Discovering Imogen
BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers, Alice Farnham
Featuring a number of world premieres, this collection of orchestral works by Imogen Holst is released as part of NMC's 35th anniversary celebrations, with label-founder and composer Colin Matthews remarking that 'if it had not been for Imogen Holst, NMC would very likely never have come into being'. The repertoire includes the overture Persephone (1929), the Suite for String Orchestra (1943), the Variations on 'Loth to Depart' (1962), and the Festival Anthem from 1946 (orchestrated by Matthews).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Elgar: Violin Concerto
Vilde Frang (violin), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati
The Norwegian violinist remarks that Elgar's Violin Concerto 'has been a very late discovery for me... But it didn't take me a long time to become a very passionate ambassador for this piece.' Reviewing a performance of the work with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO last year, The Guardian noted that 'her balancing of the virtuosic elements with the music’s hushed intimacy was always instinctive' and 'her extraordinarily beautiful tone seemed to honour the source of Elgar’s inspiration [Fritz Kreisler] with a startling immediacy.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Contemplation
Huw Montague Rendall (baritone), Opéra Orchestre Normandie Rouen, Ben Glassberg
The British baritone's debut solo recording includes arias from Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, Gounod's Faust & Roméo et Juliette, Korngold's Die tote Stadt, Britten's Billy Budd (which he will debut at the Wiener Staatsoper next month) and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel, plus Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen'. The album received five stars in The Guardian last week, thanks to his 'velvet-toned, nuanced' interpretation of Hamlet's soliloquy and 'heartbreakingly engaging' account of 'Billy in the Darbies'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3
Lars Vogt (piano), Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Barbara Buntrock (viola), Tanja Tetzlaff (cello)
These accounts of two Brahms piano quartets are Lars Vogt's final recordings: the German pianist had planned to record all three works with the Tetzlaff siblings, but died before the project could be completed. The Piano Quartet No. 2 was recorded in the studio, whilst No. 3 is a live recording from a concert which took place shortly before his death in September 2022. In a recent tribute to his friend for violinist.com Christian Tetzlaff noted that Brahms 'was for us, a central figure of musical expression': he and Vogt recorded the complete violin sonatas together in 2016, with The Guardian describing the results as 'agile, airborne, refreshingly unpredictable and alive with exhilarating freedom.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9
Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Paavo Järvi
The Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and its Music Director conclude their celebration of Bruckner's bicentenary (which fell earlier this week) with this recording of the Ninth, which the composer described as his 'farewell to life'. Their recent account of Symphony No. 8 won an International Classical Music Award this year, and was described by the jury as 'one of the most idiomatic Brucknerian readings of recent years, one that combines luminosity and transparency with the specific gravity we have come to expect from this great symphonic cathedral'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Magnus Lindberg: Viola Concerto, Absence & Serenades
Lawrence Power (viola), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
This is the world premiere of the Finnish composer's Viola Concerto, completed earlier this year and performed here by its dedicatee Lawrence Power: in an interview with his publisher Boosey & Hawkes, Lindberg recently reflected that 'It was high time I took a closer look at what the viola has to offer the contemporary composer – or to put it another way, what the contemporary composer has to give to this fine instrument'. Absence was commissioned by the Rotterdam Philharmonic to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in 2020, whilst the nocturnal, single-movement Serenades (which shares a certain kinship with Sibelius, Debussy and Mahler) was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2021.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Schurmann: Orchestral Works
Xiayin Wang (piano), BBC Philharmonic, Ben Gernon
This collection of works by the Dutch-born British composer, pianist and conductor comprises the concert overture Man in the Sky (derived from Schurmann’s score for the 1957 thriller of the same name), the 1973 Piano Concerto which was written for and premiered by John Ogdon, the set of variations on an original theme entitled Romancing the Strings, and the six symphonic studies Gaudiana (inspired by the work of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Forgotten Dances
Alessio Bax (piano)
