Today's new releases include an early celebration of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's 150th birthday from violinist Curtis Stewart, the National Philharmonic and Michael Repper on Avie, the world premiere recording of Venetian Baroque composer Antonia Bembo's opera L'Ercole amante on cpo, two late works by Max Reger from Jaime Martín and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra on Ondine, and a dawn-to-dusk collaboration between The Gesualdo Six and trumpeter Matilda Lloyd on Hyperion.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint l'Ouverture, Ballade Op. 4, Suites From '24 Negro Melodies'
Curtis Stewart (violin), National Philharmonic, Michael Repper
Released to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's birth on 15th August, this album comprises the 1901 tone-poem composed in tribute to the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (presented here in a new edition by Michael Repper), the Ballade Op. 4 for Violin and Orchestra, the recently discovered suite Five Negro Melodies, and modern recompositions of a further three Negro Melodies arranged by Curtis Stewart, Hamilton Barry, and Andrew Roitstein.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Antonia Bembo: L'Ercole amante
Yannick Debus, Chelsea Marilyn Zurflüh, Anita Rosati, David Tricou, Il Gusto Barocco, Jörg Halubek
Born in Venice in 1640, Antonia Bembo studied with Cavalli as a teenager and relocated to Paris in her mid-thirties after separating from her husband; her music attracted the attention of Louis XIV, who provided her with housing and a pension. Composed in 1707, her opera on Hercules appears to have passed the Sun King by (perhaps because Cavalli had composed a work on the same theme for the royal wedding in 1660), and finally received its premiere in Stuttgart in 2023.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Max Reger: Four Tone Poems after Böcklin; Romantic Suite
Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Jaime Martín
Following three albums devoted to Brahms, Martín and his Swedish orchestra turn their attention to one of his most ardent admirers - perhaps best remembered for his huge body of works for the organ, Max Reger also composed a number of significant orchestral pieces in the later part of his career and was favourably regarded by Hindemith and Schoenberg. The tone poems on paintings by Arnold Böcklin (1913) include a response to Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), which had also inspired Rachmaninoff four years earlier.
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Radiant Dawn
Matilda Lloyd (trumpet), The Gesualdo Six, Owain Park
Spanning close to a millennium of music (both sacred and secular), this programme exploring the themes of dawn and dusk takes its title from one of James MacMillan's Strathclyde Motets and includes works by Judith Bingham, Deborah Pritchard, Owain Park, Alec Roth, Roxanna Panufnik, Hildegard of Bingen, and Thomas Tallis. The album closes with Geoffrey Burgon's Nunc dimittis, composed for the 1979 BBC dramatisation of John le Carré’s novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Brahms & Enescu: Violin Concertos
Charlie Siem (violin), Philharmonia Orchestra, Oleg Caetani
To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of George Enescu's death, Siem presents the first commercial recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with Enescu's 56-bar cadenza (which was championed by the young Yehudi Menuhin, a student of the composer). The concerto is followed by two short pieces by Enescu himself: the Ballade which he composed in his student days at the Paris Conservatoire, and the Aria and Scherzino (originally conceived as part of a projected Piano Quintet).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
British Music for Strings Vol. IV
Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, Douglas Bostock
The fourth instalment of Bostock's British Music series comprises Gordon Jacob's Denbigh Suite, Thomas Dunhill's Vectis Suite, Imogen Holst's Suite for String Orchestra, Alan Bush's Homage to William Sterndale Bennett, Thomas Pitfield's Theme And Variations, and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs's Shade and Shine. Reviewing Volume Two of the project in 2021, BBC Music Magazine declared that 'the playing is agreeably lively, and the world in general is a better place for Douglas Bostock’s love of unfamiliar repertoire'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Torrential Raindance
April Clayton (flute), Miguel del Águila (piano)
This collection of works by the Uruguayan-American composer/pianist Miguel del Águila (b.1957) comprises the dance-inspired Piano Rolls Flute, Torrential Raindance (composed during a drought in the American Southwest in 2023), Silencio (written to honour the composer's brother Nelson), the three-movement Sonata flautísima, and Malambo. Clayton and del Águila met in 2013 when she commissioned him to write a harp trio, and make their joint recording debut here.
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Michael Haydn: Complete Symphonies & Wind Concertos
Slovak Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss Am Rhein, Salzburger Hofmusik, Bohdan Warchal, Johannes Goritzki, Frank Beermann, Lavard Skou Larsen, Wolfgang Brunner
Originally released between 1993 and 2018, these recordings of orchestral works by the 'Salzburg Haydn' were described by MusicWeb International as 'a highly recommendable set...a useful opening into a world of eighteenth-century symphonic music not crowned by especial genius but by everyday charm and down-to-earth musical intelligence'.
Available Format: 16 CDs
