JS Bach: Mass in B minor
Julie Roset (soprano), Beth Taylor (mezzo). Lucile Richardot (alto), Emiliano Gonzalez Toro (tenor), Christian Immler (bass); Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
Following superb recordings of Monteverdi's Vespers and Mozart's Requiem and a Gramophone Award-winning account of Bach's St Matthew Passion, the French ensemble turns to what Pichon describes as 'a visionary synthesis of the art of a man who here, more than anywhere else, gives meaning to the world in which he lives, and reveals to us all that lies beyond it.' Reviewing the recording last week, Early Music Review opined that 'Everything in this new recording of the B minor Mass is perfect – clarity, flawless instrumental technique and excellent voices – provided you want a performance that...owes much to the massive scale of the late romantic performance tradition.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ravel: Complete Works For Solo Piano
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano)
Bavouzet won both a Gramophone Award and a BBC Music Magazine Award for his recording of the Ravel piano concertos with Yan Pascal Tortelier and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2010, and now marks the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth with this set of the complete solo piano works. The French pianist writes: '[Ravel] does not confide in us intimately except on the rarest occasions. At these exceptional moments, our admiration for this musical giant, for his intelligence and elegant style of writing, for his perfect proportions, give way to a wave of emotion that is difficult to contain.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Schubert's Four Seasons
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano), Michael Collins (clarinet)
Following A Soprano’s Schubertiade and Elysium, Sampson and Middleton team up again for a Schubert recital themed around the changing seasons, including 'Frühlingsglaube', 'Die Forelle', 'Heidenröslein', 'Die Mainacht', 'Die Sommernacht', 'An den Mond in einer Herbstnacht' and 'Der Winterabend'; Michael Collins joins them for 'Der Hirt auf dem Felsen' (Schubert's penultimate composition), in which the eponymous shepherd dreams of the coming spring. The duo's previous all-Schubert album was applauded by Gramophone for its 'authority and intelligence' and described as 'a treasurable disc' by MusicWeb International.
Available Format: SACD
Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Gábor Bretz (Bluebeard), Rinat Shaham (Judith); Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Karina Canellakis
Two years on from their recording of the Concerto for Orchestra and the Four Pieces, the Dutch orchestra and their Music Director continue their Bartók series with one of Canellakis's favourite works: the composer's sole, one-act opera from 1911, in which a newly-wed gradually uncovers the disturbing fates of her husband's previous wives...The album received four stars in The Times this week, with Geoff Brown opining that 'Canellakis, her expressive singers and the feisty Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra definitely give value for money'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Virtuoso: Music for Euphonium & Brass Band
David Childs (euphonium), Black Dyke Band, Nicholas Childs
Described as 'a great ambassador for the euphonium' by The Observer, Childs is a third-generation brass-bander, and his programme here features arrangements of Mozart's 'Rondo alla Turca' and Evelyn Glennie's A Little Prayer by his father Robert (formerly principal euphonium and associate conductor of Black Dyke). The programme also include David's transcriptions of 'Largo al factotum' from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee', Karl Jenkins's arrangement of 'Danny Boy', Arban's Fantaisie et variations sur 'Le carnaval de Venise' (arr. Alan Catherall) and Peter Graham's Brillante (originally written as a duet for Childs's father and uncle).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Belle époque
Joseph Moog (piano)
The German pianist's collection of 'musical jewels from the golden decades of piano music' includes Rachmaninoff's transcription of Kreisler's 'Liebesfreud' and 'Liebesleid', Godowsky's arrangement of 'Triana' from Albéniz's Iberia, excerpts from Sergei Bortkiewicz's Lamentations and Consolations, Ravel's Jeux d'eau, York Bowen's Suite Mignonne, and miniatures by Chaminade, Mel Bonis, Alkan, Sibelius, Scharwenka and Respighi. Moog was named as Gramophone's Young Artist of the Year in 2015, when Bryce Morrison hailed him as 'already among the most brilliant of pianists'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Elfrida Andrée: Symphony No. 1 · Fritiof-Svit
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Hermann Bäumer
