Classial

James Levine conducts Wagner’s early masterpiece in its first return to the Met stage in more than a decade. Today’s leading Wagnerian tenor, Johan Botha, takes on the daunting title role of the young knight caught between true love and passion. Eva-Maria Westbroek is Elisabeth, adding another Wagner heroine to her Met repertoire after her acclaimed Sieglinde in the Ring a few seasons ago. On the heels of his recent triumph in Parsifal, Peter Mattei sings Wolfram, and Michelle DeYoung is the love goddess, Venus.

Adiu, Adiu Dous Dame, a new digital-only recording by period ensemble La Rota, brings 14th-century Italian songs to life.

When deciding on the repertoire for his début recital, James Newby’s first choice fell on An die ferne Geliebte, songs that he had been performing ever since the beginning of his career. But Beethoven’s song cycle – and perhaps even more so the quasi-operatic Adelaide – also sets a tone for the entire programme, that of longing and of wanting to be elsewhere, near the distant beloved. These are emotions that Schubert, perhaps more than any other composer, has plumbed in depth, and Newby went on to select five of his songs that in various ways depict the restlessness and loneliness of the eternal wanderer.Mahler is another composer who knew something about longing – for instance that it can be deadly, which he demonstrated with his Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, in which a soldier awaits execution after trying to desert to his homeland while the piano imitates the muffled rolling of drums.

The extant music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two volumes, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first volume of her survey in 2019, to critical acclaim. The Vol. 1 included works for violin and piano as well as three pieces with orchestral accompaniment, in performances described in "The Strad" as having ‘a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch’.The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument, of the Viennese school, was built around 1815 and is thus almost exactly contemporary with the sonatas recorded here, the ones in D major and A minor dating from 1816 and the Sonata in A major from the following year. Schubert, who was around twenty years old at the time, had learned the violin from an early age, but the sonatas were probably intended for his older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola.

A Delicate Fire is a sumptuous musical experience that celebrates the joys, vicissitudes, and triumphs of love and pays homage to one of the greatest composers of the 17th century.This 60-minute opera featuring the music of Barbara Strozzi is available here from 29 October - 13 December An Australian triumph forged in a time of great adversity, this film features the vocal talents of great artists set against the glittering chiaroscuro of members of the Orchestra of the Antipodes.

Domenico Scarlattis magnificent sonatas were composed for the Infanta, who became Queen of Spain in 1746. Previous releases in this series have focused primarily on the sonatas contained in Venetian volumes but this one ranges further afield. It includes 13 sonatas from various Italian, Spanish and Portuguese archives notable for their refined ornamentation, brilliant figuration, rapid repeated notes and scales, and wide leaps, as well as music of meditative breadth and athletic vitality.

To say that Christian Thielemann's March 3rd 2020 Semperoper Dresden performance of Schoenberg's colossal Gurre-Lieder didn't take place a moment too soon is something of an understatement, when under a fortnight later Europe's international-level live music making scene had been reduced to solo recitals self-filmed on mobile phones and posted onto social media. Equally fortuitously, it was recorded live, meaning we can now all listen to this ambitious project with its international line-up that would, had 2020 turned out differently, have received a second airing the following month at the Salzburg Easter Festival.