New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 16th February 2024
Inspired by a painting by William Thomas Horton, this lunar-themed programme includes Korngold's Schönste Nacht, Florence Price's Night, Lili Boulanger's Reflets, transcriptions of Fauré's Clair de Lune, Debussy's Beau Soir & Clair de lune, Takemitsu's Will tomorrow, I wonder, be cloudy or clear?, and cello sonatas by Britten, Walker and Debussy.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Brahms: Cello Sonatas & Schumann: Fünf Stücke im Volkston
Christian Poltéra (cello), Ronald Brautigam (piano)
Six years on from their superb survey of Mendelssohn's works for cello and piano (which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine and was described as 'an outstanding disc' by Gramophone), Poltéra and Brautigam team up again for Brahms's two cello sonatas, written in the mid-1860s and 1886 respectively; Schumann's 'Five Pieces in Folk Style' from 1849 are sandwiched between the two sonatas.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Taking its title from a 1970 film by Claude Sautet, Capuçon's second cinematic album includes excerpts from the scores for Le Dernier Métro (Georges Delerue), Lawrence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre), The Shape of Water (Alexandre Desplat), Love Story (Francis Lai), The English Patient (Gabriel Yared), plus Michel Legrand's The Windmills of Your Mind and Joseph Kosma's Les Feuilles mortes.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This set comprises all of the recordings of his own music which Copland made for Columbia Masterworks between 1935 and 1976, plus recordings of Inscape and Connotations by Leonard Bernstein. Soloists include Bernstein (in the Piano Concerto), William Warfield (in the Old American Songs), Benny Goodman (in the Concerto for Clarinet, Strings & Harp) and Isaac Stern (in the Violin Sonata).
Available Format: 20 CDs
Rêves - Ysaÿe: Violin Concerto in E minor & Poème concertant
Philippe Graffin (violin), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Marisa Gupta
This is the first-ever recording of the complete Violin Concerto in E minor, which Ysaÿe abandoned in 1885; the first movement was only recently discovered, and the whole has been reconstructed by Ysaÿe scholar Xavier Falques in consultation with Graffin. The later Poème Concertant (orchestrated by Erika Vega) also receives its world premiere recording here, and the album is completed by the Deux Mazurkas de Salon Op. 10 & the Rêve d'enfant Op. 14.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nominated for a Grammy Award, this album from the Chicago-based percussion quartet features world premiere recordings of four works by living composers: Missy Mazzoli's Millennium Canticles, Tyondai Braxton's Sunny X, Gemma Peacocke's Death Wish, and Ayanna Woods's Triple Point. The programme is completed by In Practice, a collaborative composition by the group's four members: David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Born in Amsterdam in 1801, the Dutch violinist, conductor and composer Johannes Bernardus van Bree founded the city's first professional orchestra (a forerunner to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) and conducted the Dutch premieres of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Wagner's Faust Overture. His first two string quartets were composed in 1834 and 1840 respectively, and show the influence of Mendelssohn, Spohr and George Onslow - all of whose music featured on the programmes of the Amsterdam Quartet Society during van Bree's lifetime.
Available Format: CD
A finalist at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Mndoyants makes his debut on Aparté with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 4 'From Old Notebooks' (composed in 1917 and dedicated to the memory of his friend Maximilian Schmidthof) and the last of the three 'War Sonatas' (premiered by Emil Gilels in 1944). The programme is completed by Mndoyants's own Nocturne and his transcription of the scherzo from the Fifth Symphony.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The main event on this ninth instalment in Albrecht's series marking the Bruckner bicentenary is Erwin Horn’s transcription of Symphony No. 9, incorporating Gerd Schaller’s completion of the finale. The programme was recorded on the organ of the Fraumünster in Zürich, and also includes a solo arrangement of the Libera me (originally for choir, three trombones & organ) and Philipp Maintz's 'Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir' - a Window to Bruckner's Ninth Symphony.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Exploring the evolution of vocal technique in the Italian Baroque school, this programme includes arias from Porpora's Germanico in Germania, Alessandro Scarlatti's Giuditta, Vivaldi's Farnace, Steffani's Tassilone, and Handel's Giulio Cesare, Partenope & Alcina. Also features instrumental music by Kerll, Colonna and Henricus Albicastro (aka Johann Heinrich von Weissenburg).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Donizetti: Chiara e Serafina (Blu-ray)
Pietro Spagnoli (Don Meschino), Matías Moncada (Don Alvaro/Don Fernando), Fan Zhou (Serafina), Greta Doveri (Chiara), Hyun-Seo Davide Park (Don Ramiro), Sung-Hwan Damien Park (Picaro); Orchestra Gli Originali, Coro dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala, Sesto Quatrini, Gianluca Falaschi
Set in seventeenth-century Majorca, Donizetti's first opera for La Scala was premiered in 1822 and composed in under a fortnight; it met with a rather tepid reception, partly because a high-profile treason trial in Milan had a significant effect on audience-numbers due to heavy police surveillance of theatres. This production was filmed at the Bergamo Donizetti Festival in 2022, and was described by BachTrack as 'an intellectually honest, valuable cultural operation'.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
