New releases from early December include a Mozart Requiem with a difference from Manfred Honeck in Pittsburgh (with a guest appearance from F. Murray Abraham) on Reference Recordings, André Tchaikowsky's two piano concertos from Peter Jablonski, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Łukasz Borowicz on Ondine, Mahler's Symphony No. 7 from Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra on the orchestra's own label, and Chopin & Scriabin from Mikhail Pletnev on Deutsche Grammophon.
Requiem: Mozart's Death in Words and Music
F. Murray Abraham, Jeanine De Bique (soprano), Catriona Morison (mezzo), Ben Bliss (tenor), Tareq Nazmi (bass); Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Westminster Choir, The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Manfred Honeck
With a new adaptation of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus due for release on Sky Atlantic this month, the actor who played Salieri in Miloš Forman's 1984 film joins Honeck and his team in Pittsburgh to tell the story of Mozart's final days. The programme includes a complete account of the Requiem, as well as the Masonic Funeral Music, the 'Laudate Dominum' and Ave verum corpus, woven together with plainchant, poetry by Nelly Sachs, and readings from the composer's letters and the Book of Revelations.
Available Formats: SACD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
André Tchaikowsky: Two Piano Concertos & Piano Sonata
Peter Jablonski (piano), Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Łukasz Borowicz
No relation to the better-known Tchaikovsky, André Tchaikowsky was born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer in 1935; he was given a new name after being smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto as a child. This is the world premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1 from 1957 and the first studio recording of No. 2, which was premiered by Radu Lupu in 1975. (A passionate Shakespearean, Tchaikowsky bequeathed his skull to the RSC so that he could posthumously appear as Yorick in Hamlet - although numerous actors and directors were squeamish about this, David Tennant fulfilled his wish in Gregory Doran's 2008 production).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Mahler: Symphony No. 7
National Symphony Orchestra - The Kennedy Center, Gianandrea Noseda
This recorded was captured across three concerts which the National Symphony Orchestra gave at the Kennedy Center last spring; reviewing one of the performances, Washington Classical Review noted that 'Noseda managed to make this odd assembly of incongruous ideas sound unified...embrac[ing] the work’s contradictions and broad comic strokes.' The Italian conductor writes: 'It's always difficult for me to decide which works stands out among Mahler's symphonies...For the moment, the Seventh holds a very dear place in my heart.'
Available Formats: SACD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Chopin & Scriabin: Préludes
Mikhail Pletnev (piano)
The Russian pianist recorded these accounts of Chopin's 24 Préludes Op. 28 and Scriabin's 24 Préludes Op. 11 over a single day in Berlin last November. Reviewing the results last week, International Piano's Bryce Morrison declared that 'his playing [is] radically different to the heaven-storming bravura that marked his youthful triumph at the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition...Whatever you think of it, this is a performance that sounds improvised on the spot.'
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Autumn Aubade
Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet), Roland Pöntinen (piano)
The title-work here was written for Hardenberger and Pöntinen by Mark-Anthony Turnage in 2023, whose concertos From the Wreckage (2005) and For Håkan (2014) were also composed for the Swedish trumpeter. The programme also includes Staffan Storm's Three Autumns, 'Bossa nova' from HK Gruber's 3 MOB Pieces, Pöntinen's own 'Bluebird Dream' and 'Prélude d’automne', Ornette Coleman's 'Chanting', and James van Heusen's 'The September of my Years'.
