The June new releases are now available on our website at MLSCMUSIC.COM
Summer begins a slow down in the release schedule of most labels, but we still have some notables this month and several new DVDs.
MLSC will begin our summer schedule in July and August with a four day week, Monday - Thursday. We will be closed Fridays beginning Friday July 4.
Happy Summer! |
New Label
Albion Records is a new label by The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. With almost 1,000 members, the Society now has the resources to launch its new record label, Albion Records,devoted to recordings of rare RVW. The vision is that each Albion CD will contain at least one world premiere recording and thier first CD, The sky shall be our roof, contains eleven such world premieres.
Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Sky Shall Be Our Roof
Albion 1
Gramophone Editors Choice Recording | |
| Ludovico Einaudi: Divenire
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Ponderosa 35
The music of Italian composer/pianist Ludovico Einaudi has been described as minimalist, classical, ambient and contemporary. In the UK, he is amoung the most requested composers on Classic FM. This is the long awaited US release of Divenire - which has already gone gold in Italy and was nominated for a 2008 Classical BRIT Award as Album of the Year in the UK.
"Einaudi's chief accomplishment is having resurrected and modernised the persona of the pianist as performer of his own compositions." Luca Testoni
"Contemporary and classical collide ..." Cambridge News UK
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Tchaikovsky" Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique" / Dumka
Philadelphia Orchestra / Christoph Eschenbach, piano
Ondine 11315 SACD
The Philadelphia Orchestra continues their series of SACD recordings with their third Tchaikovsky release which combines symphonic works and rarely encountered piano music.
"His piano touch is magical, with...a natural feel for the flexible phrasing that the music calls out for." Gramophone |
| Hilliard Ensemble: Audivi Vocem
Works by Thomas Tallis, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard
ECM 1127402
The Hilliard Ensemble choose lesser-known music by renaissance composers from their home-country.
Garth Knox: D'Amore
Music for Viola d'amore from 1600 to the present day
ECM 1127502
Garth Knox, violist, was a member of the Arditti quartet for eight years and makes his solo debut on ECM - on the viola d'amore, a rarely played instrument from the Baroque era. The repertoire ranges from Tobias Hume (early 17th century) to contemporary compositions commissioned by Knox.
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Bernhard Lang: I Hate Mozart
Col legno 20277SACD with DVD
With their provocatively named contribution to the Viennese Mozart Year 2006, composer Bernhard Lang and librettist Michael Sturminger succeeded in creating a parody of the opera business that loses none of its sharp wit in this CD recording. The "backstage insights" on the DVD reveal the abysses of singerdom and the respective worlds of conductors, managers and agents.
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Sinfonias from the Enlightenment
moderntimes_1800
Challenge Classics 72193
Revives the musical times for Frederick the Great with little known works of well known composers. This CD includes the first recording ever of the symphonies by Hasse, Graun and C.P.E. Bach.
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Other Releases to Note
- Britten: War Requiem with Helmuth Rilling. Hanssler 98507
- Zimro: A Broken Concert Tour is the final CD of the six part series of the music of the Moscow New Jewish School. Hanssler 93209
- Xenakis: Psappha a deluxe CD plus DVD includes interviews of Makis Solomos and Makhi Xenakis. ZigZag 40901
- George Quincy: Pocahontas is a musical dialogue in two parts set to a text by Thayer Burch and NY City composer George Quincy. Lyrichord Classical 6009
- Lyricord Early Music Series releases two titles with Bach: Harpsichord Toccatas and Elizabethan Love Songs. Lyrichord 8062 and 8063
- La Boheme with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon. Deutsche Grammophon 1121902
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DVDs
Landi: Il Sant'Alessio
Philippe Jaroussky / Max Emmanuel Cencic
Les Arts Florissants, William Christie
Virgin 18999DVD
Landi's Sant' Alessio (Saint Alexius) is recognized as the earliest opera on an historical, rather than mythological subject. William Christie made an audio recording of this rarely-seen work some years ago, but this DVD shows the opera for the first time in the full glory of a production by baroque theatre expert Benjamin Lazar. This opera is rarely performed because of its reliance on eight male singers (all castrati). Undeterred, Christie has put together a new production of this work which employes a remarkable eight countertenors.
Howard Goodall's Big Bangs
Kultur 4334DVD
Armed with wit and charm, English composer and pianist Howard Goodall charts the "Big Bangs" that forever changed the course of Western music. From the inspired invention of the thin red line in musical notation a thousand years ago to the modern electronically delivered music that surrounds us each day, this captivating five-part series examines in detail aspects of the musical world without which Western music, both classical and popular, might not exist as we know it. 5-part series, 51 minutes each. This DVD set is on the Kultur label and the video was aired in 2000 on British television - you can read more about it on Howard Goodall's website.
Other DVDs to note:
- Les Aventures du Prince Rama a spectacle of dance, music and masks, transported from Bali to France and captured last year in Lyons. The fifty man strong Kecak choir delivering the famed "monkey chant", hypnotic gamelan score along with costumes and masks. Accords Croises 123
- Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet. The film on Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Helikopter-Streichquartett" captures for the viewer a musical event that did not at all seem to be composed for being captured or replayed at all: four string players in four different helicopters. Composed for the Arditti Quartet and premiered at the 1995 Holland Festival, it involves the four members of a string quartet playing in four different helicopters flying through the air. The music is then sent to a central space and mixed at a soundboard. In his film, Frank Scheffer documents the complex preparations in the month leading up to the premiere of the work, and elicits insights from the composer regarding how he conceived and executed the piece. Medici Arts 3077508
- Ormandy Conducts Rimsky-Korsakov. Recorded live in 1977 with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. Medici Arts 2072278
- Koopman conducts Mozart and Cimarosa. Together with the excellent Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, which he conducts mostly from the keyboard, and outstanding soloists, he impresses his audience in some of Mozart's finest works and in a one-act comic opera by his contemporary, Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801). Recorded in Salzburg in 2002, the interpretations represent state-of-the-art historical performance practice and they offer referential renderings of the famous "Exsultate, jubilate" and Cimarosa's Il maestro di cappella. Medici Arts 2072218
- Plisetskaya Dances. Maya Plisetskay is the subject of this documentary. Kultur 1196
- Tomas Breton: La Verbena de la Paloma. Filmed at Madrid's new Festival de San Lorenzo de El Escorial in 2006. Decca 1108909
- Who is Karel Ancerl? Documentary including concert footage. Supraphon 7015
Donizetti: Don Pasquale performed by the Choeur du Grand Theatre de Geneve. Bel Air 33
And This is Free - The Life and Times of Maxwell Street. American urban history 1964 documentary on Chicago's Maxwell Street market area during the early and mid 1900's. Includes the DVD and a book and CD featuring the blues music of the era. Shanachie 6801
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