Spanning three centuries, the Italian pianist's programme of dance-inspired music includes JS Bach's English Suite No. 2, Bartók's Tanz-Suite Sz. 77 (originally written for orchestra in 1923 and arranged for piano by the composer two years later), Bax's own transcriptions of the 'Danza del molinero' from Falla's El sombrero de tres picos and the 'Danza ritual del fuego' from El amor brujo, the Tango from Albéniz's España, the first of Liszt's Valses oubliées, Ravel's La valse, and Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 6.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Intrigues of the Darkness
Anna Fedorova (piano)
Structured as a 'journey from darkness to light', Fedorova's recital opens with Scriabin's 'Black Mass' Sonata and closes with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition; sandwiched between the two are Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and the piano suite which Falla compiled from his ballet El amor brujo in 1922. Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 2 featured on the pianist's debut album for Channel Classics in 2018, when Gramophone remarked that 'she never forces her tone and never loses her cool'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
72 Preludes
Mao Fujita (piano)
Two years on from his set of the complete Mozart piano sonatas (which won him the Young Talent of the Year prize at the Opus Klassik Awards and was described as 'consistently impressive' by Gramophone), the young Japanese pianist presents sets of 24 preludes by Chopin, Scriabin and Akio Yashiro: the album received four stars in the Financial Times this week, with Richard Fairman observing that 'In the Chopin, the combination of Fujita’s sensibility and a warm, close recording make for an intimate, romantic performance...The same romanticism works well in Scriabin'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
George Benjamin: Picture a Day Like This
Marianne Crebassa (Woman), Beate Mordal (Lover 1/Composer), Cameron Shahbazi (Lover 2/Composer's Assistant), John Brancy (Artisan/Collector), Anna Prohaska (Zabelle); Mahler Chamber Orchestra, George Benjamin
Recorded during the first performances at Aix-en-Provence last summer, this is the world premiere of Benjamin's opera about a bereaved mother in search of a miracle; The Telegraph hailed the work as 'an exquisitely crafted little masterpiece', whilst BachTrack's David Karlin enthused that 'its 75 minutes were the most inspiring I have ever spent in an opera house'.
Sir George spoke to us about the work's genesis shortly after the premiere.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Max Richter: In A Landscape
Max Richter
Richter describes his ninth studio album as 'a memoir of the present moment...The tracks themselves are, as ever, my attempts to figure out how to make sense of our lives in the here and now of our daily life as I experience it'. In a four-star review yesterday, The Irish Times observed that 'The numerous Life Study interludes that punctuate the tracklist are testament to Richter’s determination to insert the everyday into his work, whether it’s the crunch of leaves underfoot, the chatter of a family gathering or the patter of rain on a windowpane...As with much of his previous work, Richter strikes a pleasing equilibrium between music to admire and music to enjoy.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Stanford: Partsongs, Pastorals and Folksongs
The Sixteen, Harry Christophers
Issued to mark the centenary of Stanford's death, this collection of secular choral works features 17 premiere recordings, and includes the eight partsongs on poems by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, a generous selection of the Irish folksong settings which draw on the work of Thomas Moore and Alfred Perceval Graves (father of Robert), and the Elizabethan Pastorals 'Damon's Passion', 'Corydon, Arise!', 'Sweet Love For Me', 'Phoebe' and 'Diaphenia'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Grinke Legacy
Frederick Grinke, Boyd Neel, Arthur Benjamin, Michael Mullinar
A passionate advocate for new music, the Canadian-born violinist Frederick Grinke (1911-87) was the dedicatee of Vaughan Williams's 1954 Violin Sonata in A minor, which is the final work on this collection of his complete recordings of the composer's music: the recording was prepared under Vaughan Williams's supervision, before the piece received its live premiere. The set also includes Grinke's recordings of the Concerto Accademico, The Lark Ascending, and Arthur Benjamin's 1924 Sonatina for Violin and Piano (which makes its first digital appearance here).
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Roberto Alagna: All'Opera
Roberto Alagna (tenor)
This anthology of the French tenor's complete opera recordings on Warner Classics includes the five-act French version of Verdi's Don Carlos (with Karita Mattila, Waltraud Meier, Thomas Hampson and José van Dam), Puccini's Il Trittico, Tosca and La rondine (all conducted by Antonio Pappano and starring Alagna's then-wife Angela Gheorghiu), Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Massenet's Werther, Manon and La Navarraise, and Donizetti's Lucie de Lammermoor (with Natalie Dessay in the title-role and Ludovic Tézier as Henri).
Available Format: 33 CDs
