dealer information service: no. 339 april 2020 highlights · releases from the world’s finest...

APRIL 2020 HIGHLIGHTS

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DEALER INFORMATION SERVICE: NO. 339

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About this Release

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Homage to Godowsky Andrey Gugnin CDA68310 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 HYPERION

An anniversary accolade with a twist: one hundred and fifty years after his birth, this is a wonderful recital of some of the many works dedicated to Leopold Godowsky. It’s difficult to imagine more persuasive performances than these by Andrey Gugnin, who makes a second appearance on Hyperion after his universally—and vociferously—acclaimed Shostakovich.

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Highlight of the Month

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About this Release


Fading The Gesualdo Six, Owain Park

CDA68285 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 HYPERION

From the twelfth century (Saint Hildegard) to the twenty-first, the voices of The Gesualdo Six weave a meditative reflection around the ancient Office of Compline in a moving sequence of music from fourteen composers.

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Juan Esquivel Missa Hortus conclusus; Magnificant & motets

De Profundis, Eamonn Dougan

CDA68326 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 HYPERION

The lush foliage of Juan Esquivel’s ‘enclosed garden’ is expertly tended by De Profundis, who reveal the neglected output of another master of the Spanish Renaissance.

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About this Release


Johannes Brahms The Complete Songs, Vol. 9

Robin Tritschler, Graham Johnson, Harriet Burns

CDJ33129 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 HYPERION

The heady, youthful tenor of Robin Tritschler is our guide through more of those musical riches which constitute Brahms’s complete song output. Volume 9 is a rewarding journey spanning more than three decades of the composer’s creative life.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10

Andrew Haveron, Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, John Wilson

CHAN 20135 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CHANDOS

Andrew Haveron and John Wilson deliver a fresh and intensely idiomatic reading of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, coupled with the formidable String Sextet.

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Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, Op. 103 ‘The Year 1905’

BBC Philharmonic, John Storgårds

CHSA 5278 £9.00 1 HYBRID SACD 27/03/20 CHANDOS

The BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds performs Shostakovich’s monumental Eleventh Symphony The Year 1905, which commemorates the St Petersburg uprising.

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Gabriel Fauré Noctune - A Fauré Recital, Volume 2

Louise Lortie

CHAN 20149 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CHANDOS

Louis Lortie’s second volume of Fauré features Nocturnes, Barcarolles, and the Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, along with transcriptions of the ‘Pie Jesu’ and ‘In paradisum’ from the Requiem.

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Edward Gregson Music of the Angels - Works for Symphonic Brass and Percussion

London Brass, Rumon Gamba

CHAN 20127 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CHANDOS

This outstanding programme contains all of Gregson’s significant works for Symphonic Brass, including the seminal Brass Quintet, the Symphony in two movements and Music of the Angels.

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George Frideric Handel Messiah

Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann

ACC30499 £14.58 2 CD 03/04/20 ACCENTUS MUSIC

Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is one of the most sung oratorios in the world and its great choruses and arias can be heard on countless classical collections. From its premiere to the present day, this great sacred work enjoys almost unbroken popularity and has always fascinated audiences and musicians alike. In the chapter “Resurrection of George Frideric Handel” of his book “Decisive Moments in History”, Stefan Zweig provides a particularly colourful description of Handel’s “Messiah”. Starting from the fresh spirit of the work, he creates a lively story that lets the reader look over his shoulder as he composes the work. In it, he illustrates the timelessness and special position of this great composition in the context of music history. In September 2019, the choir and orchestra of the Gaechinger Cantorey, under the direction of their principal conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann, got to the bottom of this singular work and, together with an excellent quintet of soloists, recorded this stirring and masterly interpretation.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Toccatas

Masaaki Suzuki

BIS2221 £9.00 1 HYBRID SACD 27/03/20 BIS

Very little is known about the origin of J. S. Bach’s seven Toccatas (BWV 910–916) or of their use. They are believed to have been written before 1717 or the end of Bach’s Weimar period – but it is quite possible that at least some of them were drafted before he arrived there in 1707, at the age of 22. The Toccatas are usually performed on harpsichord or piano – but even though they are ‘manualiter’ (intended to be played by the hands only) and do not call for pedal parts, they are also occasionally heard on the organ. In terms of style they are examples of the so-called stylus phantasticus – ‘the most free and unfettered method of composition’ – and belong to the North German organ tradition of the late 17th century. Each toccata consists of several distinct and contrasting sections, interweaving strict counterpoint and fugal passages with freely rhapsodic material, and as such the toccatas differ from the two-movement prelude-and-fugue format which Bach later would put his own, indelible stamp on. With this disc, Masaaki Suzuki takes on some of the earliest of Bach’s extant harpsichord compositions, after having released acclaimed recordings of a wide range of later works, from the two-part Inventions to the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, he also brings his experience in performing the music of Bach’s North German predecessors to bear, for instance Buxtehude (BIS1809) and Nicolaus Bruhns.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Trios, Vol. 1 - Op. 1/3 & 70/2

Sitkovetsky Trio


With the three piano trios Op. 1 Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with entertaining salon music, and raised it up to rival the string quartet. The works are innovative in form as well as in content –especially so in the case of the Trio No. 3 in C minor, Beethoven’s trademark key. It is therefore fitting that the Sitkovetsky Trio has chosen this work to open their cycle of the composer’s piano trios. That the C minor trio was pioneering is illustrated by the fact that Haydn, who at the time was Beethoven’s teacher, advised against its publication. He feared that it would not ‘be understood so quickly and easily’ – but the world as Haydn knew it was clearly changing and the trios became a commercial success as well as harbingers of a new musical aesthetic. Some twenty years later, in 1813 when E.T.A. Hoffmann reviewed the two Op. 70 trios, the new era was firmly established, and to Hoffmann the works confirmed ‘how Beethoven carries the Romantic spirit of music deep within his soul’. Between the two complete trios recorded here, the Sitkovetskys include Beethoven’s very last contribution to the piano trio genre, the little Allegretto in B flat major, WoO 39. It was composed in June 1812 for Maximiliane, the ten-year-old daughter of Franz and Antonie Brentano – or, as it says on the title page of the autograph manuscript, ‘for my little friend Maxe Brentano, to encourage her piano playing’.

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Leonard Bernstein Symphonies 1 ‘Jeremiah’ & 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’

Anna Larsson, Roland Pöntinen, Arctic Philharmonic, Christian Lindberg


At the age of 21, Leonard Bernstein wrote what he described as a ‘Hebrew song’ using a text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Three years later the song became the final movement of his Symphony No. 1 and in January 1944 Bernstein himself conducted the première of the work. The first movement aims to parallel in feeling the intensity of the prophet’s pleas while the scherzo gives a general sense of the destruction and chaos. Being a setting of the biblical text, the third movement is naturally more literary: the cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved Jerusalem. During the next few years, Bernstein’s career as a conductor took flight, while the musical On the Town made his name on Broadway. Towards the end of the 1940s he returned to the symphonic genre, however – once more with an extra-musical inspiration. W. H. Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety is set during the recently concluded war, and falls – like the symphony –into six sections during which four characters express their anxieties, hopes and the quest for meaning and identity. Bernstein chose to portray all four characters via a single instrument, the piano. The instrument comes to the fore at various points and in one of the final sections Bernstein supplies what is arguably the most exuberant and rhythmically dazzling display of piano writing in the symphonic literature. For this Christian Lindberg and the Arctic Philharmonic have enlisted the aid of Roland Pöntinen, while Anna Larsson is the soloist in Jeremiah.

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Felix Mendelssohn, George Enescu

Octets

Gringolts Quartet, Meta4


Before Felix Mendelssohn produced his Octet for strings in 1825, only Louis Spohr had composed for a similar combination of instruments. Rather than an octet, however, Spohr’s work was a ‘double quartet’ written for two equal but independent string quartets. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, treated the eight instruments as a single unit, collaborating ‘in symphonic orchestral style’, as he himself put it. He was only sixteen when he composed the Octet, full of a youthful ardour that has made it one of his most popular works. It is a farewell to the Mozartian style that had characterized Mendelssohn’s early production and at the same time a first step on the way to Romanticism. The second octet on this disc is also a youthful work written at a time of transition, now from Romanticism to Modernism: George Enescu was 19 years old when he completed his Octet in C major in December 1900. The work is concentrated, complex and highly contrapuntal, a sounding illustration of what Enescu elsewhere described in words: ‘I am by nature a polyphonist, not at all an advocate of sequences of pretty chords. I have a horror of anything that stagnates. For me, music is not a state but rather an action…’ Among the small number of works for this instrumental combination, these belong to the very finest, and are here performed by two of today’s leading quartets: the Gringolts Quartet and Meta4, who have both made numerous acclaimed recordings in the most diverse repertoire.

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Edvard Grieg The Violin Sonatas

Eldbjørg Hemsing, Simon Trpčeski


Following acclaimed recordings of concertos by Dvořák and Shostakovich, by Tan Dun and Josef Suk, the Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing returns to her roots in this Grieg recital, joined by Simon Trpčeski at the piano. Each of Edvard Grieg’s violin sonatas marks a decisive phase in the composer’s artistic development. He completed the F major Sonata at the age of 22, while still trying to break free from the heady influences he had received during his training at the Leipzig conservatory. The work still bears the stamp of German romanticism, but it also includes references to Norwegian folk dances and Hardanger fiddle techniques, features that were perceived as ‘a breath of fresh air’ when the work was premièred. Two years later, in 1867, Grieg had become deeply involved in the project of constructing a national culture, as part of the movement for an independent Norway. In his Sonata No. 2, he exploited national characteristics far more consistently than before and especially his Norwegian audience reacted with great enthusiasm. Closing this disc, Eldbjørg Hemsing plays her own composition Homecoming. It is a set of variations on a tune from the valley where she grew up, as well as a friendly nod to Grieg, who used the same tune almost 150 years ago in his large-scale Ballade Op. 24.

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Luciano Berio Coro; Cries of London

Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Grete Pedersen


Luciano Berio’s Coro has been described as the work that ‘exemplifies all the qualities that made him one of the leading composers of our time’. The work’s full title is ‘Coro for voices and instruments’, and the 40 voices and 44 instrumentalists do indeed make up a single choir – instrumentalists and singers sit together, with each singer paired with a particular player, and used both as soloists and combined in mass effects. Composed in 1976, Coro is also a strikingly ‘global’ work: Berio’s use of texts (mainly translations of folk poetry) attributed to peoples – ‘Peruvian’, ‘Croatian’, ‘Sioux’ – turns the work into a chorus of cultures. The texts are laid out in 31 separate sections of varying length, but the overall effect is cumulative, not episodic. Under its artistic director Grete Pedersen the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir has made acclaimed recordings of music ranging from Norwegian folk songs and Hildegard of Bingen to Bach, Brahms and Xenakis. Joined by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra it now takes on one of the major choral works of the past 50 years. The disc closes with Berio’s smaller scale Cries of London, performed by members of the choir.

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Richard Wagner Die Walküre

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks,Simon Rattle

900177 £27.00 4 CD 03/04/20 BR KLASSIK

To follow the release of its November 2015 recording of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold BR-KLASSIK is now continuing the cycle with The Valkyrie. With his “Rheingold”, Sir Simon Rattle has already decisively disproved the longstanding claim that he and Wagner were unsuited to one another. This next collaboration between the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the British conductor not only features a team of first-rate Wagner singers but also reveals once again how well Rattle understands and interprets Wagner’s music. Only a few months after the live event recorded in Munich, this mighty music drama – a huge success with the public – is being released for the first time on four very fine CDs.

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Anton Bruckner Symphony No.4

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariss Jansons

900187 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 BR KLASSIK

It was on the borderline between High and Late Romanticism, where the style of the times was to change and finally dissolve, that Bruckner conjured up the essence of the Romantic attitude with his Fourth Symphony. It was Bruckner himself who gave the work its popular title “The Romantic” as this symphony conjures up an ideal world in bright, unbroken colours, whilst reflecting upon an intact and carefree past. The consistently relaxed and positive mood of the symphony seems more astonishing when one considers the complicated history of the work’s genesis. The first version of 1874, was rejected by Bruckner after several plans for a premiere came to nothing; with relentless self-criticism, he referred to it as “overladen” and “too restless”. In 1878 he subjected it to radical revision, in the course of which, among other things, a completely new third movement was written - the hunting scherzo. As one of Bruckner’s most-performed works the Fourth has remained successful to this day. Indeed, the symphony’s unbroken popularity also underscores the timeless appeal of Bruckner’s work: that deeply human longing for the “Romantic”, which has left no-one unmoved to this day. Mariss Jansons performed the “Romantic” Symphony in Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig in concerts at the end of November 2008, together with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

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James MacMillan Symphony No. 5, ‘Le grand Inconnu’; The Sun Danced

The Sixteen, Britten Sinfonia, Mary Bevan, Harry Christophers

COR16179 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 CORO

Imagine a vision too wondrous for eyes alone – ‘the lady more brilliant than the sun’. ‘The lady’ is the Virgin Mary, and The Sun Danced is an ecstatic choral celebration of the Miracle of Fatima commissioned for the Celebration of the Centennial of the Apparitions in Portugal. Celebrated British soprano, Mary Bevan, features. Of James MacMillan’s eagerly awaited 5th Symphony Harry Christophers writes: “From the barely audible breathing at the start of the symphony to the first forte that is so sudden and ecstatic that it produces one of those heart-pounding moments, everything is drawn together by James into a cornucopia of sheer virtuosity and brilliance.”

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Jakov Gotovac Eros Onoga Svijeta (Ero the Joker)

Valentina Fijacko Kobic, Jelena Kordic, Tomislav Muzek, Ljubomir Puskaric, Ivica Cikes, Suzana Cesnjaj, Croatian Radio Television Choir, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repušić

555080-2 £18.00 2 CD 27/03/20 CPO

Ero the Joker is the absolute all-time favorite opera among Croatians. After its immediate success in 1935 it toured through what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and today it continues to be a favorite selection for performance programs in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In Germany, however, this comic opera brimming with musical wit has to be assigned the status of a rarity. Its last performance prior to this one was in Munich in 1942 – in a German translation. But now back to the original: on Sunday, 19 May 2019, the Munich Radio Orchestra under its principal conductor, the Croatian Ivan Repušić, presented a concert performance of Ero the Joker in Croatian. Gotovac’s music sparkles with Eastern European and Mediterranean folkloric influences. The composer is regarded as one of the founders of a Croatian national musical language that in the nineteenth century was fueled by the yearning for national identity. Here we hear music full of lyrical and witty moments and with magnificent arias and choral numbers. And its hero is a joker who challenges fate.

