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Shostakovich: The Cello Concertos
Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
Made live at Boston's Symphony Hall in October 2023, these recordings were released at the end of last month as part of the Boston/Nelsons Shostakovich box-set comprising the complete symphonies, concertos and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and are now available separately. Reviewing the box a couple of weeks ago, my colleague James observed that 'If forced to choose I would say that the second movement of the first [cello] concerto is the highlight of the entire set: Ma and the orchestral strings imbue their parts with luminous intensity and vivid sonorities, resulting in a passionate, poignant reading'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 'Pathétique' & Souvenir de Florence
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Domingo Hindoyan
This recording of Symphony No. 6 was made from concerts at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in November 2021, shortly after Hindoyan made his debut as Chief Conductor; reviewing the performance, BachTrack noted that 'although the most intense moments of the symphony blazed ferociously, it was the quietest passages which left the deepest impression'. Souvenir de Florence (originally written for string sextet but given here in an arrangement for string orchestra) was recorded at The Tung Auditorium in Liverpool last June.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mieczysław Weinberg: String Quartets, Vol. 5
Arcadia Quartet
This penultimate release in the Arcadia Quartet's Weinberg series features three works from different stages of the composer's career: the three-movement String Quartet No. 3 from 1944 (the first work which he wrote after leaving Tashkent for Moscow), No. 9 from 1963 (composed whilst Weinberg and Shostakovich were engaged in what the latter called a friendly 'quartet competition'), and No. 14 from 1978, which is dedicated to Shostakovich's pupil Yuri Levitin. The programme is completed by the Improvisation and Romance from 1950, written under the constraints of the anti-formalist 'Zhdanov Doctrine' which remained in place until Stalin's death three years later, but still suffused with the composer's distinctive musical personality.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Salieri: Cublai, Gran Kan De' Tartari
Mirco Palazzi (Cublai), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (TImur), Marie Lys (Alzima), Fabio Capitanucci (Orcano); Les Talens Lyriques, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Christophe Rousset
Following their well-received recordings of Les Horaces, Armida, Les Danaïdes, Tarare and La Grotta di Trofonio, Rousset and his ensemble continue their Salieri project with a comic opera which received its first performances just a year ago: Cublai, gran kan de’ Tartari was composed in 1788, but the planned premiere was cancelled by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in the wake of the Habsburg–Ottoman War.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Women
Esther Abrami (violin), Kim Barbier (piano), Lavinia Meijer (harp), Esther Abrami Quintet, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Irene Delgado-Jiménez
The main event on this programme of music by female composers is the world premiere recording of Irish composer Ina Boyle's Violin Concerto from the early 1930s, which was dedicated to the memory of her mother and shares a certain kinship with Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending. The album also features Abrami's own arrangement of Ethel Smyth's March of the Women (overlaid with an original recording of a 1908 speech given by Emmeline Pankhurst in Hyde Park), plus music by Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Anne Dudley, Rachel Portman, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Teresa Carreño and Jewish poet and composer Ilse Weber, who was a children's night nurse at Theresienstadt and died at Auschwitz in 1944.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Beethoven & Lentz
Arabella Steinbacher (violin), Luxembourg Philharmonic, Gustavo Gimeno
The German violinist pairs Beethoven's Violin Concerto with a new work which was written for her by Luxembourg-born composer Georges Lentz between 2019 and 2022: subtitled '...to beam in distant heavens...', it was inspired by Lentz's long-standing fascination with astronomy and with the poetry and art of William Blake. The piece was premiered by Steinbacher and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2023, when Limelight Magazine mused that 'this transcendent sonic construction seems for much of its existence to be hovering just out of reach in the spheres, an ephemeral dance with silence'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Fazil Say: Violin Concerto No. 2
Friedemann Eichhorn (violin), Sào Soulez Larivière (viola), Maciej Kułakowski (cello), Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Gropius Quartett, Christoph Eschenbach
Composed during the first weeks of the 2020 COVID lockdown, the Turkish composer-pianist's Violin Concerto No. 2 was inspired by the early-morning walks which he took on the beach by his home in Urla (on the coast of the Aegean Sea): Say reflects that 'each sunrise had its own colour, texture and atmosphere which subsequently flowed into the composition.' The album also includes Leopards for string sextet, the solo sonata which Say dedicated to the memory of Turkish viola-player Ruşen Güneş (given here in the version for violin) and the string quartet Divorce, which charts the breakdown of a relationship.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Hommages
United Strings of Europe, Julian Azkoul
This fifth BIS album from United Strings of Europe celebrates musical traditions, from the myth of Apollo and the muses of Greek antiquity to twentieth-century icons Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla. The programme features the world premiere recordings of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Einstein-inspired Organum Light and Julian Azkoul's chamber arrangement of Stravinsky’s neo-classical ballet Apollon musagète, plus Osvaldo Golijov's Last Round (a tribute to his compatriots Gardel and Piazzolla), and two works by Olli Mustonen: the Second Nonet and Apotheosis, which was written in memory of Pablo Casals and inspired by Bach's chorale preludes.
