Today's new releases include Finnish orchestral works from Rumon Gamba in Oulu on Chandos, Strauss from Gianandrea Noseda in Zürich on Accentus, and the world premiere recordings of two recent American operas: Mark Adamo's Lysistrata from Odyssey Opera, and Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek's Breaking the Waves from Houston Grand Opera.
This third album of Finnish repertoire from Gamba and the Oulu Sinfonia comprises Sibelius’s Scaramouche Suite, Selim Palmgren's incidental music for the fairy-tale play Tuhkimo and the Princess (which blends the Cinderella story with Finnish folk tales), the suite drawn from Einar Englund's award-winning score for the 1952 horror film Valkoinen peura ('The White Reindeer'), and Kalervo Tuukkanen's Joulusarja ('Christmas Suite').
Available Formats: SACD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Noseda succeeded his compatriot Fabio Luisi as General Music Director of Zürich Opera in 2021, and chose Dvořak’s Symphony No. 8 for his inaugural symphonic concert with the orchestra; the results were issued on Accentus in 2023, and were hailed as 'really outstanding' by BBC Music Magazine. Two further live recordings are released on the label today - this all-Strauss programme comprising Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, the early Macbeth Overture and Four Symphonic Interludes from Intermezzo, and a complete set of the Brahms symphonies.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Premiered by Houston Grand Opera in 2005, Adamo's third opera was described by Variety as 'a compendium of accessible mid-twentieth century styles with echoes of Webern, Gershwin, Milhaud and Bernard Herrmann as well as jazz, Latin-American and Broadway elements'. Although the piece takes its cue from Aristophanes's comedy about a group of women who impose sexual sanctions in a bid to end the Peloponnesian War, Adamo writes 'The Nude Goddess is not your mother's Lysistrata. It's not even the one by Aristophanes.'
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Missy Mazzoli & Royce Vavrek: Breaking the Waves
Lauren Snouffer (Bess McNeill), Ryan McKinny (Jan Nyman), Maire Therese Carmack (Dodo McNeill), David Portillo (Dr Richardson), Michelle Bradley (Bess's Mother); Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers
Released to mark the tenth anniversary of the work's premiere, this is the first recording of Mazzoli and Vavrek's opera inspired by Lars von Trier's 1996 film about a deeply religious young woman who is encouraged to take lovers by her husband after he suffers life-changing injuries whilst working on an oil-rig. Reviewing this Houston performance, Texas Classical Review hailed Snouffer's 'powerhouse performance' as the troubled Bess (played by Emily Watson in the film).
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
This fourth volume in Cordes's Music From The Hanseatic States series focuses on seventeenth-century Hamburg, and includes pieces by Hieronymous Praetorius, Johannes Schop, Matthias Weckmann, Christoph Bernhard, and Thomas Selle. The recording was made at the New Church in the Örgryte district of Gothenburg, which is home to the world’s largest mean-tone-tuned organ - dedicated in 2000, the instrument is based on the designs of seventeenth-century German organ-builder Arp Schnitger and contains nearly 4000 pipes.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
The Salzburg-based, all-female Constanze Quartett specialises in championing the music of neglected composers, and began its survey of the string quartets of Emilie Mayer (1812-83) back in 2023 - the first instalment was warmly welcomed by The Strad, who described the quartet as a 'persuasive advocate' for the work of a 'remarkably able composer in terms of mastering chamber music textures'. Mayer composed a dozen string quartets, of which only seven survive: this second volume comprises the Quartet in G minor Op. 14 and a work without opus in F major.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
The principal clarinet of the Philharmonia Orchestra is joined by four colleagues for three clarinet quintets: the title-work by Anna Clyne was premiered via livestream in 2021, and was inspired by American cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop. It's followed by Ruth Gipps's single-movement Rhapsody from 1942, and the Clarinet Quintet which Carl Maria von Weber composed for the German virtuoso clarinettist Heinrich Baermann in the 1810s.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Premiered at the Bregenzer Festspiele last August (in an innovative staging by tenor and director Andrew Staples), this theatrical song-cycle on the poems of Emily Dickinson was welcomed by Gramophone for the Pulitzer-winning composer's 'confident, wide-reaching manner of expression'; in a four-star review of the recording earlier this year, The Times applauded DiDonato's 'powerful conviction' and Time For Three's 'alternately gutsy and tender' contributions. Released digitally in January, the album is now issued on CD.
Available Format: CD
This intriguing programme from Australian pianist and composer Joseph Havlat (who featured on Sally Beamish's recent seventieth-birthday album House of Wonder) takes its title from a co-composition between Michael Finnissy and Cassandra Miller which is based on the African-American spiritual of the same name. The programme also includes Robert Schumann's Geistervariationen and Finnissy's response to the piece from 2021, plus Miller's Philip the Wanderer (commissioned by pianist Philip Thomas and premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2012).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Verdi: La forza del destino (Blu-ray)
Anna Netrebko (Leonora), Brian Jagde (Don Alvaro), Ludovic Tézier (Don Carlo), Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (Preziosilla), Alexander Vinogradov (Padre Guardiano), Teatro Alla Scala, Riccardo Chailly, Leo Muscato
This new production of Forza was filmed at La Scala in late 2024, and was described as 'eye-catching and ambitious' by BachTrack: Muscato sets each act of the opera in a different period, taking in the War of the Austrian Succession, the American Civil War, World War One, and the present day. Tézier's Don Carlo received unanimous critical praise, with The Opera Critic describing his performance as 'flawless...a real singing masterclass', whilst OperaWire praised Netrebko's 'remarkable histrionic intensity and technical control' as Leonora.
Available Format: Blu-ray