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Franz Krommer Symphonies 6 & 9

Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Howard Griffiths

555337-2 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CPO

In any event, a more convincing case for Krommer, who is also largely forgotten as a symphonist, than the case made with this performance culture could hardly be made.” This is what Pizzicato wrote about the release of Vol. 2 of Krommer’s symphonies. Vol. 3 of this recording series completes the picture of this composer’s quest for harmonic innovations. Compared with his fifth symphony, Krommer’s sixth such work, composed two years later, has a musical language reflecting a process of radicalization as form and function are subject to a gradual process of dissociation. Krommer concluded the score of his ninth symphony in September 1830, four months prior to his death, and so presumably one of his last compositions. After his death, his works received little attention and it is doubtful that this work was ever performed prior to this recording. As in the sixth symphony, Krommer follows convention in his ninth symphony in formal matters while fully exploiting tonal ambivalences, pursuing new compositional paths, and separating the architectonic and functional aspects of musical form. In addition, his use of a fanfare motif in the first and last movements heralds the development of a motivic-cyclical design transcending movement boundaries.

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Johann Pachelbel Magnificat

Himlische Cantorey, Jan Kobow

777707-2 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CPO

The present recording spreads out before us the rich musical panorama covered by Pachelbel’s Magnificat compositions. We do not know what we should admire more about these works: the complexity of the contrapuntal and concerto textures or the naturalness and cantability of the part writing. In addition, we have Pachelbel’s great variation artistry, which constantly brings forth new formal designs, instrumental combinations, and focal points on the basis of one and the same text. Moreover, the natural flow of Pachelbel’s music includes a steady stream of musical rhetorical interpretations, and the richly pictorial Magnificat text offers plenty of opportunities for them. On this recording two sacred concertos and a Mass in three movements complement the four very different Magnificat settings and serve as contrasts to them.

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The Mystery of the Natural Trumpet Krisztián Kováts, L’arpa festante, Christoph Hesse, Rien Voskuilen

555144-2 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 CPO

Along with the renowned classics of the trumpet concerto literature by Joseph Haydn and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the musical epoch known today as “Classicism” also witnessed the composition of other solo concertos for trumpet. These concertos were for the natural trumpet without valves. Performing on a four-hole Baroque trumpet model and with the richly nuanced L’arpa festante ensemble, the Hungarian trumpeter Krisztián Kováts interprets festive trumpet concertos by Johann Matthias Sperger, Johann Stamitz, and others. The purpose of the present recording is to call attention to the long-forgotten art of clarino playing. The use of original instruments enabling us to come very close to the composer’s musical intention. The corpus of the Baroque natural trumpet is much longer than that of modern valved instruments, so that a sound spectrum rich in overtones is the result. The repertoire recorded here was once performed by only a few most highly privileged and specialized trumpeters whose artistry enabled them to imitate the articulation and lightness of the human voice in the clarino register.

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Sergei Rachmaninoff Complete Works for Piano Duo

Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo

555326-2 £18.00 2 CD 27/03/20 CPO

To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, the Piano Duo Genova & Dimitrov realises a fervent wish with a genuine mammoth of a project: the two pianists have recorded Sergei Rachmaninoff’s complete oeuvre for piano duo as a cpo double CD. The manifold colours in these pieces full of musical ideas…a homage to their idol Rachmaninoff. But nobody can describe this music better than the pianists themselves: ‘Rachmaninoff, Second Suite; Schubert, Fantasy; Mozart, Sonata!’ This is the authoritative answer that we received at the end of 1995 from our teacher, the piano legend Vladimir Krainev, when we were students in his solo class at the Hanover College of Music and asked which works we might prepare for our first piano duo competition. At the time we never would have imagined that almost twenty-five years later the idea for this grand project would be developed – one of which we are now so especially proud.”Their impressive interpretations of a whole wide range of compositions display Rachmaninoff’s multifacetedness in all its emotionally incredible, supercharged glory.

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Georg Philipp Telemann Markus-Passion 1759

Veronika Winter, Anne Bierwirth, Georg Poplutz, Markus Flaig, Ekkehard Abele, Rheinische Kantorei, Das Kleine Konzert, Hermann Max

555347-2 £18.00 2 CD 27/03/20 CPO

A previously unknown contemporary score of the St. Mark Passion falsely ascribed to Johann Heinrich Rolle recently came to light in Brussels. Due to the new identification of the copyist’s hand, a largely original version of Georg Philipp Telemann’s St. Mark’s Passion of 1759 is now available, reflected in this recording. Freshly penned “poetical reflections” were added to the Evangelist’s text. The anonymous, theologically educated author of these reflective arias and accompagnati, who in consultation with the composer also chose the selection of church songs and designed the overall structure of the libretto, coordinated the sacred message of the text with a finely calculated affective dramaturgy. The various affective areas developed by the composer are in each case modeled on the situations depicted in the recitatives. Here extremely harsh affective contrasts could exist side by side within a single aria. Remarkably, for the Evangelist’s part the recently discovered source prescribes a male alto, not the otherwise customary tenor. For the present recording Hermann Max decided to transpose the alto part down by an octave into the baritone range.

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Ernst TochEight String Quartets

Buchberger Quartet, Verdi Quartet

555351-2 £25.00 4 CD 27/03/20 CPO

One of the most ambitious cpo chamber music projects – Ernst Toch’s String Quartets – is now being rereleased in a box of four CDs at a special price! All eight quartets attest “to the very personal, multifaceted, and compelling musical language of a composer who speaks intimately to his listener, without showy fashions, with classical rigor and intensity” (Klassik-heute). The genre of the string quartet played a major role in Ernst Toch’s oeuvre. He wrote a total of thirteen string quartets; cpo has already brought Toch’s symphonies into the spotlight with new recordings of them, and we now turn to the eight extant string quartets by this composer, who was deprived of his well-deserved fame by the brutal politics of the Nazis and developed a highly individual style within the modernism of the twentieth century. The impact of the string quartets is even greater than that of the symphonies. For performers it is the purest tour de force. Two renowned string quartets – the Verdi Quartet and the Buchberger Quartet – have risen to this gigantic challenge.

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Jakov Gotovac, Marko Tajčević Symphonic PoemsMarko Tajčević: Seven Balkan Dances

NDR Radio Philharmonic of Hannover, Moshe Atzmon

999724-2 £5.25 1 CD 27/03/20 CPO

Jakov Gotovac created the Croatian national work of art with his opera Ero the Joker, a work brimming with Balkan zest for life but also characterized by melancholy, while always drawing on this region’s marvelous folk music tradition. Drawing on their own Balkan experience, Moshe Atzmon and the NDR Radio Philharmonic of Hannover team up for interpretations of Gotovac’s most important orchestral works: the symphonic poems Orači – Men and Ploughs and Guslar – The Gusle Player, the captivating Symphonic Kolo, and the orchestral intermezzi from Ero. The Seven Balkan Dances by Gotovac’s Serbian contemporary Marko Tajčević supply the encore.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Quartets, performed by Beethoven Quartet

Beethoven Quartet

MELCD 1002587 £35.00 8 CD 10/04/20 MELODIYA

Melodiya presents one of the best recordings of chamber music - the complete quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven performed by the State Beethoven String Quartet. The quartet existed from 1923 to 1990, almost as long as the Soviet Union did, and took a truly unique place in the history of music and performing arts of the Soviet period. The recordings of the Beethoven quartets were timed to the composer’s 200th anniversary and became a highlight of the world-wide Beethoveniana. The set released by Firma Melodiya in the early 1970s was awarded the Beethoven’s 200th anniversary commemorative medal, an honorary diploma from the Association of Japanese Musicians and the medal of the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Italy.

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Rudolf Barshai Anniversary Edition Rudolf Barshai, Various


Unique historical recordings in the Melodiya release dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the great musician. Melodiya has repeatedly turned to Rudolf Barshai’s archive recordings. For the great musician’s anniversary, music lovers are presented with a truly luxurious gift containing his solo, ensemble and orchestral recordings, live and studio ones, made between 1955 and 1976, most of which see the light of day for the first time and have not been released on CD previously. Bach’s solo partita and Hindemith’s Funeral Music, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante performed with David Oistrakh, Stravinsky’s orchestra concertos, orchestrations of Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, and Shostakovich’s Quartet played by the original line-up of the Tchaikovsky Quartet featuring Yulian Siktovetsky... Barshai was the founder of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, a unique formation back in the Soviet times. The orchestra’s concerts and recordings were a revelation to hundreds of thousands of listeners. The familiar masterpieces of baroque and classicism sounded next to modern music under his baton. The live nerve of the time, of the great and tragic twentieth century, pulsated in the crystal clarity of his impeccable style. The culmination of the release is a complete recording of the orchestra arrangement of Bach’s The Art of Fugue. Along with the ending of Mahler’s Tenth, Barshai considered it his life’s work.

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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Kashchei the Immortal

Pavel Pontryagin, Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya, Pavel Lisitsian, Lyudmila Legostayeva, Konstantin Polyaev, Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, All-Union Radio Choir, Samuil Samosud


To commemorate the 175th anniversary of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Melodiya presents for the first time on CD the archival recording of the opera Kashchey the Immortal. This first studio recording of the opera Kashchey the Immortal was made 70 years ago, in 1949. The leading parts were performed by truly outstanding musicians – Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya, a legendary soloist of the All-Union Radio, concert singer, and the mother of conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Pavel Lisitsian, one of the leading soloists of the “golden era” of the Bolshoi Theatre, and Pavel Pontryagin, an owner of a unique tenor timbre. The recording features the symphony orchestra and the choir of the All-Union Radio. In the 1940s and 1950s, the orchestra put in a lot of effort to perform and record rare opera masterpieces of the Russian and foreign repertoire. The performance was conducted by Samuel Samosud, who had been chief conductor of the USSR Bolshoi Theatre and stood at the conductor’s desks of the largest opera houses in Moscow and Leningrad.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Six Trio Sonatas (arranged for two harpsichords by David Ponsford)

David Ponsford, David Hill

NI6403 £8.70 1 CD 03/04/20 NIMBUS ALLIANCE

The instruments played on this recording were both based on particular historical instruments: the harpsichord by Jean Claude Goujon (Paris, 1749) made by Andrew Garlick, and a harpsichord by J. H. Harrass (Gross- Breitenbach, early 18th century) made by Huw Saunders. Both instruments have two keyboards, and have the same specification of two 8-foots, one 4-foot and a buff. Pitch: A415. Temperament: Vallotti.

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Manuel de Falla The Best of Martin Jones: Discover Manuel De Falla

Martin Jones

NI7731 £6.40 1 CD 03/04/20 NIMBUS RECORDS

Celebrating his 80th Birthday this year Martin Jones has been one of Britain’s most highly regarded solo pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. The same year he made his London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and his New York debut at Carnegie H ll, and ever since has been in demand for recitals and concerto performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a prolific recording artist and his many major projects include the complete solo piano works of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Grainger, Stravinsky, Korngold, Szymanowski, Granados, Guastavino, Mompou, Ernesto Halffter, Joaquin Nin, Has Gál, Jean Françaix, Jean Roger-Ducasse, and Alan Richardson. Manuel de Falla (1876-1949) is the most highly regarded Spanish composer of the 20th century. This recital contains de Falla’s complete original works for solo piano. With 16 complete tracks and at 72 minutes is exceptional value.

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Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2; Handel Variations

Lars Vogt, Royal Northern Sinfonia

ODE 1346-2 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 ONDINE

The second album in Lars Vogt’s Johannes Brahms concerto series with the Royal Northern Sinfonia includes Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto combined with a solo piano work, Handel Variations Op. 24, which was dedicated to Clara Schumann by the composer.

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Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartets, Opp. 132 & 130/133

Tetzlaff Quartett

ODE 1347-2D £9.00 2 CD 03/04/20 ONDINE

New album of Beethoven’s late String Quartets by the prestigious Tetzlaff Quartett offers a fitting tribute to Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year. These monumental works which are given fresh interpretations by the quartet are among the greatest achievements in the history of Western art music written by a composer who had already largely lost contact with the world.

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Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis The Sea; In the Forest; Kęstutis Overture

Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Modestas Pitrėnas

ODE 1344-2 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 ONDINE

This release by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Modestas Pitrėnas includes the complete surviving symphonic oeuvre of the great Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) restored back into their original versions. Čiurlionis was conceptually ahead of his time and the uniqueness and aesthetic value of his compositions have been fully understood only during the last decades.

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Philip Glass King Lear (original score)

Sam Gold, Scott Rudin, Glenda Jackson, Ruth Wilson

OMM0141 £9.00 1 CD 10/04/20 ORANGE MOUNTAIN

Orange Mountain Music is proud to present the premiere recording of Philip Glass’s original score to the 2019 Broadway production of KING LEAR which starred Glenda Jackson as Lear and Ruth Wilson as Cordelia/The Fool. For this new production, directed by Sam Gold and produced by Scott Rudin, Glass composed almost an hour of new music for string quartet. Gold and Glass decided not only would the music be featured prominently in the production, but that the musicians would be on stage for almost the entire duration of the play. Glass has been a self-described “theater composer” for most of his artistic life, dating back more than 50 years. Indeed, upon developing his own musical language in Paris in the mid-1960s, Glass’s first concert work in that language was his String Quartet No.1 from 1966.

