The English soprano’s debut album on EMI includes songs by Strauss, Rodrigo, Granados and Canteloube, plus extracts from works by Ravel, Stravinsky and Debussy.
Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco record the Italian baroque composer’s ‘azione sacra’ (which predates Handel’s *Saul* by 15 years), with contralto Marjana Mijanovic as the eponymous hero and Furio Zanasi as Goliath.
An ‘uplifting, overwhelming, charming and comforting’ account of Haydn’s most popular oratorio, sung in a new English adaptation, with soloists including Miah Persson and Mark Padmore.
Two leading English tenors tackle opera and oratorio arias, including Jupiter’s ‘Where’er you walk’ from *Semele*, Jephtha’s ‘Waft her, angels’, and Samson’s ‘Total eclipse’.
Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra mark the 150th anniversary of the English composer’s birth with a marvellous new live recording of his tribute to ‘my friends pictured within’.
The French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet begins a new Debussy cycle with arresting performances of the Préludes and *Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon*.
Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent performed the German baroque master’s ‘Opus ultimum’, a series of eleven motets for double choir setting Psalm 119.
In the wake of French pianist Alexandre Tharaud’s superb recent album of Couperin, *Tic Toc Choc*, Chris considers the implications of performing baroque keyboard music on a modern piano.
A new recording of Strauss’s late reflections on mortality from EMI’s new signing, Swedish dramatic soprano Nina Stemme, stands comparison with the very best.