New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 30th August 2024
Recorded in Paris this February, the French tenor's first solo song album features Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer (in new transcriptions by Matheson), Duparc's L'Invitation au voyage, Extase, Phidylé and La Vie antérieure, Joseph Kosma's Les feuilles mortes, Jacques Brel's Quand on n'a que l'amour, and Charles Trenet's Douce France.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Released as individual digital tracks between February and June, Dalia's Mixtape is now available as a complete album; this collection of contemporary orchestral works includes Anna Meredith's Nautilus (in a new orchestration commissioned by Stasevska), 'They Being Dead Yet Speaketh' (from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's Miners' Hymns), Caroline Shaw's The Observatory, and Noriko Koide's Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The quartet describes this album as 'a retracing of musical pathways across the North Sea...taking us from Denmark and Norway to the Faroe Islands, and to Ireland and England'. The programme includes their own arrangements of Mabel Kelly, Fair Isle Jig, Carolan's Quarrel with the Landlady, Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møje and Planxty Kelly, plus Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen's Once a Shoemaker and Fredrik Sjølin's Kjølhalling.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Stutzmann was appointed Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in October 2021, and this debut recording with the orchestra was captured across two concerts at their home-venue last November; Gramophone recently observed that the 'bold, punchy account' of the Symphony 'grips like a great concert performance should'. The coupling is the American Suite, originally written for piano in 1894 and subsequently orchestrated by the composer; the work received its Atlanta premiere in these concerts.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Antonín Kraft & Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Cello Concertos
Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi
Queyras's previous album of CPE Bach concertos with Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz won a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in 2018 and received a glowing review in The Times, with Stephen Pettitt noting that 'Queyras relishes this craggy landscape, his phrasing beautifully articulated, his sound mellow.' This sequel couples his Cello Concerto in B flat (Wq. 171) from 1751 with Kraft's Cello Concerto in C major (published c.1804): a virtuoso cellist and a pupil of Haydn, Kraft was the dedicatee of his teacher's Cello Concerto No. 2.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The 23-year-old Swedish violinist signed an exclusive contract with Warner Classics in April following three albums on Deutsche Grammophon (including a debut album of Bach which BBC Music Magazine described as 'a performance way beyond his years'), and this first project for the label comprises the Franck and Grieg violin sonatas plus the Romance from Shostakovich’s The Gadfly, and a sonata co-composed by Pletnev and Alexey Shor.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The fifteen two-part inventions and fifteen three-part sinfonias are thought to have been composed for Bach's younger pupils, including his son Wilhelm Friedemann. Esfahani writes: 'That these works owe their existence to pedagogical purposes should not blind us to the extraordinarily distilled nature of their beauty'. Previous volumes in the series have been applauded for Esfahani's 'inquiring musical mind and absolute mastery of his instrument' (Gramophone on the Toccatas) and 'lively and inexhaustible interrogations' (The Guardian on the Italian Concerto & French Overture).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Freezing
Emily D'Angelo (mezzo), Sophia Muñoz (piano), Bruno Helstroffer (guitar), Jonas Niederstadt (bass/synthesizer), Fridolin Blumer (double bass)
The Canadian-Italian mezzo's second solo album on Deutsche Grammophon spans five centuries, including new arrangements of Purcell's O Solitude, Rebecca Clarke's The Cloths of Heaven and Down By the Salley Gardens, Kodály's Esti Dal, Philip Glass's Freezing, Jeanine Tesori's Grounded: Night Drive, Snow and Silver from Cecilia Livingston's Lullabies, and Randy Newman's Wandering Boy.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The title-work here ('Ilo ja epäsymmetria' in the original Finnish) is a 1996 suite for mixed choir by Kalevi Aho, setting texts by Finnish writer Mirkka Rekola. The album also includes his Kolme laulua Mawlana Rumin runoihin ('Three Songs to Texts by Mawlana Rumi'), and four choral works by Aho's teacher Einojuhani Rautavaara: Die erste Elegie, Unsere Liebe, Ave Maria, and Elämän kirja (A Book of Life).
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Saariaho: Adriana Mater
Fleur Barron (Adriana), Axelle Fanyo (Refka), Nicholas Phan (Yonas), Christopher Purves (Tsargo); San Francisco Symphony, Esa-Pekka Salonen
Commissioned by the Paris Opera (where it was premiered in 2006), Saariaho’s second opera centres on a young woman's decision to raise a child conceived as a result of rape during war-time. This world premiere recording was made during a concert-staging by Peter Sellars last June, just a few days after the composer's death; reviewing the live performance, The New York Times remarked on 'the way Saariaho’s delicately consoling music stares down the worst of the world and says: The only way forward is grace'.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