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Astor Piazzolla, Franz Schubert, Alfred Schnittke Katherine Hunka, Irish Chamber Orchestra

ORC100130 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 ORCHID CLASSICS

A dazzling programme of music for violin and orchestra performed by The Irish Chamber Orchestra, featuring Katherine Hunka (violin/director) and Nicola Sweeney (violin – Schnittke). Piazzolla’s La Cuarto Estaciones Porteñas (‘The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires’) takes us through the seasons: Verano Porteño (‘Summer’), alert and enigmatic, blustery Otoño (‘Autumn’), the jittery liveliness of Primavera (‘Spring’) and a gently melancholic Invierno (‘Winter’). We hear the pieces arranged for violin and strings by Leonid Desyatnikov, playfully incorporating elements from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Schubert composed his Rondo in A, D.438, in 1816, when he was still in his late teens. He never wrote a full-scale violin concerto, so this Mozartian Rondo is one of the closest things we have. Schnittke’s Moz-Art à la Haydn combines an unfinished fragment by Mozart with the theatricality of Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, uniquely conveyed by the Irish Chamber Orchestra using audible movement and effects.

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Richard Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten Nina Stemme, Stephen Gould, Camilla Nylund, Wolfgang Koch, Evelyn Herlitzius, Sebastian Holecek, Maria Nazarova, Benjamin Bruns, Monika Bohinec, Samuel Hasselhorn, Ryan Speedo Green, Thomas Ebenstein, Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Chor der Wiener Staatsoper, Bühnenorchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Opernschule der Wiener Staatsoper, Christian Thielemann

C991203 £18.57 3 CD 03/04/20 ORFEO WIENER STAATSOPER LIVE

Not many masterpieces have premiered at the Vienna State Opera. Die Frau ohne Schatten – the fourth collaboration between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal – make one of the few exceptions. On the evening of 25 May 2019 – the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Vienna State Opera – a star-studded festival première of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten took place at Vienna State Opera. Together with his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss, at the time director of the opera house, developed a fairytale, complex and psychologically discriminating work that received its world première a hundred years ago, on 10 October 1919 at the opera house on the Ring. Since then, Die Frau ohne Schatten has enjoyed a rich performance history and is regarded as a special highlight of Viennese and international music theatre.

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Zelter, Reichardt, Spohr, Wolf, Pfitzner

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Lied Edition, Vol. 1

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Aribert Reimann, Maria Graf, Julia Varady, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Hans Schöneberger, Hartmut Höll, Irmgard Seefried, Erik Werba

C992205 £12.38 5 CD 03/04/20 ORFEO

Even a quarter of a century after the end of his active career as a singer, nothing has changed concerning Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s preeminent status in the history of performing song. It is above all the Lied performer Fischer-Dieskau who set standards that have remained valid far beyond his time. This compilation from very different song worlds offers striking examples of this. Vol. 1 of the “Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Lied-Edition” presents Lieder by two almost forgotten song composers – Carl Friedrich Zelter (CD1) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (CD2), who owe their significance not least to their affinity to Goethe, as well as a selection of songs by Lous Spohr (CD3), who is more familiar as the composer of instrumental concertos and chamber music, and by Hans Pfitzner (CD5), who takes us into a later period. Hugo Wolf’s last and perhaps most popular cycle, the Italienisches Liederbuch, was an unparalleled recital experience at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1958 (CD4). Studio recordings with other partners did not find the same spontaneity and brio as in that live recording with Irmgard Seefried and Erik Werba.

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Franz Schubert Symphony in C Major (The Great)

Philharmonia Zürich, Fabio Luisi

PHR 0111 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 PHILHARMONIA REC

With his ‘Great’ symphony in C major, Franz Schubert composed a work of mighty proportions – Robert Schumann, who became aware of the score after Schubert’s death, spoke of a ‘heavenly length’. Not until 1839, eleven years after Schubert’s early death, the symphony in C major was played by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the Gewand-haus in Leipzig for the first time. After the symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert’s ‘Great’ is considered to be one of the most important symphonic orchestral work of the early 19th century and is now a part of the core repertoire in all the major symphony or chestras. General Music Director Fabio Luisi has worked on the Schubert’s Symphony 2019 with the Philharmonia Zurich. The live recording in the Opernhaus Zürich is now available.

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Johannes Brahms Songs of Loss and Betrayal

Simon Wallfisch, Edward Rushton

RES10258 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 RESONUS CLASSICS

Following their acclaimed recording of songs by Robert Schumann, the baritone and piano duo Simon Wallfisch and Edward Rushton return to Resonus Classics with an evocative selection of songs by Johannes Brahms. Entitled Songs of Loss and Betrayal, this intoxicating programme sees Brahms using his settings of poetry as a powerful channel for his own feelings, recalling his own personal memories of unrequited love, loss and betrayal.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Orgelbüchlein, BWV 599-644

Stephen Farr

RES10259£9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 RESONUS CLASSICS

Organist Stephen Farr continues his survey of works by Johann Sebastian Bach with one of the composer’s major collections of organ chorale preludes – the Orgelbüchlein. This unfinished compendium of miniatures, said by Mendelssohn to bear ‘most evidently the marks of his genius’, contains much variety with each of the forty-six completed works containing a well-defined and individual character. For this recording, Farr performs on the eighteenth-century Trost organ of Waltershausen’s stunning Stadtkirche in Germany.

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Dionisio Aguado, Mauro Giuliani, Napoléon Coste, Fernando Sor, Giulio Regondi, Luigi Boccherini

Fandango! - Music for Solo Guitar & String Quartet

Johan Löfving, Consone Quartet, Nanako Aramaki

RES10260 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 RESONUS CLASSICS

Swedish-born guitar virtuoso Johan Löfving returns to Resonus Classics to record his debut solo album with a programme of works for both solo guitar and guitar with string quartet. Joined by the Consone Quartet, and castanet player Nanako Aramaki, for Boccherinl’s fourth guitar quintet, Löfving presents a compelling selection of Romantic guitar repertoire framed by two fandango movements that show the influence of Spanish folk music, an idiom so intimately connected with this medium. With this recital of works from across Europe, the considerable reach and versatility of the guitar is on full display with music from the height of the instrument’s popularity.

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Willie SmithAlto Sax All-Time Great (His 48 Finest)

Willie Smith

RTS4368 £6.40 2 CD 03/04/20 RETROSPECTIVE

Willie Smith (1910-1967) stands alongside Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter as one of the three great alto saxophone players of the pre-Charlie Parker generation – yet this is the first double CD devoted to his formidable artistry. Retrospective’s tribute to this towering figure in jazz history presents a 48-track survey that tracks his extraordinary career from sax-section leader in the 30s to high-flying soloist in the 50s, opening with 10 classics from his 13 years as one of the big stars of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3

Peter Donohoe

SOMMCD 0613 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 SOMM

The third volume of Peter Donohoe’s acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas for SOMM Recordings focuses on three works from the second half of the 1780s – including his last exercise in the form, Sonata No.18 (K576) – together with two exquisite miniatures. Although likely composed as teaching materials, the sibling Sonatas Nos.10 (K330) and 11 (K331) eloquently push their intended student-players with considerable technical challenges that point to Mozart’s own development as a composer. This new release follows critical acclaim for Volume 1 (SOMMCD 0191) including the accolades of MusicWeb International’s Recording of the Year and BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Month which declared: “It was high time someone blew the cobwebs off this still under-appreciated repertoire, and Donohoe is clearly the person to do it. Musical Opinion described Donohoe in Volume 2 (SOMMCD 0198) as “an ideal interpreter”, adding “no finer accounts of these still neglected masterpieces will have been offered to the public”.

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Penelope Thwaites From Five Continents - Choral music and songs

Carolyn Sampson, James Gilchrist, William Daveley, Penelope Thwaites, Ex Cathedra, Jeffrey Skidmore

SOMMCD 0612 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 SOMM

Featuring 19 premiere recordings, From Five Continents celebrates a lifetime of making music around the world to showcase Penelope Thwaites’ distinctive compositional signature. The disc’s centrepiece, a moving new Missa Brevis, is coupled with four Psalm settings, songs influenced by the sounds of Indian and African music, folk-styles from the Americas and an evocation of the vast Australian outback. From Five Continents features three outstanding singers venturing into new musical territory. Making their debuts on SOMM are Carolyn Sampson – whose brilliant soprano ranges from shimmering choral solos to guitar-accompanied folk song – and baritone William Dazeley, who vividly conjures the inherent anger of the much-set Fear no more the heat o’the sun, one of five Shakespeare settings. Enveloped by drums and saxophone, tenor James Gilchrist returns to SOMM for a stirring tribute to Nigeria’s second-largest city, Kano. The composer herself provides exceptional accompaniment on piano throughout the disc. Also returning to the label is Ex Cathedra under their inspiring conductor Jeffrey Skidmore to demonstrate again a rare versatility and the most beautiful of choral sounds while revelling in the punchy, rhythmic vivacity and telling colours of Thwaites’ music.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Complete Symphonies

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Roger Norrington

SWR19525CD £13.80 5 CD 17/04/20 SWR CLASSIC

In recording Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, its principal conductor Sir Roger Norrington presented a summary of his life-long work with the composer’s music. He applied the insights of historically informed performance to a modern symphony orchestra. For Norrington, historically informed performance does not mean making exclusive use of historical instruments, but includes remaining as faithful as possible to phrasing, articulation and dynamics, and following the tempi prescribed by Beethoven himself. During the 2002 European Music Festival, Norrington and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart set out to prove that a modern symphony orchestra could play the nine symphonies in accordance with the most recent “artistic findings”. Their impressive achievement filled the Stuttgart audience with enthusiasm for its sensational and revelatory performances. The live recordings of the symphonies made during the five concerts document the astonishingly high level at which the orchestra performed. Presenting Beethoven’s symphonies in the order of their composition was the dramatic concept of this cycle of concerts that is duly captured on these recordings. Since the symphonies were performed at the festival in the order in which they were composed, they are found on the discs in combinations that are unusual, but chronologically accurate.

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Cole PorterA Celebration: Songs and Melodies from Musicals and Movies

Juliane Banse, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Dorian Wilson

SWR19091CD £9.00 1 CD 17/04/20 SWR CLASSIC

Cole Porter left a musical legacy that earned him great respect far beyond the world of popular music: more than 40 of his musicals and countless melodies became evergreens, while their lyrics became quoted in daily life. His songs, with their ease, elegance, refinement and drive have fascinated musicians of all genres ever since. Juliane Banse is one of the most versatile singers of her generation with a repertoire ranging from Mozart to Richard Strauss, from unknown operas to the most current modern music. It was only a question of time before she would turn to Cole Porter, hence this album, recorded in the autumn of 2018. And she has to be credited for not trying to copy Ella Fitzgerald, for example, but for singing Porter in her own way; for retaining her clearly intoned, classically trained voice, and not awkwardly acting the part of a husky bar singer. Banse perfectly interprets the roles in her very own way, turning between the ironic, erotic, lascivious and vigorous, with all the necessary syncopated swing. Fans of American entertainment and those lovers of beautiful singing who have an open mind will all find pure delight in this recording. The arranger, composer, choir master and church musician Lars J. Lange made wonderfully lavish orchestral arrangements of Porter’s songs, while conductor Dorian Wilson makes his “classical” ensemble swing and virtually wallow in these melodies.

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Mozart by Arrangement Volume Three: Transcriptions for Organ

Zeno Bianchini, Christian Lambour

TOCC 0381 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 TOCCATA CLASSICS

Until the advent of recordings, the way you got to know the music of the masters was to play them yourself. The expansion of domestic music-making at the beginning of the nineteenth century generated a huge market for arrangements, most of them for piano solo or duet. Mozart was an especial favourite, and this programme extends the basic premise by arranging some of those arrangements for organ as well as presenting some contemporary arrangements and completions.

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Robert Fürstenthal Complete Chamber Music, Volume Two

The Rossetti Ensemble


When Germany invaded Austria in 1938, Robert Fürstenthal, born in 1920, took the path of many Viennese Jews and fled to the United States, where he made his living as an accountant; the fact that he had written music in his youth was soon forgotten. Reconnection, after 35 years, with the woman who had been his first love rekindled both that flame and his urge to compose, and from then on songs and chamber music flowed from his pen, preserving the spirit of fin-de-siècle Vienna under the Californian sun – ‘When I compose, I am back in Vienna’, he explained. He died in November 2016, aged 96, knowing that his lyrical, eloquent music was at last attracting the attention of both musicians and microphones.

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Fridrich Bruk Orchestral Music, Volume Two

Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, Māris Kupčs


Fridrich Bruk – born in Kharkov in 1937 and a Finnish resident since 1974 – made his name as a composer of tangos. But the heart of his music lies in a series of (to date) 21 symphonies, which have a strong narrative element, some reflecting Jewish themes, others inspired by Karelia and Finland. The three most recent together form a kind of meta-symphony premised on the persecution of the Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. Bruk’s kaleidoscopic use of orchestral colour, his angular but expressive melodies and his dramatic musical language reflect this urge to chronicle the outrage visited on his fellow Jews – and which directly impinged on his own life.

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Marc’Antonio Ingegneri Missa Laudate Pueri Dominum A8 & other works

Choir of Girton College, Gareth Wilson, Historic Brass of the Guildhall School and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Jeremy West


The Cremonese composer Marc’Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36–92) is chiefly remembered as the teacher of Claudio Monteverdi while, for well nigh 500 years, his own achievements were left to sit in the shadows. This pioneering recording reveals Ingegneri to have been one of the masters of his age, writing music of breathtaking richness and beauty: the polychoral works to be heard here combine learned, intricate counterpoint with the kind of sheer sonic thrill that brings a shiver of physical excitement.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concertos, Vol. 2K.451, K.450, K.175

Anne-Marie McDermott, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Andreas Delfs, Kenneth Montgomery, Gilbert Varga

BRIDGE 9523 £9.00 1 CD 17/04/20 BRIDGE RECORDS

Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott’s Mozart Piano Concerto cycle continues with Mozart’s brilliant first original Piano Concerto, the D major Concerto , K. 175, composed at age 17. Volume 2 also presents two of Mozart’s unquestionable masterpieces, the powerful concerto in D major, 451, and the ever-popular Concerto in B-flat major, K. 450. McDermott’s Mozart Vol. 1 has been met with glowing praise, Donald Vroon in The American Record Guide writing of K. 238: “Her playing is better than anyone else that I’ve heard. !t’s so alive! It’s as if I never heard this Concerto before.”

