Today's new releases include a Winterreise with a twist from Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, an homage to Humperdinck (featuring the world premiere recording of his early piano-piece Erinnerung) on Deutsche Grammophon, Mahler's Resurrection Symphony from Ádám Fischer and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and Scarlatti-inspired concerti grossi by Charles Avison from the new Spanish baroque ensemble Tiento Nuovo.
Schubert: Winterreise
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo), Yannick Nézet-Séguin (piano)
DiDonato approaches Schubert’s great cycle from the perspective of the woman who ‘spoke of love’ to the protagonist before his mysterious nocturnal departure: rather like Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther, she reflects on his suffering through reading the journals he’s sent her. The performance was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in December 2019, and was described by Limelight as ‘original and intriguing’.
Available Formats: Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Erinnerung: Homage To Humperdinck
Christina Landshamer (soprano), Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Hinrich Alpers (piano), Schumann Quartet, Bamberger Symphoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker
Released to mark the centenary of the German composer’s death, this collection takes its title from a short piano-piece which he wrote at the age of seventeen (and which receives its world premiere recording here). Also includes a generous selection of lieder, the Piano Quintet in G minor and String Quartet in C major, plus excerpts from Königskinder, the two Shakespeare Suites and of course Hänsel und Gretel.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 & Academic Festival Overture
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Herbert Blomstedt
Following on from an account of the First Symphony which was described as ‘deeply considered and broadly conceived’ (The Times) and ‘splendid and inspiring’ (BBC Music Magazine), the nonagenarian conductor continues his Brahms cycle from Leipzig with a work which the composer considered to be ‘so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it’, plus the ebullient Academic Festival Overture from three years later.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mahler: Symphony No. 2
Tünde Szabóki (soprano), Nadine Weissmann (mezzo), Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Ádám Fischer
Reviewing the First Symphony in 2018, Gramophone observed that the elder Fischer’s Mahler series from Dusseldorf was ‘shaping up to be the most idiomatic and exciting cycle…since Kubelík and Bernstein’, and the project nears the finishing-line with this account of the Resurrection (the Sixth Symphony is still to come). Fischer places particular emphasis on the work’s Classical pedigree, declaring that ‘As far as I am concerned, Mahler is just as much a part of Vienna Classicism as Haydn’.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Charles Avison: Concerti Grossi (based On Scarlatti)
Tiento Nuovo, Ignacio Prego
The Madrid-born harpsichordist and conductor directs his new Spain-based ensemble in four of the concertos which Avison based on keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, many of which make extensive use of references to the folk-music which Scarlatti encountered during the three decades he spent living and working in Spain and Portugal. The concerti are interspersed with four Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, performed by Prego.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Tansy Davies: Nature
Huw Watkins (piano), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oliver Knussen, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Karen Kamensek
This collection of works by the English composer (b. 1973) takes its title from her 2012 concerto for piano and ten players, premiered by these musicians at Knussen’s sixtieth birthday concert and described by The Telegraph as 'the piece that actually set the heart and mind in motion'; the album also includes the suite What Did We See (drawing on material from Davies's 2014 opera Between Worlds), Re-Greening (2015), and Dune of Footprints, inspired by the Cave of Niaux in southwestern France.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
1942: Prokofiev, Copland & Poulenc
Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt
The New Zealand-born violinist is joined by his regular recital-partner for his Delphian debut, which features three works whose gestation began in the same turbulent year: Copland’s Violin Sonata (described by Virgil Thomson as ‘one of its author's most satisfying pieces’ after its 1944 premiere), Poulenc’s sonata in memory of Federico García Lorca, and Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 2, reworked from his Flute Sonata at the behest of David Oistrakh.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
The Music of Gerre Hancock
Jeremy Filsell (organ), The Choir of St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, Saint Thomas Brass
The New York singers pay tribute to their former choirmaster and organist (1934-2012) with a programme which includes his Missa Resurrectionis, Saint Thomas Service, Jubilate, Kindle the Gift of God, and Judge Eternal; a student of Jean Langlais, Nadia Boulanger and Marie-Claire Alain, Hancock presided over music at Saint Thomas's from 1971 to 2004.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mayr: Messa di Gloria
Concerto de Bassus, Simon Mayr Choir, Franz Hauk
A long-term champion of the works of Johann Simon Mayr (1763-1845), Hauk has produced over thirty recordings of the German composer's music over the course of the past two decades, with Fanfare observing that 'Hauk has certainly developed a sense of Mayr’s style, and his forces respond to his insightful reading' of the late Mass in E flat (1843) last summer. Mayr began work on these two Masses some twenty years earlier, and both receive their world premiere recordings here.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Pfleger: Life and Passion of the Christ
Orkester Nord, Martin Wahlberg, Vox Nidrosiensis
The Life and Passion of the Christ weaves together six cantatas by the Bohemian-born German composer Augustin Pfleger (1635-86) to form a first-person narrative which begins with the Annunciation and ends with Christ’s appearance to the disciples after his Resurrection, taking in the encounter with the Canaanite Woman and the miraculous healings along the way.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Puccini: La Bohème (DVD)
Sonya Yoncheva (Mimì), Charles Castronovo (Rodolfo), Andrzej Filończyk (Marcello), Simona Mihai (Musetta), Gyula Nagy (Schaunard), Peter Kellner (Colline), Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Richard Jones, Emmanuel Villaume
This revival of Richard Jones’s 2017 production was filmed at Covent Garden at the beginning of last year, with The Guardian declaring Villaume as ‘in many ways the star of this revival’ thanks to the ‘drive and intensity’ of his interpretation and his ‘full attention to the care and originality of Puccini’s scoring.’ Charles Castronovo’s ‘energetic, lyrical Rodolfo’ also impressed The Stage, whilst Opera Today praised the ‘wonderfully theatrical and balanced quartet’ of male Bohemians.
Available Format: DVD Video
Picture format: 1080i
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS-HD MA 5.1
Available Format: Blu-ray
