City 40

This stellar production features a pair of operatic superstars, namely GRAMMY®-nominated tenor Lawrence Brownlee and soprano supreme Sarah Coburn, who continually appear in the lead roles in top houses worldwide. The remaining characters are beautifully portrayed by distinguished singers from Lithuania and Kazakhstan. Providing brilliant and sensitive choral-orchestral support is the GRAMMY®-nominated Maestro Constantine Orbelian (“the singer’s dream collaborator”) leading the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and the Kaunas State Choir. In June 2021, Orbelian was named Music Director and Principal Conductor of New York City Opera. Bellini’s I Puritani is considered by many to offer the most beautiful music among some of his best-known operas, several of which are sublime masterpieces of the spectacular bel canto style of singing.

Naxos intend to record Vivaldi’s entire orchestral corpus, and Raphael Wallfisch’s integral four-disc survey of the 27 cello concertos inaugurates this visionary, though plainly Herculean undertaking. Soloist and orchestra employ modern instruments; director Nicholas Kraemer contends that authentic protocols can be ably met by contemporary ensembles and, in articulation, style and ornamentation, these pristine, engaging readings have little to fear from period practitioners. Wallfisch’s pointed, erudite and spirited playing is supported with enlightened restraint by the CLS, directed from either harpsichord or chamber organ by Kraemer, whose sensitive continuo team merits high praise throughout. Without exception, these Concertos adopt an orthodox fast-slow-fast three-movement format. Wallfisch, dutifully observant in matters of textual fidelity, plays outer movements with verve, energy and lucidity, such that high-register passagework, an omnipresent feature of these works, is enunciated with the pin-sharp focus of Canaletto’s images of 18th-century Venice, which adorn the covers of these issues.

Our first-ever full-length Italian opera recording, Delos’s star-studded current release of Giuseppi Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra promises to make quite a splash among today’s opera fans. As Verdi was entering his glorious “late period” (Otello and Falstaff) he wrote and re-worked much of Simon Boccanegra, a work that he had first tackled in 1857. The opera emerged in 1881 as a powerful masterpiece, although one that has been unfairly neglected, in comparison with Verdi’s other works on that level. So it’s high time for an authoritative new release of an opera that gives glamorous title star Dmitri Hvorostovsky – considered by many to be the world’s greatest Verdi baritone – the chance to record what he calls “…one of the most complex, deepest characters in the whole baritone repertoire.”

Langridge is an inspired interpreter of the role of Aschenbach; his performance here is matched by Alan Opie’s sinister portrayal of the six characters who convey him to his doom. Michael Chance contributes an ethereally unsettling Voice of Apollo, and Richard Hickox coaxes out every bit of the score's morbid beauty.

Midnite City return with the release of their highly anticipated fourth album "In At The Deep End". Since Midnite City hit the scene with a vengeance in 2017, they've done everything they can to be crowned the true kings of Hair Metal. The band has released three critically acclaimed albums, with their sophomore album "There Goes The Neighbourhood" being voted No. 5 on Classic Rock Magazine's Best Album of the Year and voted one of the best albums in Burrn magazine's 35-year history in Japan. Mixed by Grammy-winning producer Chris Laney (Europe, Crash Diet, Crazy Lixx), the band delivers their strongest album to date and ticks every criterion when it comes to Hair Metal in the style of the late 80s. From party rock anthems to melodic rock monsters to heartfelt power ballads, everything is represented here in abundance. Headlining tours through the UK and high-profile festivals in Europe have brought them a steadily growing fan base.