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Fred Lerdahl Volume Six

Tom Kraines, Daedaelus Quartet, Elizabeth Fischborn, Edwin Barker, Movses Pogossian, David Starobin, Toke Møldrup, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Andreas Delfs


Fred Lerdahl, Vol. 6 presents new work by one of today’s true masters. The disc features two major works, the cello concerto, “Arches” and Lerdahl’s fourth string quartet, “Chaconne”. Producer David Starobin writes that “Lerdahl’s work is rare in today’s musical world in that it seeks and achieves both complexity and intelligibility. It is indebted to the past yet committed to the exploration of new territory.” Rounding out the disc are three delightful smaller pieces, “There and Back Again”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Three Bagatelles.”

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Walter Piston, Leonard Bernstein, Ronald Perera New England Trios

Joel Pitchon, Marie-Volcy Pelletier, Yu-Mei Wei


This recording presents four trios by American composers who are linked by their New England experience and studies at Harvard University. Three of the four works (the Piston trios and the Perera trio) are new additions to the currently available recorded catalogue. Leonard Bernstein’s 1937 trio is one of the composer’s earliest works, written during his apprenticeship at Harvard. Its three movements are by turns dance-like, bluesy and jazzy.

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John McDonald At All Device

David Holzman


This recording chronicles the growth and development of a deep friendship between pianist David Holzman and composer John McDonald. Over the course of two decades, the two have developed a deep understanding and appreciation of each other personally and professionally.

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Meredith Monk Memory Game

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars

CA21153 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 CANTALOUPE MUSIC

Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME, as its title implies, is both a look back at a pivotal point in her storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. Teaming up here with her renowned Vocal Ensemble (featuring Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin) and backed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk explores all-new arrangements of never-before-recorded selections from her award-winning sci-fi opera The Games, as well as new versions of several pieces originally released on Do You Be (1987) and Impermanence (2008). What emerges from MEMORY GAME is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness to revisit the past with an insatiably curious eye.

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Michael Gordon Anonymous Man

The Crossing, Donald Nally


Scored for 24 unaccompanied voices, Anonymous Man is an hour-long piece that expands on Michael Gordon’s eclectic approach to composition, layering minimalistic swirls of vocal sound on top of one another to create a hypnotic incantation.Performing this tour de force is the Grammy-winning, Philadelphia-based choir The Crossing. Conducted by Donald Nally, the choir is dedicated to expanding the contemporary choral music experience through commissions, collaborations, community, and performances that are characterized by a distinctive unity of sound and spirit.

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David Lang The Loser

Rod Gilfry, Conrad Tao, Bang on a Can Opera Ensemble , Lesley Leighton


An opera in one act for solo baritone voice, solo piano and ensemble, David Lang’s the loser has been lauded by the New York Times as a “boldly unconventional” work, and that’s almost putting it mildly. the loser is based on the Thomas Bernhard novel of the same name, in which an anonymous narrator and once-promising concert pianist retells the story of his friend’s suicide. As it turns out, both were students in the same master class, taught by Vladimir Horowitz, as a young Glenn Gould. Playing in the shadow of Gould brings both to the realization that true greatness will never be theirs, wrecking both their lives forever. Featuring Rod Gilfry (baritone), Conrad Tao (piano) and the Bang on a Can Opera Ensemble conducted by Lesley Leighton, the loser premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2016, and made its West Coast premiere at the LA Opera in early 2019. Tracked in New York and Los Angeles, the studio recording recaptures what the LA Times described as “a mesmerizingly virtuosic performance by Rod Gilfry, destined for the annuals of opera.”

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Alexander Zemlinsky Sinfonietta, op. 23; Six Maeterlinck-Songs Op. 13; König Kandaules

Petra Lang, Siegfried Lorenz, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Susanna Mälkki, Gerd Albrecht

C5377 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 CAPRICCIO

“I just heard your wonderful Sinfonietta: hope this is the beginning of your American success,” wrote Arnold Schönberg to Zemlinsky. But Zemlinsky was already suffering from the effects of a stroke and died alone in New York just a few days later. In his Sinfonietta, Op. 24 (1934) he reused a short theme from the last of his Maeterlinck-Songs, Op. 13 (1913), “Wohin gehst Du?” (Where are you going?), a theme of “self-doubts” and “farewell” from a time when Zemlinsky was beginning to observe growing anti-Jewish sentiments in Vienna. The Maeterlinck-Songs were praised as “the center of his output” by Theodor Adorno, and transport the listener to a mystic world concerned with life, evanescence and death.

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Ernst von Dohnányi Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

Sofja Gülbadamova, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Ariane Matiakh

C5387 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 CAPRICCIO

Ernst von Dohnányi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time, but his stage works, orchestral compositions (including symphonies and concertos) and numerous chamber music pieces are now seldom played. This is the fourth album in Capriccio’s series of recordings of Dohnányi’s works that remain less well known. The programme features his late romantic, sensual music which is deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition. There is nothing in the musical language of these piano concertos (rhythm, melody, harmony, orchestration) that Brahms would have found unfamiliar. Sofia Gülbadamova, an acknowledged expert in Dohnányi’s piano music, has already released a recording of his complete works for solo piano on Capriccio (C5332); Gramophone described her playing as a ‘full-blooded, stirring interpretation’. This recording was in good hands, benefiting from the judicious orchestral direction of Ariane Matiakh, who also recently released Dohnányi’s The Veil of Pierrette on Capriccio (C5388).

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold Das Wunder der Haliane; Fairytale Pictures; Die Tote Stadt; Baby Serenade; Der Schneemann

Karen Robertson, Wendy Nielsen, Gigi Mitchell-Velasco, Stephen Gould, Zuill Bailey, Tibor Pazmany, Jochem Hochstenbach, Konzertvereinigung Linzer Theaterchor, Frauenchor des Mozartchores Linz, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Caspar Richter C7350 £15.65 4 CD 03/04/20 CAPRICCIO

There has been a major renaissance of interest in the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold over the last three decades. He is no longer the neglected, unknown master and the undiscovered wunderkind of 20th-century classical music. Korngold’s life might be summarised as follows: A child prodigy who composed music that was too beautiful to be taken seriously at a time when modernism was sweeping the cultural stage; and a composer who, at the end of his life, was certain that he would remain a forgotten composer – at least in his homeland. As part of the trend to generate a wider appreciation of Korngold’s music, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, under Caspar Richter, made these recordings for ASV in the late 1990s and early 2000s (now available as a 4-disc box set on Capriccio). They were pioneering efforts at the time and remain much appreciated for the overview they give us of Korngold’s oeuvre, beyond the handful of greatest hits available elsewhere.

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François Couperin L’Unique: Harpsichord music of François Couperin

Jory Vinikour

CDR 90000 194 £9.00 1 CD 10/04/20 CEDILLE RECORDS

Two-time Grammy Award-nominated harpsichordist Jory Vinikour plays historically groundbreaking works by François Couperin (1668–1733) on an album comprising three inventive Couperin suites — the composer called them “Ordres” — combining traditional French Baroque dance movements with witty and atmospheric character pieces — miniature tone poems for solo harpsichord. Highlights include the celebrated Les Baricades Mistérieuses from Ordre No. 6, which England’s The Guardian calls “shimmering, kaleidoscopic and seductive, a sonic trompe l’oeil.” The compelling Les Amusemens from Ordre No. 7 is irresistibly sweet and melancholic. Order No. 8 offers masterful examples of established forms, culminating with a dramatic Passacaille. Vinikour performs on a harpsichord created for him in 2012 by England’s Tony Chinnery, modeled after an instrument by the French builder Pascal Taskin (1723–1793). Its rich sound is ideally suited to 18th-century French repertoire.

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Benedetto Marcello Complete Keyboard Music, Vol. I

Ottavio Dantone

CNT2119 £18.00 2 CD 27/03/20 CONCERTO CLASSICS

This recording project includes the keyboard music by Benedetto Marcello preserved in manuscript form in the Marciana Library of Venice. This complete recording has found an eminent protagonist in Ottavio Dantone, known as one of the most respected and talented harpsichord performers in the world.

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Moritz Moszkowski Piano Works

Etsuko Hirose

DACOCD 866 £8.40 1 CD 03/04/20 DANACORD

The great pianist Paderewski said: “After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique.” Presented here on this album, Etsuko Hirose showcases the wide range of the piano music by an extraordinary composer who was a star in his lifetime, but now in need of a romantic revival.

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The Great Danish Pianist Victor Schiøler, Vol. 4

Victor Schiøler, Carl von Garaguly, Thomas Jensen, Erik Tuxen,

DACOCD 867-868 £8.40 2 CD 03/04/20 DANACORD

He was undoubtedly the greatest Danish pianist ever. His fame was legendary and he made some of the most impressive recordings for the Danish HMV and TONO label together with a giving concerts all over the world. His recorded legacy is among the most fascinating and we are proud to give you the 4th volume with never before published live recordings of Palmgren and Schubert.

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George Gershwin Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra

Cecile Licad, South Denmark Philharmonic Orchestra, Gerard Salonga

DACOCD 869 £8.40 1 CD 03/04/20 DANACORD

The Anthology of American Piano Music is designed to show the stylistic breadth, high musical quality and great originality of the best American piano works. While the preceding three volumes presented works for solo piano by multiple composers related to one theme (Vol. 1, “American First Sonatas”; Vol. 2, “Music of the Night - American Nocturnes”; Vol. 3, “American Landscapes”), Vol. 4 is dedicated to one composer, presenting the complete works for piano and orchestra by George Gershwin. Vol. 5, a theme CD focusing on “American Dances”, is currently in preparation.

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Xiaogang Ye December Chrysanthemum: Chamber Music of Xiaogang Ye

Les Temps Modernes

DE 3559 £9.00 1 CD 10/04/20 DELOS

Xiaogang Ye has been widely acclaimed in recent decades as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. His music has gained worldwide exposure, having been performed by many of the world’s top orchestras, ensembles and soloists in famous venues. This is the first Delos album devoted exclusively to his works. The intriguing chamber music offered here explores a number of Chinese themes. A pair of works explores the traditional symbolism of flowering plants in China, and three others capture the deep mysticism of holy lakes in Tibet as well as Tibetan Buddhist practices. Ye often explores the timbral contrasts between Western and traditional Asian instruments, and two of these pieces are given distinct Chinese flavors by including the zheng (or Chinese zither) among the Western instruments played by the marvelous French ensemble, Les Temps Modernes.

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Robin Stevens String Quartets and String Quintet

Behn Quartet, Timothée Botbol

DDA 25203£7.95 1 CD 10/04/20 DIVINE ART

The British composer Robin Stevens is a great talent waiting to be discovered by the global music community. His varied, stimulating and expressive work arises from many influences - from the music of the Romantic era, to mathematics, his faith, and the influence of his main teacher in undergraduate days, John Joubert, and he is now producing substantial works for varied instrumental groupings, which are modernist and original, but yet immediately accessible. This album contains the premiere recording of the String Quintet, an early work from his student days, rich in allusions to early 20th century works, but already containing many of the elements of his later work: tangy harmonies, intricate counterpoint, modal lyricism and often almost neo-Romantic expression. The two quartets are very different. The first was written in 2008 after the composer had recovered from a 17-year debilitating illness and while his style was developing considerably as he undertook his Doctorate. Its single movement is rich in variety, using a small few thematic ideas in constantly evolving forms. The second, from 2011, is a study of three character types (not necessarily real individuals) which are each distinctive but clearly related. The Behn Quartet is formed of players from England, the Netherlands, Portugal and New Zealand. The group was formed in 2015 and has given recitals at major venues and festivals across Europe.

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Rudolf KererPiano Concertos and Sonatas

Rudolf Kerer

DHR-8086-90 £24.00 5 CD 17/04/20 DOREMI LEGENDARY TREASURES

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Manoug ParikianViolin Concertos and Sonatas

Manoug Parikian


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Dénes Kovács Vol.1Violin Concertos by Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and Mendelssohn

Dénes Kovács


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Johann Sebastian Bach Wolfgang Marschner Vol.1: Bach’s 6 Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin

Wolfgang Marschner


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Mauro Giuliani Le Bouquet Emblématique

Christian El Khouri

CDS7855 £7.00 1 CD 17/04/20 DYNAMIC

The programme of this CD features three works for solo guitar composed by Mauro Giuliani and performed by Christian El Khouri: Giulianate Op. 148, Choix de mes fleurs chéries Op. 46, the Cavatina Bel raggio lusinghiero from Rossini’s Semiramide. The collection Choix de mes Fleurs chéries, ou Le Bouquet Emblématique Op. 46 was first published in 1814 with a dedication to Monsieur Jules Giraud. This work is here recorded for the first time by Christian El Khouri.

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Gaspare Spontini Fernand Cortez (ou la conquête du Mexique)

Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lorenzo Fratini, Dario Schmunck, Luca Lombardo, David Ferri Dura, André Courville, Gianluca Margheri, Lisandro Guinis, Davide Ciarrocchi, Nicolo Ayroldi, Davide Siega, Alexia Voulgaridou, Silvia Capra, Delia Palmieri, Jean-Luc Tingaud

CDS7868 £18.00 3 CD 17/04/20 DYNAMIC

Gaspare Spontini’s rare opera ‘Fernand Cortez’ is now available as a double disc on DYNAMIC. Recorded in October 2019 at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, this production is the first modern times recording of the original 1809 version.

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Francisco Tárrega Michael Winkler play Francisco Tárrega

Michael Winkler

EOS 234200-15 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 EOS GUITAR EDITION

The guitarist Michael Winkler is internationally known as a musical frontier crosser, especially through the Eos Guitar Quartet. After his debut LP, the highly acclaimed Bach album and the CD midlife with original compositions, he now presents his fourth solo album with original compositions by Tárrega. Francisco Tárrega 1852-1909, was a Spanish guitarist and composer. He is still considered the founder of modern guitar playing and the most prominent guitarist and teacher of his era. When I first heard Tárrega’s music as a young man, I was immediately in love with the melodies, harmonies and elegance of his waltzes. I played the pieces at every opportunity until they became ”my” pieces. Later I discovered polyphony and forgot about Tárrega’s music, until finally in 2019 I dared to reinterpret it with a grasp of my eyes. I interpreted many things more slenderly and rhythmically tighter than at that time, thought phrasings larger, but also took more time. The beautiful spatial sound of the band supported my joy of playing, stimulated my creativity and fulfilled my wish to record the CD in a natural acoustic.

