Today's new releases include Haydn's Violin Concerto 'per il Luigi' from Kammerorchester Basel and Giovanni Antonini on Alpha Classics, Biber from Bojan Čičić and the Illyria Consort on Delphian, Mendelssohn's Ein Sommernachtstraum from Pablo Heras-Casado in Freiburg on Harmonia Mundi, and fin de siècle French music from the Neave Trio on Chandos.
Haydn 2032, Vol. 17: Per Il Luigi
Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini
The centrepiece of this seventeenth instalment of Antonini's Haydn project is the Violin Concerto in C - dedicated to the Pesaro-born virtuoso Luigi Tomasini, who led Prince Esterházy's court orchestra when Haydn was director. The album also includes Symphonies No. 13 (which includes a prefiguration of a theme in Mozart's 'Jupiter' Symphony), 16 and 36. The series has been praised as 'lively and incisive' (BBC Music Magazine) and 'vital and animated' (Gramophone), and will conclude around the tercentenary of Haydn's death in seven years' time.
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Heinrich Biber: Complete Violin Sonatas - 1681
Bojan Čičić (violin), The Illyria Consort
Following his recording of Johann Jakob Walther's Scherzi da violino, the Čičić and his consort turn to another set of works from late seventeenth-century Germany which broke new ground in terms of exploring and expanding the instrument's technical vocabulary. The album is Recording of the Month in the July issue of Gramophone, with Edward Breen marvelling at Čičić's combination of emotional depth with astonishing bravura' and declaring that 'pretty much everything about it speaks of an artist entering the golden phase of his career.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mendelssohn: Ein Sommernachtstraum
Max Urlacher, Freiburger Barockorchester, RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, Pablo Heras-Casado
Mendelssohn's incidental music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is presented here with German text, based on the translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel which the composer read before beginning work on the overture in 1826. The narrator here is German actor and film-maker Max Urlacher, who took the role of Samiel on René Jacobs's 2022 recording of Weber's Der Freischütz.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
La Mer
Neave Trio
Sally Beamish's ingenious transcription of Debussy's great symphonic depiction of the sea gives this album of French piano trios its title; the arrangement was commissioned by Trio Apaches in 2012, as a companion-piece for Beamish's The Seafarer. It's preceded here by Saint-Saëns's Piano Trio No. 2 from 1892 and two shorter pieces by Mel Bonis: 'Soir' and 'Matin', which prompted Saint-Saëns to exclaim 'I never thought a woman could write something such as this.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Corelli: Concerti Grossi Op. 6, 1-6
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Mayumi Hirasaki, Georg Kallweit
Five years on from their survey of Handel's Concerti Grossi Opp. 3 and 6 (which received five stars in BBC Music Magazine thanks to the 'commendably stylish' playing), Akamus and their concertmasters present the first set of Corelli's Op. 6 (published in 1714 but thought to have been written several decades earlier). The popularity of the works inspired the London printer John Walsh to publish Handel's Op. 3 - possibly without the composer's knowledge - in the 1730s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser and Granville Bantock: The Seal Woman
Yvonne Howard (The Cailleach - An Old Crone), Catherine Carby (The Seal-Woman), Catriona Hewitson (The Seal-Sister), Seumas Begg (The Islesman), Arthur Bruce (First Fisher), Christian Loizou (Second Fisher and The Water-Kelpie), Eve Pearson Maxwell, Caitlin Mackenzie, Amy Karensa (Three Swan-Maidens); The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, John Andrews, Benjamin Hamilton
Based on the legend of the 'selkie' (a mythical creature who shapeshifts between a seal and a mortal woman), this Celtic folk opera was premiered in Birmingham under Adrian Boult in 1924, with Kennedy-Fraser herself as the Cailleach ('divine hag') who sets the story in motion; the score incorporates a number of Hebridean folk-tunes which she had collected through extensive field-work, including ‘An Eriskay Love Lilt’, 'The Seal Woman's Sea Joy' and 'Sea Sounds'.
Available Format: 2 CDs
Isidora Žebeljan: Three Curious Loves
Daniel Rowland (violin), Žebeljan Orchestra, Arethusa Quartet, David Cohen
Isidora Žebeljan (1967-2020) was one of the most prominent Serbian composers of the late twentieth century, working in film and theatre as well as producing a large body of concert works and the opera Zora D. (centring on the disappearance of a Belgrade poetess in the 1930s). The title-work here is a violin concerto which was premiered by Rowland and the Stift Festival Orchestra in 2018; the album also includes the Sarabande for piano trio, the Polomka Quartet, the clarinet quintet Song of a Traveller in the Night, and Intimate Letter from Judean Desert.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Arnold Bax: Spring Fire
Alexander Baillie (cello), John Thwaites (piano)
This collection of Bax's complete music for cello and piano is named after a programmatic symphony which was written in 1913; although the piece was never performed in Bax's lifetime, he repurposed one of its melodies for the slow movement of his Cello Sonata in E flat minor a decade later. The programme also includes the Folk-Tale dedicated to Felix Salmond, the Cello Sonatina in D minor, and the Legend-Sonata which was commissioned by English cellist Florence Hooton in the early 1940s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Ukrainian Piano Quintets
Phoenix String Quartet, Violina Petrychenko (piano)
Established in Lviv in 2008, the Phoenix String Quartet devotes much of its time and energy to to championing neglected music from Ukraine, and here joins forces with compatriot Violina Petrychenko for two works from the first half of the twentieth century: Vasyl Barvinsky's Piano Quintet in G minor from 1912 (dedicated to the memory of Mykola Lysenko) and Borys Lyatoshynsky's Ukrainian Quintet from the early 1940s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
A Prayer For Deliverance
Tenebrae, Nigel Short
The title-work is a fifteen-part setting of Psalm 13 ('How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?') by Atlanta-based composer Joel Thompson in response to the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The programme also features Herbert Howells's Requiem, Francis Pott's The Souls Of The Righteous Are In The Hand Of God, and shorter works by John Tavener, Caroline Shaw, Joanna Marsh, Arthur Sullivan, and Richard Rodney Bennett.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Gabriel Jackson: Choral Works
The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral, David Newsholme, Jamie Rogers (organ)
This collection of sacred choral music by the Bermuda-born British composer (b.1962) includes his Mass of St Mary, the Coronation Canticles (commissioned to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in 2023), O quam gloriosum, Ave maris stella and Praise Ye The Lord, plus two solo organ works: the Canterbury Concertos and Southwark Symphonies. Jackson received part of his early musical education at Canterbury Cathedral, where he was chorister in the 1970s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Caldara: Gioseffo che interpreta i sogni
Margherita Maria Sala (Gioseffo), Luigi de Donato (Faraone), Arianna Venditelli (Sedecia), Eleonora Bellocci (Coppiere), Lorrie Garcia (Panatiere), Mauro Borgioni (Testo); Consort e Coro Maghini, Alessandro De Marchi
The Venetian composer Antonio Caldara was at the height of his fame when he wrote the oratorio Gioseffo che interpreta i sogni ('Joseph, the interpreter of dreams') for the Viennese imperial court in 1726; setting a libretto by Giovanni Battista Neri, the drama centres on the relationship between Joseph and the Pharaoh who has him released from captivity thanks to his gift for oneiromancy.
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
