New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 5th July 2024
Drawing on his own Irish heritage (his paternal great-grandfather Danny McKenna left Waterford for South Africa in the 1890), Hope joins forces with artists including Sir James & Lady Jeanne Galway and folk band Lúnasa for a programme which features music by Ina Boyle, Geminiani, Purcell, O’Carolan and Roseingrave, plus new arrangements of folk-songs such as 'Molly Malone', 'Danny Boy', 'The Red-Haired Boy' and 'Follow Me Up to Carlow'. The recording was born out of the TV documentary Celtic Dreams: Daniel Hope’s Hidden Irish History, which was broadcast on PBS in the spring of 2022.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Janáček: The Excursions of Mr. Brouček
Jaroslav Březina (Mr. Brouček), Aleš Briscein, František Zahradníček, Alžběta Poláčková, Jiří Sulženko; Prague National Theatre Orchestra, Jaroslav Kyzlink
Released to commemorate the 170th anniversary of Janáček's birth, this studio recording of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček was made at the Rudolfinum in Prague whilst theatres and concert-halls were locked down. Twelve years in the making, the opera was eventually premiered at Prague's National Theatre in 1920 and centres on a shambolic Czech landlord who falls into a drunken stupor one evening and dreams of journeying first to the moon and then to fifteenth-century Prague (where he finds himself caught up in the middle of a fifteenth-century Hussite uprising).
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Stanford: Te Deum & Elegiac Ode
Rhian Lois (soprano), Samantha Price (mezzo), Alessandro Fisher (tenor), Morgan Pearse (baritone); BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales, Adrian Partington
Stanford's large-scale Te Deum was premiered at the Leeds Festival in the autumn of 1898, and is dedicated to Queen Victoria: the first performance celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of her coronation, and also showcased the full-bodied power of the 350-strong Leeds chorus. Commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival in 1884, the Elegiac Ode sets text from Walt Whitman’s elegy ‘When lilacs in the dooryard bloom’d’; in a recent essay marking the centenary of Stanford's death, Gramophone's Jeremy Dibble noted that the work 'has all the properties of a symphony in the cyclic integration of its first movement and finale'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
For their sixth album on Chandos, the Neaves present four works inspired by folk music: Smetana's Trio in G minor for 1855 and Suk's early Piano Trio (both of which draw on Bohemian melodies and rhythms), the suite which Coleridge-Taylor arranged from his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies for Piano (including 'Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child', 'Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel?' and 'They will not lend me a child'), and Frank Martin's Irish-inspired Trio from 1925.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
George Lloyd: The Violin & Cello Concertos
Cristina Anghelescu (violin), Anthony Ross (cello), Philharmonia Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, David Parry, David Alan Miller
Lloyd's two violin concertos date from 1970 and 1977 respectively, although the premiere of Violin Concerto No. 1 did not take place until the summer of 1998, when these recordings were made; Lloyd died just a week later, but played an active part in the editing process. A pupil of Albert Sammons, Lloyd remarked 'I don’t really like the relationship between the violin and the big modern orchestra… I hate to hear that poor little fiddle being totally swamped' - No. 1 is scored for violin and wind ensemble, and No. 2 for violin and strings. The Cello Concerto was completed just a year before Lloyd's death, and also receives its world premiere recording here.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This final instalment of Capriccio's #Bruckner2024 series includes both his very first and final symphonies: the 'Study Symphony' in F minor (written shortly after Bruckner completed his studies with the renowned counterpoint teacher Simon Sechter, who forbade him from composing until graduation) and the unfinished Symphony No. 9. The cycle has been applauded for Poschner's 'impressive sense of conviction' (Gramophone on Symphony No. 5) and 'nuanced phrasing and dynamics' (MusicWeb International on Symphony No. 1).
Available Format: 2 CDs
Two years on from her accounts of Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 17, the Russian early keyboardist teams up with Il Gardellino again for two of Mozart's best-known concerti. Pashchenko plays a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano (ca. 1792) built by Paul McNulty, which she also used for her recording of Piano Concerto No. 17: reviewing the earlier release, Gramophone observed that she 'draws a remarkable panoply of shadings and pedallings from the instrument' and 'homes in unerringly on the operatic inspiration that lies behind so much of Mozart’s music'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Formed in Basel in 2018, the Protean Quartet won the York Early Music International Young Artists Competition in 2022; the group makes its debut on Linn with Schubert's String Quartets Nos. 4 and 13, interspersed with their own transcriptions of Josquin's Mille regretz and three short pieces by Purcell. Their previous recording of works by Haydn, Almeida & Beethoven (released on Eudora last year) was hailed by Opus Klassiek as a set of 'magnificent performances by an ensemble that believes in this music with heart and soul'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The centrepiece of this album is Johann Christoph Schmügel's Friedens-Cantate ('Peace Cantata'), composed in 1763 to mark the end of the Seven Years' War and performed during the thanksgiving festivities of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg; this is the work's world premiere recording. The album also includes two musical commentaries on the conflict by Schmügel's teacher Telemann: Herr, wir danken deiner Gnade and Hannover siegt, der Franzmann liegt.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This programme of seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Italian motets includes Monteverdi's Cantate Domino and Adoramus te, Christe,Giovanni Legrenzi's Salve Regina and Intret in conspectu tuo, Agostino Steffani's Qui Diligit Mariam, Ercole Bernabei's Tribulationes cordis mei, and a five-part Crucifixus by his pupil Antonio Lotti; much of this music was collected and brought to London by English antiquarians of the eighteenth century. The Oxford-based vocal consort's previous recordings have been praised for their 'superb tuning and rock-solid ensemble' (BBC Music Magazine). 'intensity of sound' (Sunday Times), and 'consistently full-toned and focussed' singing (Early Music Review).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
A winner of the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition and Cesti Competition, British tenor Laurence Kilsby makes his solo recording debut with a programme of songs of innocence and experience, including Rebecca Clarke's 'The Seal Man' & 'Tiger, Tiger', Jake Heggie's 'Snake' & 'Animal Passion', Saint-Saëns's 'La coccinelle', songs from Wolf's Mörike-Lieder & Schoenberg's Brettl-Lieder, and Britten's Canticle No. 1 'My Beloved Is Mine'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