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JeungBeum SohnWorks by Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel and Ludwig van Beethoven

JeungBeum Sohn

GEN20688 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 GENUIN CLASSICS

Universal music, resounding philosophy, and the tragedy of fate: breathtaking tales of the night are presented by the Korean pianist JeungBeum Sohn on his new GENUIN CD. The winner of the ARD Music Competition and the International German Piano Award plays works by Schubert, Beethoven, and Ravel that deal with powerful, touching, and demonic finalities. Schubert’s late sonata in A minor, Beethoven’s Op. 111, and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit are no easy fare. JeungBeum Sohn, however, performs these pieces with a sweeping breadth and deep earnestness while never neglecting pianistic brilliance and richness of color. Equally impressive and moving.

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Christian Ridil Solo Songs and Works for Male Choir

Camerata Musica Limburg, Nikolaus Fluck, Andreas Frese , Jan Schumacher


With its latest GENUIN production, Camerata Musica Limburg, one of the best male choirs of our time, demonstrates its enormous versatility: choruses and solo lieder by Christian Ridil are on the program. The stylistic range of this outstanding musician and music educator is wide: from student choirs inspired by Romanticism to humorous settings for celebrations and Heine’s gloomy Belsatzar. The baritone Nikolaus Fluck, originally a member of the choir, sings moving psalm settings and love songs. Under the direction of Jan Schumacher the Camerata demonstrates its best side: spotlessly clean and sonorous.

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AmbarabàWorks by Saint-Saëns, Henze, Mikheev, Ginastera, Debussy, Rodrigo, Iglesias, Ravel and Fähndrich

sixty1strings


The trio sixty1strings is indeed a unique ensemble! On their GENUIN CD Ambarabà, the three young musicians Ekaterina Solovey (mandolin), Negin Habibi (guitar), and Konstanze Kuß (harp), explore a whole cosmos of sound that ranges from baroque structures to folkloristic and impressionistic spheres. The program includes the only original work for the instrumentation by Hans-Werner Henze and transcriptions of Debussy, Ginastera, Rodrigo, and Micheev. The works, however, receive no new attire; instead, they allow let their original garments to shine in an entirely new and special way. The album thereby pays homage to the beauty of the three instruments, which we rediscover in an excitingly evocative manner.

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Jacques Offenbach Offenbach Fantastique! Symphonic Music by Jacques Offenbach

Leipziger Symphonieorchester, Nicolas Krüger


Everybody knows Jacques Offenbach’s fantastic melodies: the snappy Can-Can from his first international triumph “Orphée aux enfers,” which had been danced in numerous film classics, or the Barcarole from “Les contes d’Hoffmann.” His music sparkles with charming wit, ingenuity, and slapstick comedy. With his famous operettas, Offenbach established a new genre – political cabaret with enchanting musical ideas. Like no other, he hit the nerve of the time of Parisian life in the 1860 and 70s in his over 100 dramatic works. He composed as if on an assembly line. Pieces that flopped landed irretrievably in the bin. This recording by the Leipzig Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Nicolas Krüger is now dedicated to the little-known works that reflect the richness of this unique composer’s multifaceted repertoire. In the caustic satires of the times, he turns dogs and carrots into rulers or abducts them to the worlds of knights and the moon: Offenbach Fantastique!

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Johann Sebastian Bach Die Kunst Der Fuge

Salzburg Chamber Soloists, Christoph Schlüren

98009 £9.00 2 CD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

This ‘Triple Completion’ of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue’, performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists under Christoph Schlüren for Aldilà Records, is a pioneering enterprise: for the first time the final fugue is presented both in its unfinished original form and in three completions, each of which hypothetically completes the composer’s architectonic plan. The first CD presents the eleven consecutive main fugues and the unfinished final fugue with the concluding chorale. The second CD of this double album opens with the two four-part mirror fugues, and continues with five later composers joining Bach: with the three ’completers’ of the final fugues: Donald Francis Tovey (1931), Karl Hermann Pillney (1937) and Kalevi Aho (2011); and with two fugues on the B-A-C-H theme by Robert Schumann (1845) and Reinhard Schwarz-Schiling (1985) that are used as connective interludes. The range of music that emerged directly from Bach’s late work thus extends in this project from Romanticism via Expressionism to the present time.

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Dvořák, Smetana, SukPiano Trios

Thomas Albertus Irnberger, David Geringas, Pavel Kašpar

99206 £18.00 3 HYBRID SACD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

The growing national consciousness of European people in the 19th century led to numerous innovations and changes in many countries that had hitherto held onto the artistic models of Central and Western Europe. In the case of Czechoslovakia, in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Antonin Dvořák is - besides Bedrich Smetana and Josef Suk - probably the composer that first comes to mind who masterfully understood how to weave into their works the essence of the popular folk songs and dances. Thomas Albertus Irnberger, violin, Pavel Kašpar, piano and David Geringas, cello, present the four piano trios by Dvorak as well as the piano trios bySmetana and Suk on this 3-SACD box.

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El silencio imposibleEratos Trio

Nicholas Spanos, Rafael Catalá, Florian Eggner

99207 £9.00 1 CD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

El silencio imposible (“The impossible silence”) celebrates the silence, the peaceful nuances, the intimate. Nicholas Spanos, countertenor, Rafael Catalá, guitar, arrangements and composition, and Florian Eggner, violoncello present a live program that begins with works by John Dowland and Georg Friedrich Händel. Completely in the style of the Ancient Music heard so far, the journey passes Rafael Catalá’s eponymous work before culminating in a series of Sephardic songs that Catalá artistically arranged for this special instrumentation. Catalá, hailing from Valencia, and Spanos, born in Thessaloniki, give these songs unique authenticity, both being places where the population of Sephardic Jews exerted enormous influence until the waves of displacement in the 15th and 16th centuries. A homage to tranquility and contemplation in today’s noisy and fast-paced world.

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Anton Bruckner Symphony No.2, 1872 original version

Altomonte Orchester, Rémy Ballot

99211 £18.00 2 HYBRID SACD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

Bruckner’s Second, like most of his symphonies, underwent numerous changes and revisions during the composer’s lifetime, in this case on the advice of his patron, Hofkapellmeister Herbeck, before the first publication by Bruckner himself, “so as not to overwhelm the audience”. The sheet music of the very first ‘unheard’ version lies in the archive of the Sankt Florian Abbey, from which the prominent Bruckner researcher William Carragan reconstructed the first untouched version of this great symphony. This version is presented as live recording from the Bruckner Tage 2019 with the Altomonte Orchestra under the baton of Remy Ballot.”

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Peter JózsaPortrait

Peter Józsa

99213 £11.10 2 CD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

Hungarian pianist Peter Józsa, born in 1975 has been giving concerts all over Europe since the age of 16. In 2013 he was appointed professor at the University of Art in Graz, Austria and now presents a 2-CD-album by the title “Portrait” featuring works that have had a significant influence on the artist in the course of his career. These include the Sonatas in B minor, Hob. XVI:32 and A flat major, Hob. XVI:46 by Joseph Haydn, the Sonata in A minor D 537 by Franz Schubert and the 7 Fantasies op. 116 by Johannes Brahms. On the second CD there are virtuoso pieces by Frédéric Chopin such as Impromptu No. 2 Op. 36, the Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor Op. posth. 66, the Fantaisie f minor Op. 49 and the Polonaise Fantaisie in A flat major Op. 61 as well as rather calm, contemplative works by Franz Liszt, which illuminate his poetic and religious side. Thus this portrait ends with Les Funérailles, Ave Maria in E major, Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, Nuages gris and Recueillement.

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Moving TelemannCantatas and Sonatas

Nicholas Spanos, Pandolfis Consort

99215 £9.00 1 CD 10/04/20 GRAMOLA

Had it been up to his mother, Georg Philipp Telemann would never have become a musician or composer. However, his irrepressible interest in it made Telemann one of the most respected composers of his time and one of the most productive with more than 3000 works. The Pandolfis Consort led by Elzbieta Sajka-Bachler and countertenor Nicholas Spanos present with “moving Telemann” four cantatas from the “Harmonischer Gottesdienst” as well as two trio sonatas for transverse flute or oboe with viola and basso continuo. In addition to the diverse historical instruments with violin, violetta, viola, violoncello and theorbo as well as archiliuto, the use of a (modern) accordion instead of the organ ensures a refreshing and truly “moving” listening experience.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Six Partitas, BWV 825-830

Trevor Pinnock

HC19053 £9.00 2 CD 03/04/20 HÄNSSLER CLASSIC

Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027-1029) were written around the year 1740. At those time Bach was Thomaskantor in Leipzig and also director of the Collegium Musicum, a chamber music society. Hille Perl was born in 1965 as daughter of a musicologist and harpsichordist. She studied viola da gamba with some of the leading experts in the field of historically informed performance. For more than 30 years she is travelling around the world, playing concerts and recording CDs ( more than 25) with different groups or soloizing, mostly in the field of 17th and 18th century music. Michael Behringer, born in 1956, studied church music, harpsichord and organ playing. He is travelling the world extensively, giving concerts with Jordi Savall, Musica Antiqua Koln, Hesperion XX, Freiburger Barockensemble and many more.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonatas for Viola da Gamba & Harpsichord, BWV 1027-1029

Hille Perl, Michael Behringer


Bach’s partitas BWV 825-830 are a set of six harpsichord suites that became well-known as ”Clavier-Obung I”, published in 1731. They are the last set of suites that Bach composed, and are the most demanding, compared with the French and the English Suites. Trevor Pinnock, born in 1946, is a famous British harpsichordist and conductor. He is one of the pioneers of the modern revival of early music performance, founding The English Concert in 1972 and the European Brandenburg Ensemble in 2006. He appears as a guest conductor with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras as well as giving solo harpsichord and chamber music recitals worldwide. Apart from his concert activities he is now focussing on teaching and giving masterclasses.

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Claude Debussy, Jacques Ibert, Maurice Ravel, Henri Duparc

Invitation au Voyage: Don Quixote and French Songs

Giorgos Kanaris, Thomas Wise


After ”Songs of Yearning” (HC16080), the current ”Invitation au Voyage” is the second album with Thomas Wise (piano) and Giorgos Kanaris (baritone) to be published by Hanssler Classic. Giorgos Kanaris is a recitalist as well as an opera singer. Together with the conductor and pianist Thomas Wise he has given numerous recitals with works including Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Liederkreis, Schubert’s Schwanengesang, Winterreise and Die schone MUllerin, Ravel’s Don Quichotte a Dulcinee and songs by Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner. This recording provides a colourful collection of French poems by Paul Verlaine, Charles d’Orleans, Paul Morand, Charles Baudelaire and many more set to music by the leading French composers of their time.

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Antonio Salieri strictly private

Heidelberger Sinfoniker, Diana Tomschel, Esther Valentin,Timo Jouko Herrmann


Very little is known today about the personal life of composer Antonio Salieri, if only because he left very few private documents to posterity. An autobiography of the composer, presented to the Gesell schaft der Musikfreunde among other papers by his grandson Eduard Rumfeld in 1865, is lost. To learn more of Salieri, then, it is necessary to refer to sources such as diaries and letters by close friends. One rewarding source has proved to be the diary of Joseph Rosenbaum, who married the daughter of Salieri’s teacher Florian Leopold Gassmann and was on friendly terms with the artist for many years. This recording seeks to bring us closer to Salieri the man - with works that he composed for performance among friends. They show the composer in quite a different light from the operatic works that he wrote to enhance the prestige of the Viennese court.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Works

Mona Asuka


The young pianist glows with enthusiasm ... but then proves that for all this vigour and exuberance, she also has a keen sense of what lies between the notes and a sensitive awareness of tempo. (WAZ newspaper). Born in 1991, the German-Japanese pianist Mona Asuka made her debut in concert performance with the Munchner Rundfunkorchester at the age of eleven. Since then she has received invitations for solo recitals and concerts with famous orchestras from around the world. From surveying the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, it can be established that of the more than 600 compositions he left for posterity, about a sixth were dedicated to the piano. In contrast to the other two masters of Viennese classical music, Haydn and Beethoven, Mozart’s music for solo piano was less of a field for formal experimentation or for expression of individual musical soliIoquy. Mozart wrote his piano sonatas mostly for quite specific practical purposes, whether for performance on his travels, for musical events among a smaller circle of people, or as exercise material for his students.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Most Complete! Vol. 1

Peter Bruns, Annegret Kuttner

KL1534 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 KLANGLOGO

The recordings by cellist Peter Bruns and pianist Annegret Kuttner promise to be the most complete of all complete recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s works for cello and piano. In celebration of the 250th birthday of the musical revolutionary from Bonn, the two artists bring together arrangements by Beethoven himself and by composers from his context, expanding his known repertoire of five cello sonatas and three sets of variations and making their recording MOST COMPLETE. These exceptional performances guarantee that the first disc in this three-part collection offers an ear-opening musical experience.

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Canadian Landscapes Claudia Tesorino, Jonathan Oldengarm

KL1417 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 KLANGLOGO

Indian Summer, impressive mountain worlds, and so much more: Canada’s breathtaking landscapes have inspired modernism in arts and music. German-Canadian Claudia Tesorino is one of the leading ambassadors on the classical saxophone. She has become internationally renowned for her outstanding interpretations in combination with organ. Together with Montreal based organist Jonathan Oldengarm, Claudia Tesorino discovers “Canadian Landscapes” as soundscapes of playful vastness and mystical depth.

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Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann Gugnin, Kholodenko, Geniušas - Dedicated to the 90th Anniversary of Vera Gornostayeva

Andrey Gugnin, Vadym Kholodenko, Lukas Geniušas


On the occasion of the 90th birthday of the outstanding musician and teacher Vera Gornostayeva, Melodiya is releasing a recording of the live concert of her students. This is the first recording made by Melodiya at Moscow’s venue Zaryadye. Lukas Geniušas, Vadim Kholodenko and Andrei Gugnin have been friends since they studied in the class of Vera Gornostayeva. The Professor jokingly called her favorites “three musketeers” or “three bogatyrs”. The disc contains works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. All of these works the musicians learnt in Vera Gornostayeva’s class. Vera Vasilievna Gornostayeva, a student of the great Heinrich Neuhaus, taught for more than fifty years at her alma mater, the Moscow Conservatory. Dozens of her students became winners of international competitions.

