimova's solo Bach recordings on Hyperion-which is surely everyone who has ever listened to these remarkable accounts-and wondered what to explore next. They are works which amply justify the high repute in which Telemann was held in eighteenth-century Hamburg, and can seldom have sounded so compelling.

Walton: Violin Concerto, Partita & Hindemith Variations
Anthony‎ Marwood, violin
B‎BC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Martyn‎ Brabbins conductor
Hyperion CDA67986
Release: 7 October 2022

Víkingur Ólafsson: From Afar
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 7 October 2022
Celebrated for his innovative programming and award-winning recordings, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is offering a window into his musical life story with his new album, From Afar. The highly personal double album reflects Ólafsson's musical DNA, from childhood memories growing up in Iceland to his international career and contemporary inspirations. Recorded on both upright and grand pianos, the album captures two distinct sound worlds with works by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and Bartók, alongside Icelandic and Hungarian folk songs, a world premiere by Thomas Adès, transcriptions by Ólafsson himself, and interconnecting pieces composed by his hero, 96-year-old Hungarian composer and pianist György Kurtág. The album was inspired by Ólafsson's life-changing meeting with György Kurtág in Budapest in September 2021, which left him with 'a feeling of lightness and joy' and sparked memories of music he loved as a child. From Afar (a title inspired by Kurtág's Aus der Ferne) is both a tribute to his hero and a return to his musical roots. 'It is more personal than my previous work,' says Ólafsson. 'It connects very deeply to my childhood and it pays homage to one of my favorite composers of all time. Throughout the album, there are intimate conversations and messages from afar – closely knit canons, transcriptions and dedications, as well as distant echoes of nearly forgotten, ancient melodies.' Having met Kurtág in Budapest last year, Ólafsson wanted to thank him for his time. Unable to find the right words, he instead found the right music. 'A musical map started to form in my head, with some of his miniatures acting as compass,' he recalls. 'I started thinking about some of the music I'd loved as a child as well, and realized there was a strong connection between them and Kurtág's aesthetic. The album grew from those two seeds.'  In a bold move, Ólafsson has recorded the album twice – on grand piano and on felt-covered upright, offering the same music with two different timbres. He captures the intimacy granted by the upright, as well as the full palette possible with the grand piano. Ólafsson's own childhood was marked by his relationship with two such pianos: his parents' grand piano (which they bought before they could afford a house!), and an old upright piano he was given at the age of seven and whose 'warm, dreamy' sound he grew to love as he practiced Schumann, Bach, and Mozart in his bedroom. Kurtág himself often recorded on felted pianos for variations of dynamics and tone. Exploring such evocative themes as home, childhood, and family, the album features Hungarian and Icelandic folk songs, nature-inspired works, interwoven homages, and three previously unreleased transcriptions by Ólafsson: the Adagio from Bach's Sonata for solo violin in C major, Mozart's Laudate Dominum – which he dedicates to Kurtág – and Icelandic composer Sigvaldi Kaldalóns' Ave Maria (the first work Ólafsson ever transcribed). Ave Maria is the first single from the album – a musical prayer which Ólafsson performed as Lockdown Artist in Residence for BBC Radio 4's Front Row in 2020, broadcasting live from an empty Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík and bringing solace to millions of listeners around the world. Ólafsson performs with his wife, Halla Oddný Magnúsdottir, in Kurtág's transcription of Bach's three-handed arrangement of Trio Sonata No. 1, which the composer used to perform with his late wife, Márta. György Kurtág, in turn, recently dedicated this transcription to Ólafsson. Additionally, Magnúsdottir and Ólafsson duet on Kurtág's Twittering. Also on the album is the first recording of Thomas Adès' The Branch, an otherworldly waltz written specially for Ólafsson.

 

5 OCTOBER 2022

Retrospective – A Life in Trumpet
Charles Schlueter and friends
MSR Classics MS1821 (3 CDs)
Release: 5 October 2022
Music by Britten, Ewazen, Hindemith, Honegger, Hovhaness, Hummel, Poulenc, Saint-Saëns and Stravinsky; and by Norman Bolter, Yves Chardon, Jean Hubeau, Otto Ketting, Ruth Lomon, James Stephenson, Robert Suderburg, Tomáš Svoboda and Albert Tiberio

Il Circolo Respighi - Songs for Soprano and Piano
Gabrielle Haugh, soprano (recording debut); Randall Fusco, piano
MSR Classics MS1784
Release: 5 October 2022
Music by Giuseppe Martucci, Respighi, Elsa Sangiacomo Respighi, Vittorio Rieti and Rimsky-Korsakov.

Georgia Shreve; Anna Komnene; Lavinia - Courageous Women of Antiquity
Meredith Lustig, Jacqueline Bolier, Elizabeth Sutphen and Wendy Bryn Harmer, sopranos; Carla Jablonski, mezzo-soprano; Alexander McKissick & Roy Hage, tenors; Timothy McDevitt, baritone; Brandon Cedel, bass-baritone; Czech National Symphony Orchestra / Steven Mercurio
MSR Classics MS1725
Release: 5 October 2022

 

Posted 6 November 2022 and updated 7 November 2022 by Keith Bramich

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