Born in Visby in 1841, Elfrida Andrée studied with Niels Gade and Ludvig Norman, and was organist at Gothenburg Cathedral for five decades; as well as being one of the first Scandinavian women to hold a professional position as an organist, in 1897 she also became the first Swedish woman to conduct an orchestra. Based on an epic poem by Esaias Tegnér, her opera Fritiofs saga was composed shortly afterwards, and was unsuccessfully submitted for the opening of the Stockholm Opera House: although the piece was never staged, the suite which Andrée compiled in 1909 became very popular in Sweden. It's coupled here with the early Symphony in C, premiered in Stockholm in 1869.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Milestones
Philippe Quint (violin), Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Andrew Litton
Quint makes his Pentatone debut with world premiere recordings of three works which were composed for him: Lera Auerbach's Violin Concerto No. 1 (which began life as a sonata when both of them were students), Errollyn Wallen's new Violin Concerto, and his mother Lora Kvint's Homer-inspired Odyssey-Rhapsody for violin and piano. Reviewing the first performance of Wallen's concerto last March, the Calgary Herald noted that 'the score is replete with many special effects for the soloist and challenging passages to play, and Quint showed himself to be fully equal to the considerable demands of the piece'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Attende Domine - Music For Lent & Passiontide
Bevan Family Consort, Graham Ross
This third album from the Bevan Family Consort (featuring sopranos Sophie and Mary) includes world premiere recordings of the six-voice Lamentations by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (from an edition by Francis Bevan) and family friend Neil Wright's Ave regina caelorum, plus Lotti's Crucifixus, Mel Bonis's Tantum ergo, Duruflé's Ubi caritas, Colin Mawby's Reproaches and works by Felix Mendelssohn, Baldassare Sartori, Bruckner, Poulenc, Purcell and Byrd. The choir's debut recording Vidi Speciosam was praised in the Sunday Times for the 'exquisite subtlety and clarity' of the singing, whilst Gramophone applauded the sopranos' 'soft-focus haze and blossomy, full-throated warmth'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mendelssohn: Sacred Choral Works
Latvian Radio Choir, Sigvards Kļava
The centrepiece of this album is the set of six motets which Mendelssohn composed in the mid-1840s (around the same time as Elijah): written for the Königlicher Domchor in Berlin, each is related to a specific feast-day in the liturgical year. The programme also includes the Three Psalms from the same period, the posthumously-published Jauchzet dem Herrn, alle Welt, the Deutsche Liturgie (composed at the request of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia), and Ehre sei dem Vater. The Latvian Radio Choir won a Gramophone Award in 2023 for its album of music by John Cage, and has been praised by BBC Music Magazine for the ' beguiling sophistication' of its singing.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Philippe d'Orléans: Suite d'Armide ou Jérusalem délivrée
Marie Lys (Herminie), Véronique Gens (Armide), Cyrille Dubois (Renaud), Victor Sicard (Tancrède), David Witczak (Le Sage Vieillard, Ismen, Tissapherne); Cappella Mediterranea, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Leonardo García Alarcón
The nephew of Louis XIV, Philippe d’Orléans was appointed regent after his uncle's death in 1715 and held the position until Louis XV came of age eight years later. A talented musician, he studied composition with Marc-Antoine Charpentier, André Campra and Charles-Hubert Gervais, and it was under the latter's guidance that he wrote this opera inspired by Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata; the work was premiered at Fontainebleau in 1704.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Verdi: Macbeth (Blu-ray)
Ludovic Tézier (Macbeth), Martina Serafin (Lady Macbeth), Vitalij Kowaljow (Banco), Saimir Pirgu (Macduff); Gran Teatre del Liceu, Giampaolo Bisanti, Christof Loy
Staged in Barcelona in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Christof Loy's predominantly monochromatic production prompted comparisons with early cinema. BachTrack noted that Tézier (making his debut in the title-role) displayed a 'rounded timbre, without any stridency in any register' and was fully attuned to Macbeth's 'submissive, contradictory, and fatalistic nature', as well as praising Kowaljow's 'imposing' Banquo.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Joan Sutherland: The Operas 1959-1970
Joan Sutherland (soprano), Richard Bonynge, John Pritchard, Ferdinand Leitner, Adrian Boult, Nino Sanzogno
The earliest recordings on this collection are a Don Giovanni with Carlo Maria Giulini and a live Alcina (with Fritz Wunderlich as Ruggiero), both from 1959; later highlights include Bellini's La sonnambula, Norma, Beatrice di Tenda and I Puritani, Donizetti's La fille du régiment and L'elisir d'amore, Rossini's Semiramide and another Alcina (all conducted by Richard Bonynge), plus excerpts from Bononcini's La Griselda and Graun's Montezuma. A second anthology comprising the opera recordings from 1971-1988 will follow later this year.
Available Format: 49 CDs