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Niccolò Paganini, Nikita Koshkin

Artyom Dervoed - Paganini & Koshkin

Artyom Dervoed, Alexey Lundin, Kirill Semenovykh, Daniil Shavyrin, La Primavera Kazan Chamber Orchestra, Rustem Abyazov


This album features Megaron Concerto live performance recording: the concerto was performed in Kazan in November 2017 with La Primavera Kazan chamber orchestra under the baton of Rustem Abyazov and recorded live. Niccolò Paganini’s Grand Sonata was originally written for the guitar accompanied by the violin. Nikita Koshkin decided to choose the Paganini-style quartet for the transcription: guitar, violin, viola, and cello. Moscow Virtuosi chamber orchestra artists Alexey Lundin (violin), Kirill Semenovykh (viola), and Daniil Shavyrin (cello) participated in the recording. Nikita Koshkin won international fame as a composer in the 1980s, once his “avant-garde” works broke the generally accepted notion of the classical guitar as an instrument locked into Spanish-Gypsy traditions. His works for the guitar contain techniques and tools which provide the audience with a full set of emotions and moods, usually associated with the classical music of the highest caliber. Nikita Koshkin resides in Russia and remains one of the most sought-after world guitar composers.

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Alexander Tsfasman, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Kapustin

Rapid Movement

Dmitry Masleev, Leonid Gourjev, The Siberian State Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Lande


Melodiya releases a new disc from Dmitry Masleev, the winner of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition. The program includes concertos by Shostakovich, Tsfasman and Kapustin. Born in Ulan-Ude, Dmitry Masleev graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and the International Piano Academy Lake Como in Italy. He became widely known after his triumphant victory at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The tour that followed the competition brought the pianist worldwide recognition. In 2017, the pianist made a successful debut at Carnegie Hall. If Dmitry Masleev’s first album that went in the charts of Spotify Top Classical of 2017 and received the prestigious German Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik included solo works by Scarlatti, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, this time the pianist performs with the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic Society’s highly professional orchestra conducted by Vladimir Lande. Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Concerto, Alexander Tsfasman’s Concert Suite and Nikolai Kapustin’s Second Concerto are compositions that combine classical structures with improvisational freedom, and a rigid rhythmical scale with an expressive emotional tone. The fresh astringency of the music, the soloist’s brilliant virtuosity and the perfect coordination of orchestral sound – the jazz vibes that fill this music will strike a chord with every listener.

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Edward Cowie Three String Quartets & A Solo

Kreutzer Quartet, Peter Sheppard Skærved

MSV 28603 £7.95 1 CD 10/04/20 METIER

Edward Cowie is one of the most individual and notable voices in contemporary music – which he sees as both conscious and unconscious sensitivity to sound. Highly inspired by Nature and our world, he works with sound, colour, order and disorder, shape, pattern and form which he sees a part of a grand unification of sensual input. As an acclaimed and successful visual artist, he creates drawings to visualise his subject matter before composing. His music is not however ‘filmic’ or directly impressionistic but draws from the essence of nature, wildlife and the seasons to create his unique soundworld. The Kreutzer Quartet is one of the most accomplished and creative ensembles in the UK and is acclaimed for its adventurous programming of both the music of our time and the great quartet heritage of the past. It has been the recipient of works from many of today’s pre-eminent composers, and has performed around Europe as well as at its ‘home base’ of Wilton’s Music Hall in London. The quartet has recorded a substantial number of albums for Métier as well as Chandos, Naxos, NMC, Toccata and several other labels.

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Friedrich Jaecker paradis

pianoduo elaeis, Chamber Choir of the University of Cologne, Michael Ostrzyga

MOD-CD-315 £8.70 1 CD 17/04/20 MODE RECORDS

American composer Harry Partch developed a system of intonation in which the exact tuning of spectral sounds and their inversions are made possible. In Harry’s Dream, each of the thirty-three musicians are responsible for a single note played on a tuned wine glass. Each glass — tuned precisely to the (microtonal) cent — helps to build a tremendous “glass harp,” in which the listener is enveloped by a mass of sounds. The cosmic theme, the just intonation and the unique instrumentation of Harry’s Dream, offers a complete contrast to the intimacy portrayed in Bagatellen & Studien, written for solo piano. Composed between 2007 and 2012, each of the twenty-four miniatures represents a unique style. The contrasting profile of the Bagatelles and Studies — compared to Preludes and Fugues — becomes especially clear if they are alternately performed by two pianists at two pianos, as on this recording. Friedrich Jaecker’s paradis (paradise), written in 2013, unites both instruments, forming a delicate array of sounds mostly within the pianos’ upper octaves. The composition is thinned out — even to the point that only a single canonic line often remains. The fainted image of beauty lingers in the air, leaving one to ask if the beauty had ever been present, or in the spherical sounds simply suggested.

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Ayman Fanous, Frances-Marie Uitti

Negoum

Ayman Fanous, Frances-Marie Uitti


The music on this CD was recorded in the studio the day after Uitti and Fanous spent 10 minutes improvising together in concert, during a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled. “The spectacularly gifted cellist Frances-Marie Uitti has made a career out of demolishing musical boundaries. She has developed new techniques (most famously, playing with two bows simultaneously), collaborated with a who’s who of contemporary composers, and pushed the cello into realms of unexpected beauty and expression”. (Washington Post 2011) Ayman Fanous has been described as a “…master musician/composer pursuing the most imaginative alternatives to the status quo … who has honed distinctive and unconventional methods on both guitar and bouzouki, managing to synergize classical, flamenco, and free jazz techniques” (Karl Ackerman, allaboutjazz.com). In addition to the guitar, Fanous also reaches back into his Egyptian ancestry in improvisations on the bouzouki.”

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Henri Pousseur Works for Flute

Roberto Fabbriciani


Flautist Roberto Fabbriciani continues his releases dedicated to the flute repertoire of single composers with works by Belgian composer Henri Pousseur (1929-2009). As with the preceeding Clementi and Maderna releases, this Pousseur release marks the first time Pousseur’s works for flute have been collected in one recording. The series of Flexions was composed in 1979 and aims to introduce students to the diversity of post-tonal harmonic materials without discarding any contact with tradition and the harmonic qualities of the standard repertoire. The score of Éclipticare (2001) is a proposal to be elaborated (completed). Fabbriciani has made two different versions, including extended playing techniques prominent in the contemporary flute repertoire but largely unused by Pousseur in his written scores. Éclipticare builds a kind of bridge to Zeus jouer de flûtes (2006). Pousseur provided the tape (Hymne à Zeus ornothologue, extracted from the eight Études paraboliques, 1972) as well as a “plan of action” indicating the specific time-spans and the choice of instrument to be used according to the tessitura (from bass-flute to piccolo). All the other details remained in Fabbriciani’s hands. This release also includes Pousseur’s Scambi for electronic tape, composed in 1957 and realized by Pousseur at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan at the invitation of Luciano Berio.

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Debussy, Joplin, Auric, Milhaud, Satie Preludes, Rags and Cakewalks

The Symphonic Brass of London, Eric Crees

MPR005 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 MPR

Debussy and other French colleagues became fascinated by the ‘ragtime’ music and ‘cakewalks’ beginning to be performed at the end of the 19th century by negro minstrel groups and which gave birth to jazz. The now acknowledged master of ragtime was of course the American composer Scott Joplin, many of whose compositions are featured on this brilliantly performed and recorded CD. World famous trombonist, composer and arranger Eric Crees has researched the performance style of Joplin’s music and its influence on Debussy and other French composers. He has arranged eight of Joplin’s piano pieces for 10 brass players and two percussionists and has similarly arranged a selection of thirteen ragtime and jazz-influenced piano pieces by Debussy, Auric, Milhaud and Satie, providing a highly entertaining and virtuosic series of performances, which often makes one wonder whether this music could ever have been composed in any other way!

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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 1 in E-Flat Major BWV 525 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)

NMP1094 £12.15 1 BOOK 03/04/20 NIMBUS MUSIC PUBLISHING

To accompany the CD and Digital release of NI6403 Bach Trio Sonatas (BWV 525 – 530) Nimbus is delighted to be publishing the remarkable arrangements that David Ponsford created so that these works can be performed on two harpsichords. Each sonata is printed on high quality paper with a card cover and presents two full saddle stitched scores, one for each performer.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 2 in C minor BWV 526 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)



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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 3 in D minor BWV 527 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)



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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 4 in E minor BWV 528 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)



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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 5 in C major BWV 529 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)



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Johann Sebastian Bach Sonata No. 6 in G major BWV 530 (arranged by David Ponsford for Two Harpsichords or pianos)

NMP1099 £12.15 1 BOOK03/04/20 NIMBUS MUSIC PUBLISHING


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Emanuel Moór Concerto for two cellos, Op. 69; Suite for four

cellos, Op. 95, Cello Sonata, Op. 53

Sebastian Hess, David Stromberg, Niklas Eppinger, Irina Zahharenkova, Rudolf Piehlmayer

OC1704 £7.95 1 CD 17/04/20 OEHMS CLASSICS

The rediscovered composer Emanuel Moór (1863–1931) belonged to a generation of composers who grew up with the romantic music of Brahms, Schumann, Wagner and Debussy, but were then confronted with the new challenges of modernism around 1900. Reflecting his friendship with the famous cellist Pablo Casals, he composed numerous works for cello. This recording highlights various stages in that friendship with Pablo Casals. Moór’s Sonata No. 2 for violoncello and piano Op. 53 was written in 1901, before the two met. The Double Concerto for two violoncelli Op. 69, written for Pablo and Guilhermina Casals, was well received at the time. The Suite for four cellos Op. 95 was commissioned by Pablo Casals. From 1920 Moór also worked in instrument making. He developed a two-manual concert grand piano (duplex coupler Grand Pianoforte) and made modifications to string instruments.

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Pablo de Sarasate & Niccolo Paganini Kim Sjøgren, Lars Hannibal

8.226913 £7.29 1 CD 03/04/20 OUR RECORDINGS

The meeting of Violin and Guitar was a marriage made in heaven, but it took a virtuoso master on BOTH instruments to turn it into a continental craze! And who was that master? Niccolo Paganini. Surprised? While known as a mysterious fiddler of near-supernatural abilities, it was said he was an even better guitarist! All told, Paganini penned dozens of sonatas, Grand Duos and extravagant sets of variations for the combination, not to mention trios and quartets. Four years after Paganini’s death in 1840, the Spanish virtuoso Martín Melitón Pablo de Sarasate y Navascués was born. Even though Sarasate composed no original works for guitar, the instrument’s sound, and the rhythms and melodies of Spain inspired every page of Sarasate’s music. Listening to Hannibal’s arrangements, you quickly forget the composer originally wrote the part for piano or orchestra! Joining Hannibal on this virtuoso voyage is longtime duo partner, the superstar violinist Kim Sjøgren. From 1980 to 1995, Kim and Hannibal, who toured as Duo Concertante, performed more than 1.000 concerts around Europe, and released ten CD’s. Three current program features newly remastered selection from two of those legendary albums!

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Alkis Baltas Ballet Music

Theodore Kerkezos, Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Alkis Baltas

PHASMA-MUSIC 016 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 PHASMA MUSIC

The outstanding album BALLET MUSIC is third album in a series dedicated to the one of Greece’s leading composers, Alkis Baltas. The ballet Panoria was composed during the period 2002–3, following the assignment by the Greek National Opera (Artistic Director: Lucas Karytinos). The play was first presented in 2004 in five shows by the ballet of the Greek National Opera, with choreography by Charis Mantafounis, who transferred the story to the modern era. The Orchestra of the GNO was directed by the composer. The story of the ballet is based freely on the theatrical play Panoria(or Gyparis) by the Cretan Renaissance writer Georgios Chortatsis (1550–1610). Two haughty Amazons, who hunt in Psiloreitis, refuse the love of two young men. At the end, and with the magical intervention of Aphrodite, the two girls’ refusal is transformed into strong love. Love shall triumph again.

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Michail Travlos Colours-Metamorphoses

Iwona Glinka, Spyros Travlos, Spyros Kontos, Dimitris Travlos


The extraordinary album COLOURS - METAMORPHOSES by Michail Travlos in the aesthetic of the individual chromesthesia - sound-color synesthesia. The composer writes: “COLOURS, a project for electronics, flute, english horn, violin and violoncello, where each colour has its own properties with its own wavelength and frequency. Although white could be said to be a colour, it is generally not included in the scientific spectrum as it is in fact made up of all the colours of the spectrum, but it is often referred to being a colour. Isaac Newton proved that white light is indeed made up of colours by passing natural sunlight through a glass prism which in result projected a rainbow of colours on a surface. He then proceeded to use a second glass prism and combined the light from the first prism (which split the suns rays into sperate colours) to produce white light once again. Thus proving white light (ie the sun) contains colour. Originally, METAMORPHOSES (transformations) was written for a video art composition which had to do with the transformation of realistic images to imaginary ones. Here are a few examples of some pictures and their transformations for a possible better understanding of the music.”

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Christos Samaras Peace is When…

Anita Tanyi-Manousis, Thamyriades Female Vocal Ensemble of Polygyros Halkidiki, Maria Papageorgiou


The outstanding album PEACE IS WHEN... is first album in a series dedicated to the one of Greece’s leading composer, Christos Samaras. The recording includes 17 songs that run the gamut of the “Thamyriades” Female Vocal Ensemble of Polygyros Halkidiki repertoire -from full-voice style pieces to the women’s work song tradition of Greek Macedonia. Samaras turned a wonderful Greek poetry by Odysseas Elytis, Nikiforos Vrettakos, George Seferis, Kostis Palamas, Georgios Drossinis, Tellos Agras to the beautiful Greek songs.