Available Format: SACD
JS Bach: The Complete Works For Keyboard, Vol. 11
Benjamin Alard (harpsichord)
Launched in 2017, Alard's Bach series has been hailed by Gramophone as 'the sort of music-making that, its intellectual grasp notwithstanding, clearly emanates from the heart', whilst BBC Music Magazine observed that 'Alard’s playing bears down on the music with exacting clarity and focus'. Recorded on a Hass harpsichord from 1740 and an English Kirkman built in 1757, this eleventh volume brings together all of the works which Bach published as Clavier-Übungen I and II: the six Partitas, the Italian Concerto and Overture in the French Style.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol. 9
Brahms Trio
Back in 2020, the first instalment of this intriguing series from the Brahms Trio was praised by Fanfare for their 'probing, strongly characterised, and tonally euphonious' playing. This ninth volume focuses on works composed by expatriates between the two World Wars, and comprises Alexander Gretchaninov's Piano Trio No. 2 from 1931, Alexander Tcherepnin's sole Piano Trio from 1925, Daniele Amfitheatrof's A May (1932), and Jacob Weinberg's Piano Trio on Hebrew Themes from the early 1930s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Michael Finnissy: Organ Works
Forrest Eimold (organ)
This is one of two sets released to mark the eightieth birthday of English composer Michael Finnissy, with a collection of his piano music from Ian Pace due to follow next week. Recorded at Blackburn Cathedral and the Memorial Church of Harvard University, the programme comprises the four Organ Symphonies (which were written between 1962 and 2008), the 7 Hymn-Tune Preludes, ...ere the set of sun... (composed for a school production of Macbeth), the student work Xunthaeresis, and Blackburn, which quotes an aria from Handel's Joshua.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Pur ti miro
Wu Wei (sheng), Martin Stegner (viola), Janne Saksala (double bass)
Two members of the Berlin Philharmonic join forces with sheng player Wu Wei to uncover new colours and sonorities in a programme of Baroque music comprising Monteverdi's madrigal 'Si dolce è il tormento' and the titular duet from L'incoronazione di Poppea, 'La Folia' from Vivaldi's Trio Sonata in D minor (RV 63) and JS Bach's Trio Sonata No. 1 in E flat Major (BWV 525), rounded off with a new arrangement of the Norwegian folk tune 'Bruremarsj frå Beiarn' ('Wedding March from Beiarn').
Available Formats: CD, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Friedrich Gulda Edition
Friedrich Gulda
Spanning half a century, this 85-disc anthology ranges from the Austrian pianist-composer's earliest recordings for Decca (made when he was only seventeen) to his final Mozart sessions in Attersee just a few months before his death in 2000. Taking in concertos, solo repertoire, chamber music and live recital recordings, the set includes two complete cycles of Beethoven sonatas and Debussy's Préludes, numerous CD premieres, and the first release of a Bach Toccata recording from 1947 which was only recently unearthed.
Available Format: 85 CDs
John Williams: Complete Philips Recordings
Boston Pops Orchestra, John Williams
This collection celebrates the great film composer's parallel career as a concert conductor, bringing together all of the recordings which he made for Philips during the first decade of his tenure as Principal Conductor of the Boston Pops (Williams succeeded the long-serving Arthur Fiedler in 1979). Highlights include Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (narrated by Dudley Moore), Holst's The Planets, a Christmas album from 1980, Bernstein by Boston, and Salute To Hollywood; an all-American song recital with Jessye Norman (with Williams as pianist) rounds out the set in fine style.
Available Format: 21 CDs
Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus
Hilde Güden (Rosalinde), Waldemar Kmentt (Eisenstein), Giuseppe Zampieri (Alfred), Erika Köth (Adele), Regina Resnik (Orlofsky), Peter Klein (Blind), Walter Berry (Falke), Eberhard Wächter (Franke), Erich Kunz (Frosch); Wiener Philharmoniker, Wiener Staatsopernchor, Herbert Von Karajan
Described as 'the most luxuriantly Viennese of all Fledermice' by BBC Music Magazine, Karajan's 1960 recording of Strauss's champagne-drenched operetta incorporates a glittering extended gala scene with guests including Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price and Jussi Björling. To mark the bicentenary of the composer's birth, it is released in a new remastering from the original stereo mastertapes at 24-bit/192kHz and presented in deluxe packaging with a facsimile of the original booklet.
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
