Gramophone Magazine June 2012

Dunedin Consort, John Butt - Handel: Esther (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Dunedin Consort, John Butt - Handel: Esther (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 99:24 minutes | 1.91 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

The Dunedin Consort has established a reputation as the finest single-part period performance choir currently performing. In 2011 Gramophone named the Dunedin Consort the 11th Greatest Choir in recognition of its triple focus upon artistic revitalisation of over-familiar great works, meticulous musicological enquiry and the audiophile integrity of Linn Records' production values. The multi-award-winning Dunedin Consort has won praise for the natural style of its soloists (an authoritative bass and a superb contralto-The Guardian) and renown for the virtuosity of its singers. The Dunedin Consort has performed at music festivals in Scotland - including the Edinburgh International Festival and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Scotland.
Rachel Podger, Holland Baroque Society - Vivaldi: La Cetra 12 Violin Concertos (2012)

Rachel Podger, Holland Baroque Society - Vivaldi: La Cetra 12 Violin Concertos (2012)
EAC | FLAC (image+.cue, log) | Covers Included | 01:58:29 | 646 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Channel Classics | Catalog: CCSSA33412

After recording Vivaldi's set of Violin Concertos 'La Stravaganza', Opus 4, in 2003, Rachel Podger has been immersed in music by Mozart and Bach on disc. But it has now felt right to come back to the Venetian Maestro, whose sense of drama she adores: “This time I chose his opus 9, the set of 12 Violin concertos entitled 'La Cetra'. There are plenty of jewels in this set, just as in 'La Stravaganza', with even higher technical demands made on the soloist including many, often exotic experimental effects.”
Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini - Antonio Maria Bononcini: Messa; Stabat Mater (2012)

Antonio Maria Bononcini: Messa; Stabat Mater (2012)
Concerto Italiano, conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 372 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Choral | Label: Naive | # OP 30537 | Time: 01:19:56

This disc is a tour de force, a world premiere recording of stunning music splendidly performed. The unjustly obscure Antonio Maria Bononcini was appointed late in life to be maestro di cappella in Modena, a post which allowed him to pour his store of invention into two grand sacred works, a Mass and a Stabat Mater. Conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini engages deeply with the composer’s imagination, opening up his dense counterpoint and delicately binding together his vocal and obbligato lines. The musical rhetoric of the Concerto Italiano is spellbinding, particularly when band and singers heighten gestures to surge powerfully towards a passage’s final cadence. However heated their delivery becomes – and the Stabat Mater does sizzle – the artists never rush. This is particularly crucial for bringing out Bononcini’s modulations and textures, which, because they shift rapidly, need space to breathe.
The Choir of Worcester College Oxford, Stephen Farr - This Christmas Night (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The Choir of Worcester College Oxford, Stephen Farr - This Christmas Night (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 75:48 minutes | 1.11 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

This album includes a world premiere recording by Hafliði Hallgrímsson entitled Joseph and the Angel, which was written specially for this album. Also included are several world premiere recordings by leading composers including Peter Maxwell Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Richard Allain, Matthew Martin, Gabriel Jackson, Judith Bingham, Cecilia McDowall and Thomas Hyde.
Marc-Andre Hamelin - Haydn: Piano Sonatas III (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Marc-Andre Hamelin - Haydn: Piano Sonatas III (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time -157:18 minutes | 2.41 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

Hyperion’s Record of the Month is the third double-volume release in Marc-André Hamelin’s much-praised series of Haydn’s keyboard sonatas. Haydn wrote around sixty keyboard sonatas and this selection of eleven focuses on those from the 1770s, including the great C minor sonata from the composer’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ period, with its dynamic contrasts and virtuoso demands. These are bookended by three from Haydn’s earliest output from the 1750s, most likely penned for his young female pupils to play, and the D major sonata written during the second of the mature composer’s triumphant London visits in 1794.
The London Haydn Quartet - Haydn: String Quartets, op.33 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The London Haydn Quartet - Haydn: String Quartets, op.33 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 133:17 minutes | 2.44 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