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Antonio JanigroThe Rare Cello Recordings

Antonio Janigro, Paul Badura Skoda, Orchestra Sinfonica de Roma della RAI, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Kempe, Erich Kleiber

PH20002 £16.65 4 CD 03/04/20 PROFIL

The Italian conductor and cellist Antonio Janigro (1918-1989) lives on in the memory. As an outstanding cello virtuoso he set benchmarks with his recordings. The 4 CDs of this box set provide a representative cross section of his rare cello recordings. In 1954 he founded the Zagreb Soloists, which developed over time into one of the world’s best string orchestras. Its reputation grew at such a mercurial pace that the ensemble was given permission, even at the height of the Cold War, to perform on international stages. Janigro was also conductor of the Radio Zagreb Symphony Orchestra (1954-64) and of the Orchestra Dell’Angelicum di Milano. As successor to Karl Ristenpart he headed the Chamber Orchestra of Saarland Radio. Antonio Janigro compiled a wide repertoire both as a soloist and with the Zagreb Soloists, encompassing works by Vivaldi, Corelli and Boccherini as well as the great works of the Viennese Classical School by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven through to Brahms. He simultaneously ensured that works by contemporary composers were well represented in his concert programmes and as a result premiered some very interesting works by the likes of Krzysztof Penderecki, Gyorgy Ligeti and Milko Kelemen, who was involved in this very collection, both as composer and arranger.

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Michael RabinA Genius on the Violin

Michael Rabin, Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Denver Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Boult, Alceo Galliera, Georg Solti

PH20003 £16.65 4 CD 03/04/20 PROFIL

The American violinist Michael Rabin (1936-1972) died at the very early age of thirty-five. The cause of his death was given as a fall, though he had been suffering from mental health issues for some time beforehand. Rabin’s father played violin with the New York Philharmonic, while his mother was a pianist. He began to make music at the age of three, and made his first public appearance at eleven; just three years later, at the age of fourteen, he launched his international career with a highly acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall. He gave performances of breathtaking quality. For many years, he played the “Kubelik” Guarneri us del Gesu of 1735. Audiences were in thrall to him in Europe and America and especially in Israel, where he often gave concerts. His programmes often included the most popular violin concertos and some of the principal sonatas. He saw it as a great honour therefore, when Paul Creston dedicated his Second Violin Concerto to him. The premiere was given under the baton of Georg Solti on November 17, 1960 in Los Angeles and the recording made of it rounds off this documentation of an outstanding artist whom American critics called ”a true and rare genius”. Rabin refused to enter a recording studio after 1959, and so the studio and live recordings he did make and that form his musical legacy have continued to this day to attract considerable attention.

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Urban SoulTwo

Jonas Lindeborg, Andreas Andersson

PCD224 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 PROPHONE

Trumpet player Jonas Lindeborg and sax player Andreas Andersson have for decades been in high demand in the Swedish music scene and have separately and together been seen in a broad spectrum of musical surroundings such as Stockholm Royal Philharmonic, Taylor Swift , Mike Stern, Modern Fantazias /Ane Brun, Mezzoforte, Efterklang, Bill Champlin and Laleh just to name a few. In 2015 they created the band ”Urban Soul” and launched their debut CD ”Nothing is impossible” which was well received in the press and by fans all over the world. On this release the duo is proud to feature guests such as former Chicago lead singer Bill Champlin, guitar icon Michael Landau, smooth jazz piano star Jonathan Fritzen and Mezzoforte bass player Johann Asmundsson. ”We are aiming to refine our idea, the horndriven heartfelt sound, and we are very proud to present the list of musicians helping us realize our dreams” says Jonas. Andreas adds: ”Our goal was to combine fresh original tunes with the tradition of organic live music in the spirit of Groover Washington JR and Kirk Whalum.

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Emil Ingmar Karlavagnen

Emil Ingmar

PCD219 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 PROPHONE

Swedish pianist and composer Emil Ingmar makes his debut with a soft-hearted punch in the gut. Twelve songs that reflect just as many places, memories and frames of mind. It is music from the Swedish forests, the cities and the country side. Music about longing for home, but also leaving it behind. It is generally said that music evokes memories, but this time I’ve let my memories evoke the music, Ingmar says. To me, both difficult and warm emotions are connected with places I’ve dreamt about, spent a lot of time at or just bicycled through a million times. I guess I’m very nostalgic in that way. Each member of the stellar band, including Swedish saxophone player Jonas Knutsson, helps to build a versatile soundscape, ranging from hip hop, folk music and jazz. The warm, acoustic foundation intertwines with electronical elements to create a dynamic full length album. The trip down memory lane reaches its peak in title track Karlavagnen (Swedish word for Big Dipper) – a destination as unreachable and epic as the asterism.

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Jeanne Philippe Rameau, Domenico Scarlatti

Maestros of the Baroque: Rameau and Scarlatti

Finbarr Malafronte

QTZ2136 £9.00 1 CD 17/04/20 QUARTZ

Music for the keyboard has dominated much of Western music history, with works for the harpsichord and its relatives forming a hugely significant portion of Baroque repertoire. Yet alongside the development of keyboard music, the guitar enjoyed a rich and varied evolution of its own. The Baroque guitar was particularly prominent in Spain, France and Italy, while romantic depictions of guitarists appeared in paintings by the likes of Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer. This programme brings together music by two great Baroque composers, one French, one Italian, whose harpsichord music lends itself superbly to these transcriptions for the guitar. Whereas the strings of the piano are struck, harpsichord strings are plucked with a plectrum-like device, creating a technical and audible relationship with the guitar. Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was influenced by Couperin, who pioneered the style luthé or ‘lute style’ of harpsichord playing, and Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) lived in Spain for much of his life; he was greatly influenced by the Spanish guitar, and his use of repeated notes in his sonatas was intended to emulate the instrument.

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Carlisle Floyd Prince of Players - an opera in two acts

Florentine Opera, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, William Boggs

FR-736 £9.00 2 CD 03/04/20 REFERENCE RECORDINGS

World Premiere Recording! The Florentine Opera brings Carlisle Floyd’s daring new opera, “Prince of Players”, to life! Floyd is one of the foremost composers and librettists of opera in the world today, and is considered the “Father of American Opera.” During his long career, Floyd has composed 13 operas. His most recent, “Prince of Players”, which premiered in March 2016 at the Houston Grand Opera, is based on the true story of Restoration-era actor Edward Kynaston (1640–1706). The plot centers on the crisis faced by Kynaston when, by royal decree, he is prohibited from plying the craft that made him famous—playing female roles. With this Milwaukee production, the Florentine Opera gives Prince of Players its world-premiere live recording.

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Blessed Art Thou Among WomenPatram Institute Singers, Peter Jermihov

FR-737 £7.68 1 CD 03/04/20 REFERENCE RECORDINGS

Reference Recordings is very pleased to present the third release in our series from the PaTRAM Institute, rising stars whose previous two albums on our label, Teach Me Thy Statutes (FR-727SACD) and The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (FR-731), have been honored with Grammy® nominations for Best Choral Performance. The music performed on this new recording of Russian Orthodox choral music comprises works of many great Russian composers, all celebrating the theme of Russian Orthodox hymns dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

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Luigi Cherubini Sacred Works

Sibylla Rubens, Britta Schwarz, Tobias Hunger, Tobias Berndt, Kammerchor der Frauenkirche Dresden,Ensemble der Frauenkirche Dresden , Matthias Grünert

ROP6179 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 RONDEAU PRODUCTION

World premiere recordings of Luigi Cherubini’s music featuring the Kammerchor der Frauenkirche Dresden under the direction of Matthias Grünert. The recording in the Frauenkirche, commemorating the destruction of Dresden in 1945, presents largely unknown works by Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842). The three compositions – Cum invocarem, Qui habitat and Nunc dimittis – written by Cherubini in Italy during his youth, remained dormant and undiscovered in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris for many years until Michael Pauser recently discovered them during his research work. After more than 200 years, these magnificent works are now being performed again.

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Songs of Peace Ensemble Fimmadur ROP6169 £7.29 1 CD 27/03/20 RONDEAU PRODUCTION

Ensemble fimmadur entrusted several composers from Leipzig with approaching the topic “peace” in a musical way. Six commissioned pieces were written and recorded for this CD. They are accompanied by two compositions by the former master of St. Thomas Boys’ Choir, Georg Christoph Biller. Furthermore, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, arranged by Stefan Nagy and Jonathan Wikeley as well as an own version of “We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen are part of this audio.

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Charles Gounod Cäcilienmesse

Sabine Götz, Christian Rathgeber, Felix Rathgeber, Mainzer Domchor, Mainzer Domorchester, Karsten Storck


This recording of Charles Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass was made as part of last year’s Christmas concert in the Mainz Cathedral. Intimate moments and immersion in the expansive sound, the play of dynamics and the remarkably transparent ensembles, despite the sheer size of the instrumentation, ensure a recording that is both atmospheric and at the same time exciting!

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Concerti per Organo - The Silbermann Organ in Crostau

Lucas Pohle, Dresdner Barockorchester


The Silbermann organ at Crostau has long been considered one of Germany’s most significant monuments of organ building. The combination of the instrument’s crystalline sound with Lucas Pohle’s sensitive organ playing and the historically informed performance expertise of the Dresdner Barockorchester promises to make the present CD a real highlight on the classical music market.

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Max RegerString Trios No. 1, Op. 77b and No. 2, Op. 141b

String Trio il Furibondo

SM323 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 SOLO MUSICA

In the almost three years since his move from Weiden to the music centre in Munich, Reger had acquired the reputation of an “enfant terrible of German music” with harmonically bold and tonally uncompromisingly becoming song collections, organ and chamber music works. Opus 77, consisting of a Serenade in D major for flute, violin and viola as well as the String Trio in A minor op. 77b, should, according to the composer’s will, be a work of a change of style. When Reger composed the String Trio in D minor op. 141b, 11 years later, the often performed first contribution already served as a reference work of a revived genre. The string trio Il Furibondo was founded in 2011 by violinist Liana Mosca, violist Gianni de Rosa and cellist Marcello Scandelli. They regularly collaborate with renowned early music ensembles such as “Il Giardino Armonico” or ”Le Concert des Nations”. Their repertoire ranges from baroque (played on historical instruments) to music of the first half of the 20th century. The Trio Il Furibondo attracted attention from the very beginning with extraordinary interpretations, such as their recording of the Bach fugues transcribed by Mozart for the Stradivarius label. Since then, the ensemble has been heard on radio and in concert halls throughout Europe, including Le Settimane Musicali (Merano), Ceresio Estate (Lugano), Milano ArteMusica, Paesaggi Musicali Toscani and Rencontres Internationales Harmoniques (Geneva).

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Albena Petrovic Bridges of Love: Music by Albena Petrovic

Plamena Mangova

SM337 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 SOLO MUSICA

Albena Petrovic, the Luxembourgish composer of Bulgarian origin, has meanwhile made a name for herself far beyond the borders of the duchy - with more than 600 compositions in a wide variety of genres and instrumentations, including operas, concerts, chamber music, vocal and solo piano works, which have been published, recorded on CD’s and performed worldwide. Now her new album Bridges of Love, which combines highlights of her piano work with new compositions, will be available in February 2020. The interpretation is in the hands of her congenial compatriot Plamena Mangova. The Bulgarian pianist first attracted international attention when she won second prize at the renowned Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels in 2007. Since then she has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Berlin, the BBC Philharmonic and the symphony orchestras of Rotterdam, Radio France, Luxembourg and Tokyo, and has played alongside artists such as Sir Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Renaud Capuçon and Maria João Pires. Her recordings have been honoured many times with awards such as the ‘Diapason d’Or de l’Année’.

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Franz Schubert Boundless: Schubert - Sonatinas

Zachary Carrettín, Mina Gajić

DSL-92240 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 SONO LUMINUS

In recording these, the earliest revelations of Schubert’s boundless lyricism in his early romantic compositional voice as applied to instrumental chamber music, we sought to pay homage to the original intent as well as the authentic sounds. The Sonatinas, (a posthumous title), were written for music of the chamber, a time of gathering, sharing, and delighting in the discoveries, creations, and talents of others. The Sonatinas are a revealing view into the birth of Schubert’s romantic voice. Whether the sturm und drang of the G Minor and its Haydn-esque representation of drama, the early Beethovenian poise, manner, and delight in the D Major, or the unabashed dramatic and unapologetic severity in the A Minor, (Lord Byron’s Manfred was written the same year!), these works show us young Schubert’s boundless expressive spirit.

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William Walton: Cello Concerto; Richard Strauss: Don Quixote

Zuill Bailey, Roberto Diaz, North Carolina Symphony, Grant Llewellyn

STNS 30156 £7.29 1 CD 03/04/20 STEINWAY & SONS

Music Director Grant Llewellyn and the North Carolina Symphony join cellist Zuill Bailey in live performances of the great tone poem Don Quixote by Richard Strauss and William Walton’s rhapsodic cello concerto.

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Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Alban Berg Antonio Chen Guang: Bach, Brahms, BergAntonio Chen Guang

STNS 30069 £7.29 1 CD 03/04/20 STEINWAY & SONS

Steinway & Sons presents the debut recording of pianist Antonio Chen Guang, winner of the First Olga Kern International Piano Competition in 2016. Antonio Chen Guang combines his extraordinary technical capacity with a profound and mature musical sensibility and an exceptional onstage charisma.

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Reynaldo Hahn L’heure exquise: Songs of Reynaldo Hahn

Anastasia Prokofieva, Sergey Rybin

5060192780888 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 STONE RECORDS

L’heure exquise is a collection of 25 songs from one of the most admired masters of mélodie of La Belle Epoque: Reynaldo Hahn. The programme features many examples of Hahn’s well-known charming and delicate writing (À Chloris, Le rossignol des lilas, L’énamourée) alongside a number of less familiar melodies, only recently published in collected form. These exquisite illustrations of Hahn’s genius (such as À une étoile, Dans l’été) were originally published in journals of the time, while some of the others were discovered posthumously (Naïs, Ta main). Two further rarities, Mon rêve était d’avoir and Au fil de l’eau, belong to the soundtrack of the 1934 film La Dame aux Camélias and were originally performed by Yvonne Printemps. Anastasia Prokofieva’s fresh, bell-like voice together with sensitive accompaniment by Sergey Rybin’s lucid sounding piano, create an atmosphere of elegance and sophistication.