Available Format: SACD
Mozart: Haffner-Akademie
Anna Prohaska (soprano), Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi
The Haffner Symphony sits at the heart of a programme which also includes the concert-aria 'Ch'io mi scordi di te?', 'Deh vieni' from Le nozze di Figaro, 'Non più di fiori' from La clemenza di Tito, 'Traurigkeit' from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 'D'Oreste, d'Aiace' and 'Se il padre perdei' from Idomeneo, and 'Come scoglio' from Così fan tutte. The release coincides with Prohaska's debut as Fiordiligi in Montreal this week, directed by Thomas Hampson and conducted by Rafael Payare.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Jewish Vienna
Chen Reiss (soprano), Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, Daniel Großmann
Three years on from their album of songs, arias and overtures by the Mendelssohn siblings, Reiss and Großmann explore the rich cultural world of the Austrian capital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: their programme comprises Zemlinsky's Walzer-Gesänge nach toskanischen Volksliedern von Ferdinand Gregorovius, Josefine Winter's 'Im Buchenwald', Korngold's Four Shakespeare Songs and Songs of the Clown (all arranged by Tal-Haim Samnon), the Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 10 (in a version for chamber orchestra by by Cliff Colnot), and Nicholas Hersh's transcription of Alfred Grünfeld's Kleine Serenade.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Hallelujah Junction
Lukas Geniušas (piano), Anna Geniushene (piano)
Taking its title from John Adams's 1996 work for two pianos (itself named after a truck-stop near the California–Nevada border), this all-American programme also includes Bernstein's arrangement of Copland's El Salón México, 'Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues' from Frederic Rzewski's Four North American Ballads, Stravinsky's own two-piano transcription of the chamber concerto Dumbarton Oaks, Gregory Stone's arrangement of Gershwin's Cuban Overture, and Colin McPhee's Balinese Ceremonial Music.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ancient Modernity
Louise McMonagle (cello)
This first solo album from the Glasgow-born cellist (known for her work with the Riot Ensemble) is a recital of works by contemporary composers who draw inspiration from influences including folk tunes, ancient Gaelic psalmody and Baroque bass lines: the programme includes Errollyn Wallen's Postcard for Magdalena, Josephine Stephenson's Anamnesis, John Maxwell Geddes's Callanish IV, Liza Lim's Cello Playing ~ as Meteorology, Caroline Shaw's In manus tuas, and Zoe Martlew's Salat Babilya (inspired by Iraqi music and the sound of the Arabic oud).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Clare O'Connell: Light Flowing
Clare O'Connell (cello), Eleanor Turner (harp), Marianne Schofield (double bass)
O'Connell presents a sequence of contemporary works which share what she describes as 'an introverted introspective simplicity, which I hoped would transport the listener to a place of peace': bookended by two sets by Edmund Finnis (Three Solos and Figures of Eight for cello and double bass), it features Ivor-nominated Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's Opened, Natalie Klouda's ÜhtĆeare, Emily Hall's You Sail to the Sky (inspired by Nick Drake's Cello Song), Nick Martin's Vocalise, and Alex Mills's Zenith.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
