Jesus

‘To Know Without Knowing’, Mulatu Astatke and Black Jesus Experience’s 2020 album is their second together. A grooving transcontinental gem, recorded in Melbourne, Australia and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Filled with the warmth of the mentorship and friendship of their creative partnership honed over a decade of performing together in Africa, Australia and UK/Europe.

Violist Jesus Rodolfo makes his PENTATONE debut, accompanied by pianist Min Young Kang, with an album showcasing three iconic 20th-century Russian composers who all left their homeland: Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. Rodolfo presents selections of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata in G Minor in arrangements by Vadim Borisovsky, while Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne can be heard in his own transcription for viola and piano. The pieces performed revolve around love, decency, hope and optimism prevailing against mortality, mistrust, injustice and uncertainty. Within the context of a world slowly respiring from a severe pandemic, this has become a recording about the importance of the perseverance of hope, determination and love in the face of death and uncertainty. Acclaimed for his exhilarating, passionate performances, innate musicality and technical prowess, Spanish violist Jesús Rodolfo has been praised by The New York Times Digest as "a star whose light transcends the stage."

Marking 40 years of The Jesus And Mary Chain, Glasgow Eyes was recorded at Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studio in Glasgow, where Jim and William continued the creative process that resulted in their previous album, 2017’s Damage and Joy, becoming their highest charting album in over twenty years. What emerged is a record that finds one of the UK’s most influential groups embracing a productive second chapter, their maelstrom of melody, feedback and controlled chaos now informed more audibly by their love for Suicide and Kraftwerk and a fresh appreciation of the less disciplined attitudes found in jazz.

Passion, loyalty and political conspiracy are the three pillars of Un ballo in maschera (1859), the ‘most operatic of all operas’. Set in 19th-century Boston, Mario Martone's atmospheric production for the Teatro Real brings out all the innate theatricality and drama of Verdi's work. World famous Argentinean tenor Marcelo Álvarez, in the role of Riccardo, leads a fabulous cast including Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana as his lover Amelia, and Elena Zaremba as the witch Ulrica. Jesús López Cobos conducts the Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real in a performance that emphasises the lyricism and majesty of this wonderful work, in which grand opera and opera comique are woven together with classic Italian style.

Norah Amsellem as Violetta leads a cast of outstanding talent in Pier Luigi Pizzi’s beautiful production filmed with High Definition cameras and recorded in multi-track surround sound. Jesus Lopez Cobos conducts the Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real (Madrid Symphony Orchestra and Chorus) in an acclaimed reading of one of Verdi’s greatest works.