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Frédéric Chopin Nocturnes & Polonaises

Viv McLean

5060192780970 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 STONE RECORDS

Internationally renowned pianist Viv McLean presents an exquisite selection of Chopin piano pieces. The recital includes some of his most beautiful, intimate Nocturnes interspersed with other works including the extraordinarily improvisatory Prelude Op. 45, the wistful Mazurka Op. 17 No. 4, and the mighty Ballade No. 3 Op. 47. It concludes with the great Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61, his last major work for piano, full of innovative harmonies and structural adventurousness, and tantalising suggesting as to where his composing might have led had he not died so tragically young.

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Giovanni Battista Vitali Partite; Sonate, Op. 13 1669

Italico Splendore

TC 632204 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 TACTUS

The city of Modena, under the rule of the Este family, was the capital of the Dukedom of Modena e Reggio.Thanks to Duke Francesco ii’s fondness for the violin, music became an essential element in the most important events at the Este court, such as receptions, weddings and official visits of foreign sovereigns.These were the occasions in which the Duke displayed all his magnificence. Modena stands out for the abundance of its collection of musical documents in the Biblioteca Estense: the library is a real mine, largely unexplored so far.This consideration gave rise to the idea of making this beautiful, extraordinarily modern music available to those who are “pursuing” culture and art. So our goal is to promote a rediscovery of the enormous heritage preserved in the Biblioteca Estense, by carrying out a meticulous study of the sources of the works of the composers who were active at the Este Court in Modena, transcribing them into modern notation and critical editions, and producing monographic recordings of them.The first step consisted in the study and recording of the instrumental works of Giovanni BattistaVitali. In this third of 6 CDs dedicated to his music preserved at the Estense Library of Modena, the baroque group Italico Splendore performs the Partitas and the Sonatas op. 13.The Partitas are formed of ten pieces for violone and eight for violin, in the form of variations introduced by a toccata.

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Giovanni Battista Martini Azione Teatrale, 1726; Richiami degli ambulanti al Mercato di Bologna

Coro Euridice, Pier Paolo Scattolini

TC 701307 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 TACTUS

Few musicians were as versatile as the humble Brother Martini, who insisted on being called that way in spite of all the honours rendered to him in Bologna and everywhere. He is celebrated in our time as an extraordinary keeper of books, scores and paintings; in his time he was quite famous also as an erudite musician, an expert writer of treatises, a pioneering historian, and an authentic “maestro” of music. And as a composer, obviously; but of what? Of everything that pertained to a Kapellmeister and an organist: masses, motets, psalms, hymns, organ sonatas, and so on; and also harpsichord sonatas, concertos, cantatas, duets and profane arias. The Euridice Choir conducted by Pier Paolo Scattolin and the soloists Giacomo Contro,Angela Troilo, and Vincenzo Di Donato are the protagonists of the reconstruction (seen the several gaps found on the original score) of the intermezzo ”Azione Teatrale” of 1726, and of the realization of the “Calls of the street vendors at the Bologna market”, including 13 amongst the countless vocal canons composed by Padre Martini that, once for all is offering to us a lively cross-section of eighteenth-century Bologna in its most daily and popular aspects.

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Zeynep Gedizlioğlu Verbinden und Abwenden

Yukiko Sugawara, Tomoko Hemmi, Quatuor Diotima, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Tamara Stefanovich, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Leonhard Garms, Ilan Volkov, Jonathan Stockhammer

WER 64282 £9.00 1 CD 27/03/20 WERGO

The music of the composer Zeynep Gedizlioğlu (born in Izmir) is like a kaleidoscope of diverse moments - sometimes fragile, sometimes harsh-angular, then again expressive and culminating in virtuoso sound ecstasies. A central motivation force of Gedizlioğlu‘s music is the reaching out for the ineffable, as Dirk Wieschollek writes in the booklet of the CD: “shapes solidify, contours emerge, often in imperceptible variants or shifts among things already heard, only to vanish once again.“ The perception of the world and herself, the shift between distance and approximation and the search for relations and non-relations are characteristic of the work of the composer. With these recordings Zeynep Gedizlioğlu presents herself both with chamber music and large compositions for ensemble and orchestra. Formations like the hr-Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, Quatuor Diotima and the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart can be heard on this CD.

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Arnold Cooke, Richard Elfyn Jones Oboe Sonatas

Catherine Tanner-Williams, Christopher Williams

WHR063 £9.00 1 CD 03/04/20 WILLOWHAYNE RECORDS

This recording of Arnold Cooke’s two lyrical Oboe Sonatas is the first for many years, having previously been recorded by its dedicatees. Features three world premiere recordings: The Viva Altea! Sonata for Oboe and Piano, and oboist Catherine Tanner Williams.

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Hugues Dufourt, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert The Way to Sound: Spectral Visions of Goethe

Jean-Pierre Collot

9102622 £11.10 1 CD 03/04/20 WINTER & WINTER

Winter & Winter conceives a canon of the most extraordinary piano works of world literature performed by the unique French artist Jean-Pierre Collot. After Hans Abrahamsen’s ‘Snow’, the album ‘Universe’ (Claude Debussy in dialogue with Salvatore Sciarrino), ‘Espaces Imaginaires’ (with premiere recordings of Jean Barraqué’s masterpieces) now the Goethe texts Restless Love, An Schwager Kronos, Meeresstille, Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade inspire the composers Hugues Dufourt and Schubert/Liszt to dedicate themselves to Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), a German movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Goethe and Schiller began their careers as prominent members of the movement.

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OABD7276D £23.76 1 BLU-RAY

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Idomeneo

Eric Cutler, David Portillo, Anett Fritsch, Eleonora Buratto, Benjamin Hulett, Oliver Johnston, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Chorus & Orchestra of Teatro Real, Robert Carsen (Director), Ivor Bolton

OA1317D £20.41 1 DVD 17/04/20 OPUS ARTE TEATRO REAL

Mozart’s third venture into the “opera seria” genre, demolished its traditional boundaries to open the way to lyric drama. Blending youthful earnestness with mature mastery, Mozart uses - while profoundly changing - the elements of a genre based on arias that come one after another with no real concern for dramatic progression. The importance and expressive power of the choruses, influenced by the operatic reforms of Gluck, foreshadows The Magic Flute. Idomeneo is often regarded as Mozart’s first masterpiece for the opera house. After the fall of Troy, King Idomeneo can finally dream of returning to his homeland after a long absence, during which his son Idamante ensured the continuity of his reign and guarded Trojan prisoners, including Ilia, King Priam’s daughter. To escape from a terrible storm that is keeping him from reaching Crete, Idomeneo promises Neptune to sacrifice the first living being he encounters upon landing. Unfortunately, it is his own son who greets him in his native land.By offering her own life in exchange for that of Idamante, whom she loves and who loves her, Illia manages to get Neptune to yield and to deliver Idomeneo from his fateful vow. Robert Carsen’s “politically poetic staging” (Opera News), set in present-day Crete, features a first-rate cast including Eric Cutler as Idomeneo, David Portillo as Idamante, Anett Fritsch, as Ilia, Eleonora Buratto, as Elettra, and Benjamin Hulett as Arbace.

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William Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew

Amanda Harris, Joseph Arkley, James Cooney, Claire Price, Amelia Donkor, Sophie Stanton, Emily Johnstone, Laura Elsworthy, Amy Trigg, Charlotte Arrowsmith, Melody Brown, Richard Clews, Justin Audibert (Director)

OA1305D £13.61 1 DVD 17/04/20 OPUS ARTE RSC

‘‘A LANDMARK PRODUCTION AS WOMEN TAKE CHARGE’Evening Standard

‘‘Come on, and kiss me, Kate’

In a reimagined 1590, society is a matriarchy. Baptista Minola is seeking to sell off her son Katherine to the highest bidder. Cue an explosive battle of the sexes in this electrically charged love story. Shakespeare’s fierce, energetic comedy of gender and materialism is turned on its head to offer a fresh perspective on its portrayal of hierarchy and power, directed by Justin Audibert.

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Igor Stravinsky

Barbara Hannigan: Equilibrium - Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress & ‘Taking Risks’, a documentary by Maria Stodtmeier

Barbara Hannigan; Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; Linus Fellbom; William Morgan; Aphrodite Patoulidou; John Taylor Ward; Kate Howden; Erik Rosenius; Ziad Nehme

ACC20420 £20.41 2 DVD 17/04/20ACCENTUS MUSIC

This production of ‘The Rake’s Progress’ marks Barbara Hannigan’s debut as an opera conductor and is a “labour of love” for her. Hannigan, who has sung the role of Anne Truelove many times, hand-picked the cast of soloists from over 350 applications from 39 countries, and subsequent auditions throughout Europe, as part of her men-toring initiative ‘Equilibrium’. In this unique and refined semi-staged production, director Linus Fellbom invites the audience to partake on a journey through space and time, from a distant future to the present, and back to 18th century London. The documentary ‘Taking Risks’ follows all aspects of the production, starting with the very first auditions, the casting and rehearsal process, and culminating in the premiere in Gothenburg in December 2018.

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BAC477 £17.01 1 BLU-RAY

Giuseppe Verdi Falstaff (from Teatro Real - Madrid)

Laurent Pelly, Roberto De Candia, Joel Prieto, Rebecca Evans, Simone Piazzola, Ruth Iniesta, Daniela Barcellona, Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Real, Daniele Rustioni

BAC177 £17.01 1 DVD 24/04/20 BELAIR CLASSIQUES

Out of Verdi’s adoration for Shakespeare three masterpieces were born: Macbeth, Otello and, as a musical testament, his only comedy Falstaff. Shakespeare’s most famous and subversive comic character has indeed proved to be a fertile ground for Verdi who, then eighty-years old, signed with Falstaff his most modern, most ambitious, but also wisest and most ambiguous opera. It was high time that French stage director Laurent Pelly, an eminent specialist of the buffa repertoire, tried out his talents on this whimsical music drama: a task he performs with absolute maestria, highlighting with remarkable subtlety the numerous comic devices invented by Verdi and Boito but also pondering on the equivocal morality of the argument. He is, of course, helped in this endeavour by a wonderful team of singers: from baritone Roberto de Candia to mezzo soprano Daniela Barcellona as Mrs Quickly, without forgetting the exceptional Simone Piazzola as Ford, Rebecca Evans as Alice, or Ruth Iniesta and Joel Prieto as Nannetta and Fenton, the young couple whose tender romance counterpoint Falstaff’s heroicomic gest.

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753904 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer

Thomas Gazheli, Marjorie Owens, Mikhail Petrenko, Bernhard Berchthold, Annette Jahns, Timothy Oliver, Coro Del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Paul Curran (staging), Fabio Luisi

753808 £17.01 2 DVD 17/04/20 C MAJOR ENTERTAINMENT MAGGIO MUSICALE FIORENTINO

At Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, maestro Fabio Luisi gives “a superb performance” (Operawire) of Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), the forerunner of grand Wagnerian dramas. His Italian Richard Wagner debut is infused with energy and drive, under his direction the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, together with Coro Ars Lyrica, sparkle “in what was a five star performance” (Operawire). Thomas Gazheli stars as the Dutchman, who has been condemned to endlessly wander the seas until the day of Judgement. Marjorie Owens shines as his saviour Senta.

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753504 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Ravel, Lutosławski, Stravinsky, Bjarnason LA Phil 100 - The Los Andeles Philharmonic Centennial Birthday Gala, from Walt Disney Concert Hall

Los Angeles Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel

753408 £15.65 2 DVD 17/04/20 C MAJOR ENTERTAINMENT

A century to the day after the orchestra’s first concert on 24th October 1919, the centennial season culminates in a “splashy gala night” (San Francisco Classical Voice) at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the current and former chief conductors Dudamel, Mehta and Salonen sharing the podium. The repertoire is a true reflection of the DNA that makes the LA Phil the LA Phil and “the defining factor of this orchestra is its ability to blend genres and styles to create totally new takes on classical works.” (The Guardian) The New York Times recently called the LA Phil “America’s most important orchestra. Period”. Look no further than this concert´s program: Ravel’s La Valse - Zubin Mehta; Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 4 - Esa-Pekka Salonen; Strawinsky’s Firebird Suite - Gustavo Dudamel and the World Premiere of Daníel Bjarnason’s New Work for Three Conductors! BONUS LA Phil – The Tradition of the New. The documentary portrays the LA Phil and its continual creative reinvention on the occasion of this jubilee. Including a historical part to trace the steps that played a part in where the orchestra stands today + interviews with the current and former chief conductors Dudamel, Mehta, Salonen, Frank Gehry, John Adams + music critics, and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic staff.

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Thomas Larcher Das Jagdgewehr (‘The Hunting Gun’)

Robin Tritschler, Andrè Schuen, Sarah Aristidou, Giulia Peri, Olivia Vermeulen, Schola Heidelberg, Karl Markovics (staging), Michael Boder

754208 £17.01 1 DVD 17/04/20 C MAJOR ENTERTAINMENT BREGENZER FESTSPIELE

Great moments: world premiere of Thomas Larcher’s opera ’Das Jagdgewehr’ at the Bregenz Festival.“ (Wiener Zeitung) Thomas Larcher has adapted Yasushi Inoue’s best-seller The Hunting Gun for his first opera, with a libretto by Austrian Book Prize winner Friederike Gösweiner. Austrian actor and film director Karl Markovics made his debut as stage director for an opera. The story tells of three women, who speak in three letters addressed to the same man, a hunter – his wife, his lover and his lover’s daughter. As the women react to the revelation of illicit love, the hunter’s life is laid bare. “The Austrian composer’s first opera is inventive” (The Times), “a clear, powerful text, some striking imagery and a luminous score of great beauty and originality ensure this opera’s success.“ (The Observer)

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57868 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Gaspare Spontini Fernand Cortez (ou la conquête du Mexique)

Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lorenzo Fratini, Dario Schmunck, Luca Lombardo, David Ferri Dura, André Courville, Gianluca Margheri, Lisandro Guinis, Davide Ciarrocchi, Nicolo Ayroldi, Davide Siega, Alexia Voulgaridou, Silvia Capra, Delia Palmieri, Jean-Luc Tingaud

37868 £20.41 2 DVD 17/04/20 DYNAMIC

Gaspare Spontini’s rare opera ‘Fernand Cortez’ is now available on DYNAMIC. Recorded in October 2019 at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, this production is a WORLD PREMIERE VIDEO RECORDING of the first modern times performance of the original 1809 version.

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dealer information service: no. 339 april 2020 highlights · releases from the world’s finest...

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