Maurice Greene: Jephtha
Andrew Staples (Jephtha), Mary Bevan (Jephtha’s Daughter), Michael Mofidian (First Elder), Jeremy Budd (Second Elder), Jessica Cale, Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn
This is the world premiere recording of Greene's 1737 oratorio, which predates Handel's better-known setting of the same story by fourteen years; unlike Handel and his librettist Thomas Morell (who introduced a deus ex machina to bring about a happy ending), Greene and John Hoadley retained the original tragic denouement in which Jephtha's daughter is indeed sacrificed in exchange for her father's victory over the Ammonites.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
The Complete Songs of Ravel
Lorna Anderson, Julie Boulianne, John Chest, Sarah Dufresne, Dafydd Jones, Simon Keenlyside, Paul Murrihy, Nicky Spence, William Thomas, Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Released to mark the 150th anniversary of Ravel's birth, this collection of his complete songs received four stars in The Guardian last week, with Andrew Clements singling out Paula Murrihy's 'sultry intensity' in Shéhérazade (where flautist Lisa Friend joins for the second song 'La flûte enchantée') and Simon Keenlyside's handling of Histoires Naturelles with 'precisely the right light touch'. The project follows Martineau's equally acclaimed surveys of the songs of Poulenc, Fauré and Duparc, which featured several of the same singers as this new set.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Cellotango
Ophélie Gaillard (cello)
Following albums celebrating the nightlife of eighteenth-century London and Naples, the French cellist sets her sights on Argentina with a tango-inspired programme including music by Astor Piazzólla's 'La muerte del angel', 'Oblivion', and 'Fuga y misterio', Alberto Ginastera's 'Puneña No. 2', 'Pampeana No. 2' and Dos Canciones, plus pieces by Gerardo Rodríguez, Rosita Melo, Osvaldo Pugliese, and Julián Plaza.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Bruckner & Gesualdo: Motets
Monteverdi Choir, Jonathan Sells
The Monteverdis marked their own sixtieth birthday and the bicentenary of Bruckner's birth last October with concerts in Ely, Oxford and Greenwich which combined his motets with those of Carlo Gesualdo (another volatile outsider whose music was strongly linked to his Catholic faith); the programme also includes Lotti's eight-part Crucifixus and Wagner's adaptation of Palestrina's Stabat mater.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Beethoven/5 Vol. 3
Jonathan Biss (piano), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto
Biss launched the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra back in 2015, inviting five composers to respond to each of Beethoven's piano concertos with a new companion work. Following Brett Dean's Gneixendorf Music - A Winter Journey and Sally Beamish's City Stanzas (written as couplings for Piano Concertos Nos. 5 and 1 respectively), this latest volume presents Piano Concerto No. 2 alongside Timo Andres's The Blind Banister, which takes its title from an image in Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer's Schubertiana; the work was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
An English Pastoral
Chu-Yu Yang (violin), Eric McElroy (piano)
Bookended with two works by Ian Venables (the 1989 Flute Sonata in the composer's version for violin and the Severn Valley-inspired Three Pieces from 1986), this recital focuses on three English pastoralists: Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss and Gerald Finzi. The seven pieces by Gurney receive their world premiere recordings here, and were composed during 1908-9 before he began his studies with Charles Villiers Stanford; Bliss is represented by his single-movement Violin Sonata from c. 1914, and Finzi by the Elegy which he composed in response to the deaths of his three brothers and his teacher Ernest Farrar in World War I.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Spain on Fire
Quiteria Muñoz (soprano), Fahmi Alqhai (viola da gamba), Accademia del Piacere
Subtitled 'Divine and Human Passions in the Spanish Baroque', this collection of songs and dances includes music by Alonso Mudarra, Antonio de Cabezón, Luis de Briceño, Antonio Martín y Coll and Mateo Flecha the Elder, plus gambist and musicologist Fahmi Alqhai's own Folias de Espana. The early music ensemble Accademia del Piacere won an Opus Klassik Award in 2020 for Muera Cupido, an album of Spanish Baroque love-songs with soprano Núria Rial.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Luise Adolpha Le Beau: Chamber Music
Nadia Steinhardt (mezzo), Le Beau Ensemble
Born in Baden-Baden in 1850, Luise Adolpha Le Beau studied the piano with Clara Schumann and composition with Franz Lachner and Joseph Rheinberger, and left a substantial body of work including two oratorios, a piano concerto and an opera (The Enchanted Caliph) as well as a significant number of songs and chamber works. This album includes the Piano Quartet which was published in 1884, plus arrangements of five sets of Lieder for mezzo-soprano and piano quartet; the Le Beau Ensemble was formed in Germany in 2019 to champion her music, and won a ZONTA Award in 2023.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ukraine: A Piano Portrait
Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
Three years on from her fundraising collaboration with filmmaker Viktoriia Levchenko (which featured music by Sergei Bortkiewicz and raised money for emergency vehicles in Ukraine), Fingerhut presents a programme of solo piano works written by Ukrainian composers between 1877 and 2005, including Bortkiewicz's Les Rochers d'Outche-Coche, Valentyn Sylvestrov's Three Bagatelles, Boris Lyatoshynsky's Two Preludes, and Viktor Kosenko's Nocturne-Fantaisie.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Puccini: Le Villi
Anita Hartig (Anna), Kang Wang (Roberto), Boris Pinkhasovich (Guglielmo) Munich Radio Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Chorus, Ivan Repušić
Centring on a betrayed young woman who exerts revenge on her faithless lover from beyond the grave, Puccini's first opera began life as a one-act work which was composed for the Casa Musicale Sonzogno Competition in 1883; although Puccini was disqualified thanks to his terrible handwriting, supporters including the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito funded a production which attracted the attention of the publisher Giulio Ricordi who encouraged the young man to expand it into the two-act version which is commonly heard today. This recording was made from a concert-performance in Munich last October, given to mark the centenary of Puccini's death.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
