New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 11th October 2024
Both of these concertos will feature in Pappano's first season as Chief Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, with principal cellists David Cohen (Elgar) and Rebecca Gilliver (Walton) as the soloists. For this studio recording, conductor and orchestra are joined by Gautier Capuçon, whose brother Renaud recorded the Elgar Violin Concerto with the LSO and Pappano's predecessor Simon Rattle back in 2020.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht & Pelleas und Melisande
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Rafael Payare
The Canadian orchestra and its Music Director celebrate Schoenberg's 150th birthday with a recording of two works from what Payare describes as his 'post-Romantic period of transition' - both based on stories exploring the themes of love, jealousy, acceptance and forgiveness. The booklet includes reproductions of several self-portraits and Expressionist paintings by Schoenberg, as well as the text of Richard Dehmel's poem Verklärte Nacht in the original German and in French and English translations.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Zarzuela
Juan Diego Flórez (tenor), Orquesta y Coro Juvenil Sinfonía por el Perú, Guillermo García Calvo
The Peruvian tenor launches his new label Flórez Records with a celebration of the genre which became his gateway to opera; the programme includes excerpts from Torroba's Luisa Fernanda, Luna's La pícara molinera, Chapí's La bruja and El milagro de la virgen, Sorozábal's La tabernera del puerto, and Giménez's La boda de Luis Alonso.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
The Russian pianist fell in love with Debussy's music at the age of five, when her mother played her 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair' from the first book of Préludes, and is particularly drawn to the pieces in this collection which depict nature: 'the feeling of wind, of squinting in the shining sun, of the goosebumps from “the sounds and aromas floating in the evening air”'. Tsybuleva won the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2015, when International Piano enthused that 'not since Murray Perahia’s triumph in 1972 has Leeds had a winner of this musical poise and calibre'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This year's Leeds winner makes his debut on Warner Classics with this compilation of live recordings made during the solo rounds of the competition: the programme is made up of Chopin's Scherzo No. 1, Ravel's Miroirs, and Ligeti's Études 'Arc-en-ciel' & 'Automne à Varsovie'. Born in Canada in 1999, Izik-Dzurko also took first prize at the the Montreal International Music Competition earlier this year, and was commended by Leeds jury-chair Imogen Cooper for his 'exceptional artistic maturity and imagination' and 'remarkable technical command'.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This fourth instalment in Fischer's Haydn series comprises three works which were written during the composer's second sojourn in London, in 1794: Symphonies Nos. 102, 103 (the 'Drumroll') and 104 (the 'London'). Previous volumes have been praised for Fischer's 'delight in the composer’s unpredictable inventiveness and darting wit' (Gramophone on Vol. 2) and the 'exacting articulation and panache of the final movements' (The Classic Review on Vol. 1).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Recorded live in Toronto last February, these performances of 'Mercury' and 'La Passione' see Tafelmusik's new Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger leading from the violin. Podger recounts that the concerts 'felt like a homecoming - it was exciting but yet easy, like a team of friends that had always belonged together. I have admired Tafelmusik for so many years that this is a dream come true.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 10
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano), Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy
As their Mozart survey nears its conclusion, Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy look back to the very beginning of the composer's career with Piano Concertos Nos. 1-4 - as a technical exercise in orchestration, Leopold Mozart tasked his eleven-year-old son with creating concertos from sonata-movements by Hermann Friedrich Raupach, Johann Schobert and Johann Gottfried Eckard. The album also includes the overtures from Mozart's earliest operatic works: Bastien und Bastienne and Apollo et Hyacinthus, both written in the late 1760s.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Tyler Futrell: Stabat Mater
Eirin Rognerud, Astrid Nordstad, Ingvild Nesdal Sandnes, Ulrikke Henninen, TERJUNGENSEMBLE, Lars-Erik ter Jung
Weaving in allusions to Brahms and Barber, this new work by the California-born, Oslo-based composer (b.1983) was an Editor's Choice in the latest issue of Gramophone, with Alexandra Coghlan reflecting that 'the music’s beauty is arresting, all the more so for the scuttling, juddering, convulsive sonic violence from which it often emerges'. The album also includes Futrell's Brittle Fluid (inspired by Tarjei Vesaas’s 1963 novel The Ice Palace) and Vuggesang ('Lullaby').
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Rita Strohl: Vol 3, Musique Orchestrale
Marie Perbost (soprano), Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Orchestre National d'Ile-de-France, Case Scaglione
The mainstay of this album is the 45-minute Symphonie de la forêt from 1901, which MusicWeb International recently described as a fine testament to Strohl's 'fine ear for sonority combined with a genuinely symphonic sense of scale and a piquant knack for a memorable phrase'. The album also includes the Prelude to Act II of the 'mystère sacré' Yajnavalkya, and four orchestral songs from around the turn of the century: 'Les Cygnes', 'La Flûte de Pan', 'La Momie', and 'La Cloche fêlée'.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
This 24th volume in Naxos's superb English Song Series features Gurney's most popular song 'Sleep' (on a poem by John Fletcher) as well as settings of verse by poets including WB Yeats, Hilaire Belloc, Shakespeare, Goethe, Walter de le Mare and Gurney's fellow war-poets Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves and Robert Bridges. The recital also includes two songs on Gurney's own poems: 'Severn Meadows' (1917) and 'Western Sailors' (1926).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Antonio Pappano conducts and explains Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2
Staatskapelle Dresden, Antonio Pappano
It was in Dresden that Rachmaninoff composed his Symphony No. 2 in 1906/7, having relocated from Moscow where his conducting commitments at the Bolshoi were leaving him with precious little time to write. This Blu-ray presents a complete concert-performance of the work from the Dresden Semperoper (filmed in December 2016), plus a 43-documentary featuring in-depth analysis from Pappano and extensive archive material including photos, scores and posters from Dresden in the years between 1906 and 1920.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
