As it's a relatively quiet time of year for new releases, this week we've decided to round up a few of our most popular titles from the past few months which slipped under the radar the first time around - including a nature-themed concept-album from The Hermes Experiment on Delphian, a 150th-birthday tribute to Ravel from Cristian Măcelaru in Paris on Naïve, an homage to trailblazing cellist Lise Cristiani from Sol Gabetta on Sony, and Beethoven from Jordan-born pianist Karim Said, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Domingo Hindoyan on Rubicon.
Ravel Paris 2025
Orchestre National de France, Chœur de Radio France, Cristian Măcelaru
The French orchestra's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Ravel's birth includes what Gramophone described as 'beautifully played, dapper accounts' of Le Tombeau de Couperin, Ma Mère l'Oye, La Valse, Boléro, Rapsodie Espagnole, and Daphnis et Chloé. The orchestra's recent US tour with some of this repertoire was warmly received, with Musical America noting that the musicians 'offered vivid testimony to Ravel’s orchestral wizardry' and BachTrack enthusing that their Boléro was 'masterfully paced, slowly building from an imperceptibly quiet opening to a thrillingly explosive finish'.
Available Format: 3 CDs
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3, Piano Sonatas 24 & 28
Karim Said (piano), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Domingo Hindoyan
This first concerto recording from the Jordan-born pianist (a relative of cultural critic and activist Edward Said) sees him joining forces with long-term friend Domingo Hindoyan for a work which was central to the repertoire of their mentor Daniel Barenboim, who has championed Said since the pianist's childhood. Reviewing the album last month, Gramophone described Said as 'a pure and sincere talent that comes with no ego attached', whilst BBC Music Magazine declared that 'it's one of those performances in which, as a listener, you feel in entirely safe hands'.
Watch Karim Said performing part of the programme at Presto in October.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Lise Cristiani
Sol Gabetta (cello), Irina Zahharenkova (piano), Cappella Gabetta
Gabetta's new album marks the bicentenary of Lise Cristiani, who was the first woman to forge a professional career as a cellist; after making her debut in Paris in 1845, she toured Europe extensively and later travelled across Siberia to perform in the Kamchatka Peninsula (where she died of cholera aged 25). The programme includes music by virtuoso cellist-composer Adrien-François Servais (with whom Cristiani became friends) and Offenbach, plus transcriptions of Schubert Lieder and a fantasia on motifs from Rossini's Guillaume Tell by Dutch cellist Alexandre Batta.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Tree
The Hermes Experiment
The winner of our Concept Album of the Year award, this programme of music inspired by the natural world includes recent works by Laura Moody, Hannah Peel, Marianne Schofield, Fergus Hall and the ensemble's own Oliver Pashley, plus new arrangements of Abel Selaocoe's Buhle Bendalo, Cécile Chaminade's La lune paresseuse, Jacquet de la Guerre's Les rossignols and Errollyn Wallen's Tree.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Kirill Petrenko conducts Arnold Schoenberg
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Berliner Philharmoniker, Kirill Petrenko
Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic belatedly mark Schoenberg's 150th birthday with this collection comprising Verklärte Nacht (in the 1943 version for string orchestra), the Chamber Symphony No. 1, the Violin Concerto, Variations for Orchestra, and the oratorio fragment Die Jakobsleiter ('Jacob’s Ladder'). In a five-star review in September, The Guardian pronounced the latter work the absolute highlight of the set, whilst Gramophone opined that the anthology 'sets a modern standard for performance of this music' thanks to Petrenko's 'charisma, intensity, and cardinal virtues of fluent but absolute control over both line and detail'.
Available Format: 3 CDs + Blu-Ray Video
A Vision in A Dream
Jennifer Galloway (oboe), Ross Knight (tuba), Rachel Roberts (viola), Edward Gregson (piano), BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Ben Gernon
Perhaps best known for his works for brass and wind ensemble, the English composer Edward Gregson received a Classical Ivor nomination last year for his viola concerto Three Goddesses, which sits at the heart of this collection marking his eightieth birthday. The album also includes his Tuba Concerto (1977) and the Coleridge-inspired oboe concerto A Vision in a Dream; Gregson himself is the piano soloist in A Song for Bram (written in memory of the conductor Bramwell Tovey) and A Song for Sue (composed last year and dedicated to Gregson's wife).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Divisions - John Jenkins: The Virtuoso Consort
Fretwork, Silas Wollston (organ)
This is the third album which the British viol consort has devoted to the music of John Jenkins, the English composer who performed at the courts of both Charles I and II (spending the Commonwealth years as a household musician and tutor to rural Royalist families). BBC Music Magazine awarded the recording five stars thanks to the palyers' ability to 'weave melodic lines with virtuosity, harnessing the delicious interplay between dissonance and consonance', whilst Gramophone noted that 'this repertory is Fretwork's core and they perform it with customary polish'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Baroque Encores
David Fray (piano)
This programme of Baroque favourites is partially drawn from the L’Enfant oublié project which Fray curated with his wife, the actress and director Chiara Muti: the project explored the story of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's young son Louis-Joseph, who died just a few days before the Bastille was stormed. The repertoire includes Bach transcriptions by Siloti, Kempff, Busoni and Feinberg, and works by Rameau, Royer, Domenico Scarlatti and François Couperin.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Rameau: Pygmalion - Iso: Zémide
Reinoud Van Mechelen (Pygmalion/director), Ema Nikolovska (Céphise/Zémide), Virginie Thomas (La statue animée), Gwendoline Blondeel (L'Amour), Philippe Estèphe (Phasis); A Nocte Temporis, Chœur de Chambre de Namur
Van Mechelen’s Baroque ensemble pairs two one-act works from the mid-eighteenth century, both of which deal with transformations wrought by Cupid: in Pygmalion the boy-god is urged by his mother Venus to animate a sculptor's creation, whilst in Zémide his arrow disarms the eponymous queen and causes her to fall in love with the river-god Phasis.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
