Today’s new releases include a scintillating New York recital from Evgeny Kissin and the Emerson Quartet, Rachmaninov Preludes from Boris Giltburg, twentieth-century chamber works for piano and winds from Les Vents Français, and a collection of music from the court of Frederick the Great from Florilegium.
The New York Concert
Evgeny Kissin (piano), Emerson Quartet
Recorded live at Carnegie Hall last April, this recital features Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, and the Dvořák Piano Quintet; reviewing the performance, The New York Times observed that ‘these strong, veteran players seemed ideally matched with the commanding pianist, and they had evidently achieved instant rapport.’
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Charpentier: Histoires sacrées
Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastien Daucé
Judith, St Cecilia, Mary Magdalene, and Saul and Jonathan are among the figures depicted in Daucé’s compendium of Charpentier’s ‘sacred stories’; the album includes a bonus DVD of a live staged concert of the programme, filmed at the Chapelle Royale de Versailles in 2016 and directed by Vincent Huguet.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
JS Bach: Sonatas for violin and keyboard
Renaud Capuçon (violin) & David Fray (piano)
Fray made his debut on Virgin Classics with Bach (prompting Der Spiegel to hail him as ‘perhaps the most inspired, certainly the most original Bach player of his generation’ and BBC Music Magazine to name him Newcomer of the Year in 2008); here he joins his compatriot Renaud Capuçon for the first time on disc in four of the six sonatas for violin and keyboard.
Available Format: CD
Beethoven: Choral Fantasy & Triple Concerto
Insula Orchestra, Accentus, Laurence Equilbey
Sandrine Piau, Anaïck Morel, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Florian Sempey and pianist Bertrand Chamayou are the soloists in the Choral Fantasy; Alexandra Conunova, David Kadouch and Natalie Clein join the period instruments of the Insula Orchestra for the Triple Concerto.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Rachmaninov: 24 Préludes
Boris Giltburg (piano)
The Israeli pianist has been hailed as ‘a natural Rachmaninov interpreter’ (The Observer) and ‘that genuine rarity: a pianist whose Rachmaninov is entirely idiomatic yet intensely personal’ (Gramophone); following acclaimed recordings of the Études-tableaux Op. 39 and the Second and Third Piano Concertos, he returns to the very first Rachmaninov pieces he ever learned.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Nino Rota: Works for Harp
Anneleen Lenaerts (harp), Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Brussels Philharmonic, Adrien Perruchon
Arrangements of music from several of Rota’s best-known film scores (including The Godfather, Death on the Nile, and La dolce vita) feature alongside three concert works composed before his Hollywood career really took off: the 1947 Harp Concerto, the Sonata for flute and harp from 1937, and the Sarabande and Toccata for solo harp from 1945.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
The Prussian king was an accomplished flautist and an extremely prolific composer himself, but none of his own music features here; instead, the focus is on works by his court musicians, including CPE Bach, Quantz, Graun, Benda and Fasch. The album opens with a Ricercar from JS Bach’s A Musical Offering, composed after the King presented a theme to the composer whilst he was visiting the court in 1747.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Moderniste
Les Vents Français
French pianist Eric Le Sage joins the all-star wind quintet (whose members include Emmanuel Pahud and François Leleux) for their fifth album in a programme of music by Nielsen, Milhaud, Jolivet, Albéric Magnard, Philippe Hersant and Thierry Escaich.
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brahms & Ligeti: Violin Concertos
Augustin Hadelich (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Miguel Harth-Bedoya
For his first orchestral recording since winning the inaugural Warner Music Prize in 2015, the Grammy-winning violinist performs the Brahms concerto with his own cadenza and the Ligeti with a new cadenza by Thomas Adès; when Adès and Hadelich unveiled it last January, The Boston Globe described the results as ‘masterful in the way it ventriloquizes Ligeti’s voice, folds organically into what comes before and after’.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
