Yannick Nézet Séguin

This live recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni inaugurates a series of Mozart operas to be recorded live at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden in southwestern Germany, featuring a galaxy of top operatic stars. The performance marks an impressive beginning indeed for the project. The incongruously named Mahler Chamber Orchestra under French Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin may seem tentative and underpowered to those used to, say, the Vienna Philharmonic, but Nézet-Séguin keeps the music very tightly connected to the singers. The opera stands or falls on the voice and attitude of the seducer Don himself, and the performance of the young Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando d'Arcangelo may come to be seen as a milestone in his career development. He has a low yet lively voice, and he's a completely persuasive Don Giovanni.

Premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2022 – with Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara as its stars – Kevin Puts’s The Hours was praised by The New York Times as “sincere and persuasive … fervent … and soaringly lyrical”. The opera returns to the Met’s schedule in May 2024. Based on both the award-winning 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry and the original novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours interweaves characters and events from three different periods of the 20th century. Joyce DiDonato, who takes the pivotal role of writer Virginia Woolf, says that: “Even though it deals with death head-on, the piece is life-affirming and tells a timeless story. The characters’ struggles are shared universally, and by highlighting them through the different personalities and periods, hopefully everybody can find a part of themselves in the story.”

Star pianist Daniil Trifonov releases his new album My American Story – North, embarking on a very personal musical journey across the Americas. The first of a total of two albums, My American Story – North, begins in the USA, where Trifonov has spent almost half of his life. It features a collection of pieces reflecting the variety of his experiences. The album’s diverse repertoire “has given me access to many perspectives, styles, cultures, places, people, stories and forms of expression that have shaped and molded my experience of America,” says Trifonov.

World famous mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and conductor-pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin join forces to take on one of the most brilliant song cycles ever written: Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey). DiDonato, however, casts a different light on this beloved cycle of 24 songs in telling their story from the perspective of the woman, the lost love. Nancy Plum, Town Topics writes: “The question of what happened to the woman who sent the narrator on a tortuous journey was not answered in the Wilhelm Müller poetry from which Schubert drew the text, but DiDonato created a scenario onstage of being that woman, reading from the narrator’s journal and responding to the inherent despair.” “What stood out was the heavy emotion that came through in her singing, as she lingered on a syllable here, pressed her tone there. She created vivid feelings with her contrasts” wrote New York Classical Review about Joyce Didonato’s interpretation.

There’s much to admire in Randall Goosby’s debut concerto recording. This star pupil of Itzhak Perlman possesses a beautifully warm and tender sound, as well as delivering technically immaculate playing that easily surmounts the most challenging daredevil passagework in the two Florence Price concertos.

For over a decade, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) have been reunited each summer in the German spa town of Baden-Baden. In 2021, their work there led to a well-received complete Beethoven symphony cycle, released on DG in 2022. In the summer of 2022 Nézet-Séguin became artistic director of the Festspielhaus’s new La Capitale d’Été festival and during that and the next year’s residencies, the COE and Nézet-Séguin performed and recorded all four of Brahms symphonies. The performances were euphorically received.

ATMA Classique proudly presents Jean Sibelius’ Symphonies No. 3 & 4 with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. Recorded at Maison symphonique de Montréal, this new release is part of our complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies, launched in 2019 with Symphony No. 1.