Aurora Orchestra

Aurora Orchestra’s debut album for Deutsche Grammophon, ‘Music Of The Spheres’, featuring memorised performances, will be released in June.

Tenebrae and Nigel Short are joined by Aurora Orchestra together with mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and narrator Simon Callow for A Walk with Ivor Gurney, an album celebrating the music of Ivor Gurney whose promising career as a composer was interrupted by World War I. Alongside four pieces of Gurney’s own music are works by his contemporaries, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. The recording features a new piece by Judith Bingham commissioned by Tenebrae in 2013 for the choir with Dame Sarah Connolly.

Violinist Leticia Moreno, the Houston Symphony and its Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada present two world premiere recordings of works by contemporary composer Jimmy López Bellido. Aurora, for Solo Violin and Orchestra, and Symphony No. 2: Ad Astra share a fascination for the stars. While Aurora is inspired by López Bellido’s years in Finland, and particularly the privilege to witness northern lights, Ad Astra is an homage to humanity’s spirit of exploration, and dedicated to the people of NASA, whose bravery and vision continue to inspire humanity’s most ambitious dreams. López Bellido’s symphony adds a new dimension to the notion of per aspera ad astra (“through hardship to the stars”), which has been one of the central narratives of symphonic composition since Beethoven’s days.

Numerous myths surround the supposed failure of Ermione, and while Rossini himself feared the subject might be ‘overly tragic’, he was clearly fond of the work, keeping its manuscript until his death. Ermione is set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, with the Greek princess Ermione consumed with jealousy because Pirro has forsaken her and fallen in love with Andromaca, the widow of Hector. This complex web of emotional turmoil explores the calamitous consequences of passion between larger-than-life characters, with Rossini’s captivating lyrical expressiveness and spectacular vocal acrobatics superbly performed in this acclaimed Rossini in Wildbad production.

Numerous myths surround the supposed failure of Ermione, and while Rossini himself feared the subject might be ‘overly tragic’, he was clearly fond of the work, keeping its manuscript until his death. Ermione is set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, with the Greek princess Ermione consumed with jealousy because Pirro has forsaken her and fallen in love with Andromaca, the widow of Hector. This complex web of emotional turmoil explores the calamitous consequences of passion between larger-than-life characters, with Rossini’s captivating lyrical expressiveness and spectacular vocal acrobatics superbly performed in this acclaimed Rossini in Wildbad production.

Numerous myths surround the supposed failure of Ermione, and while Rossini himself feared the subject might be ‘overly tragic’, he was clearly fond of the work, keeping its manuscript until his death. Ermione is set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, with the Greek princess Ermione consumed with jealousy because Pirro has forsaken her and fallen in love with Andromaca, the widow of Hector. This complex web of emotional turmoil explores the calamitous consequences of passion between larger-than-life characters, with Rossini’s captivating lyrical expressiveness and spectacular vocal acrobatics superbly performed in this acclaimed Rossini in Wildbad production.

Alberto Ginastera was one of the most admired and respected musical voices of the twentieth century, who successfully fused the strong traditional influences of his national heritage with experimental, contemporary, and classical techniques. The two Cello Concertos are among his most innovative, brilliant and technically formidable compositions.

It is a revelation to hear every note that Vaughan Williams wrote, late in 1947, for the then unmade film Scott of the Antarctic. There have been previous attempts to revisit some of the unused music he sketched for the film, but now conductor Martin Yates, with the support of the composer’s estate, has transcribed from the original manuscripts all the music, comprising some 41 beautifully rounded numbers. Vaughan Williams subsequently reworked some of this material in the Sinfonia Antartica, but on this recording we are able to hear for the first time his vivid reaction to the story, before the film was even shot. Standing independently beside the Sinfonia Antartica, this is a gripping symphonic experience in its own right.