New Release Round-Up - 14th June 2024 (2024)

Subtitled 'Songs of Death and Resurrection', this recital of orchestral Lieder and opera excerpts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries includes songs from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Rückert-Lieder, Zemlinsky's 'Der alte Garten', Braunfels's 'Auf ein Soldatengrab', Pfitzner's 'Herr Olf', 'Pierrot's Tanzlied' from Korngold's Die tote Stadt, and 'Dort links geht's in die Stadt' from Berg's Wozzeck (for which Hasselhorn is joined by Julia Grüter as Marie). Hasselhorn was shortlisted in the Male Singer of the Year category at the 2023 Opus Klassik Awards for his Schubert album Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe.

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This programme of music written for the British tenor (1910-86) includes Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (the first major work which he composed for his partner), Lennox Berkeley's Five Housman Songs and Songs of the Half-Light, Arthur Oldham's Five Chinese Lyrics, Richard Rodney Bennett's Tom O’Bedlam’s Song, and Geoffrey Bush's Songs of the Zodiac (dedicated to Pears's memory and premiered by Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Graham Johnson).

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Inspired by a conversation with Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant (with whom Berkeley recently worked on a song for Ukraine entitled 'Zero Hour'), this collection of works which the British composer created in collaboration with performers includes two keyboard Haikus dedicated to Clare Hammond and Mahan Esfahani respectively, Notes on the Loss of a Friend (written in memory of arts administrator Nicholas Snowman), and the song-cycle Speaking Silence; originally written for baritone David Wilson-Johnson, the work is sung here by Alice Coote.

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Sinfonia of London's first volume of works by the Grammy-winning American composer (b. 1956) was a Gramophone Critics' Choice last year (as well as a Presto Recording of the Week). This second instalment comprises Eventide for alto saxophone and orchestra, an orchestral version of the wind band piece Point of Tranquility, the Bass Trombone Concerto (composed for Tim McAllister, and the suite Light Year- inspired by the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler and dedicated to Wilson and Sinfonia of London.

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This Brahms triptych opens with the world premiere recording of Virgil Thomson’s 1957/8 orchestration of the Eleven Chorale Preludes for Organ Op. 122, followed by Bright Sheng's Black Swan (an orchestral arrangement of the Intermezzo for solo piano, Op. 118 No. 2), and Schoenberg's orchestration of the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 - made at the request of Otto Klemperer in 1937 and first performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

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Two years on from a volume of the American composer's songs and chamber music (described by Gramophone as 'tonal with deft sprinklings of harmonic spice'), Naxos presents world premiere recordings of five orchestral works: The Art of Sailing at Dawn, Rhapsody, Concerto for Orchestra (2021 version), Symphony No. 1 'Lake Voices', Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers, and the orchestral version of Pluto (originally scored for orchestra and women's voices). A pupil of the late George Crumb, Brouwer began her career as an orchestral violinist, and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004.

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This collection of contemporary concertos from trumpet takes its title from a work by James M. Stephenson, composed in memory of Adolph 'Bud' Herseth, who was Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for over fifty years. The programme also includes Tyson Gholston Davis's Veiled Light, Sarah Kirkland Snider's Caritas, Reena Esmail's Rosa de Sal, Vivian Fung's Trumpet Concerto, and Stephenson's Scram! - a brief encore commissioned by 'The President’s Own' United States Marine Band in 2018.

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Perhaps best-known for his film-scores and compositions for guitar, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed a substantial body of chamber music from the 1920s onwards: String Quartet No. 1 from 1929 paints a vivid picture of Italian village life, whilest the more sombre No. 2 (written in 1948) reflects his anxieties on returning to Italy after the Second World War, and No. 3 (composed four years before his death and subtitled 'Casa al Dono') is a nostalgic fantasia, shot through with memories friends including the American Renaissance art historian Bernard Berenson.

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In recognition of the fact that the mezzo voice did not exist as a distinct entity in Mozart's time, Viotti's programme mixes music that was written for soprano and alto castrati as well as excerpts from roles which are now almost exclusively performed by sopranos: the album includes Susanna's 'Deh, vieni' from Le nozze di Figaro, 'Venga pur, minacci e frema' from Mitridate, Re di Ponto, 'Cara, lontano' from Ascanio in Alba, the concert-aria Ch'io mi scordi di te?, and the motet Exsultate, jubilate (composed for the celebrated castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, who had also created the role of Cecilio in Lucio Silla).

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Premiered in Naples in 1819, Rossini's Racine-inspired tragic opera was dropped by the theatre after just seven performances, though the composer remained proud of the work and described it as 'my little Italian Guillaume Tell'. This performance was recorded at the Rossini in Wildbad Festival in 2022, when Forum Opera enthused that Fogliani 'unerringly illuminates all the potential of the score with precision and power' and also praised Farnocchia's 'flamboyant, perfectly mastered' singing in the title-role (originally written for Rossini's future wife Isabella Colbran).

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