A fourth volume of Haydn String Quartets nds period band The London Haydn Quartet on sparkling form. Their previous recordings have been praised for the glowing sound of gut strings played perfectly in tune the ensembles delicacy of nuance and sensitivity to harmonic colour, treating the listener as a privileged eavesdropper (Gramophone). This competitively priced set contains the six Op 33 quartets, which Haydn wrote in Esterhazy after neglecting the genre for a decade, and which immediately became popular around Europe on publication.
Alexander Melnikov - Johannes Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2; Scherzo Op. 4 (2011)

Alexander Melnikov - Johannes Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2; Scherzo Op. 4 (2011)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 265 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 173 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Harmonia Mundi | # HMC902086 | Time: 01:09:22

Alexander Melnikov’s recent, excellent set of the Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues (currently nominated for the BBC Music Magazine Awards) demonstrated eloquently that he was no slavish follower of performing tradition. This new disc of Brahms’s earliest surviving piano works shows his questing musicality in another way. In an absorbing booklet essay on Brahms’s pianos and pianism, Melnikov cites the copious (and contradictory) evidence of how Brahms played, and what pianos he used and favoured. Brahms’s partiality for Steinways and Streichers is well attested, as is his admiration for Bösendorfer’s instruments, and Melnikov has opted here for an 1875 Bösendorfer even though, as he comments, it is ‘notoriously difficult to play and to regulate’, shortcomings ‘compensated by the beauty and nobility of its sound’. Those qualities, along with immediacy of attack, agile articulation and individuation of registers, are admirably well caught in this recording: no matter that none of these works were played on such an instrument when they were new. Melnikov shows himself a formidable Brahmsian, and the piano’s ‘nobility’ is best displayed in the surging grandeur he brings to the finale of the C major and the intensely sensitive readings of both sonatas’ variation-form slow movements.
Francesco Tristano Schlimé - BachCage (2011) [Official Digital Download]

Francesco Tristano Schlimé - BachCage (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44.10 kHz | Time - 59:05 | 504 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover

Francesco Tristano leads a multifaceted career as a pianist, composer, and DJ, delving into classical and jazz works, as well as techno and experimental electronic music. As a classical artist, he is often associated with Baroque music, particularly compositions by J.S. Bach, as well as Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, and Vivaldi. However, Tristano is equally at home in contemporary and avant-garde music, regularly performing works by Berio, Cage, and Stravinsky, in addition to his own compositions.
Britten Sinfonia & Thomas Gould - Bach: Goldberg Variations (arr Dmitry Sitkovetsky) (2015) [Official Digital Download 24/88.2]

Britten Sinfonia & Thomas Gould - Bach: Goldberg Variations (arr Dmitry Sitkovetsky) (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88.2 kHz | Time - 72:34 minutes | 1.34 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

The Britten Sinfonia s Associate Leader, Thomas Gould directs the ensemble in Dmitry Sitkovetsky s beautifully realised and heartfelt arrangement for strings of Bach s great keyboard work, 'The Goldberg Variations'. Sitkovetsky s arrangement (first conceived for string trio and later expanded for string orchestra), made in 1985 on the 300th anniversary of Bach s birth, is lovingly and painstakingly done. He dedicates the string trio arrangement to Glenn Gould, and it is clear from much of the written-out ornamentation that Gould s recordings of the Goldbergs were Sitkovetsky s passport into the music.
Pekka Kuusisto, Finnish RSO, Hannu Lintu - Sebastian Fagerlund: Violin Concerto 'Darkness in Light'; Ignite (2015)

Sebastian Fagerlund - Violin Concerto 'Darkness in Light'; Ignite (2015)
Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hannu Lintu

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 214 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 135 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2093 | Time: 00:56:56

The style in which the Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund composes might be described as ‘magic realism’, combining elements of surrealism with factual narrative. Drawing upon the symphony orchestra’s full spectrum of colours, the music reflects not only the traditions of impressionism, modernism and post-minimalism but also reveals the composer’s acute ear for other genres, from cool jazz to ambient music. An earlier recording of orchestral works by Sebastian Fagerlund was described in BBC Music Magazine as displaying 'boundless technical resource at the service of a considerable imagination'. These qualities, and his receptivity towards different musical traditions Fagerlund shares with Pekka Kuusisto, to whom the violin concerto Darkness in Light is dedicated. The title of the work is a subtle reference to a quote from author Haruki Murakami’s novella Firefly: ‘Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it’. The disc closes with the orchestral work Ignite, composed for and performed here by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under its chief conductor Hannu Lintu.