New Releases Jan. 21: Rufus Wainwright, Virtuosity, and Venice

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Giovanni Sollima (Photo: Shobha)

A release from daring Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima mines the cultural crossroads that is Venice; a deep-dive into Fauré; a generation-spanning look at quartet repertoire; virtuosic contemporary compositions, and more.

Al-Bunduqiyya is the Arabic name for Venice and The Lost Concerto is a work composed in 2021 by the charismatic cellist Giovanni Sollima. It germinated from the only extant fragment – the orchestral viola part, now preserved at the Venice Conservatory – of a Vivaldi cello concerto in E minor. Among the other items are complete concertos by Vivaldi, solo improvisations by Sollima, a piece by Vivaldi’s long-lived contemporary Tartini, and music of the Cypriot and Albanian traditions. Paired with the stylish period instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, the album crosses cultures and eras, setting Vivaldi in the context of his native city’s historical relationship with the eastern Mediterranean and Asia.

Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge celebrate the 500th anniversary of Palestrina’s birth with five world-premiere recordings of still little-known works: the Magnificat secundi toni a 5; two motets: Ad te levavi oculos meos a 12, Memor esto verbi tui a 5; and two mass settings: Missa Memor esto verbi tui a 5 and Missa Emendemus in melius a 4. For context, they pair settings of the same texts by three of Palestrina’s English contemporaries: William Byrd, Robert White, and William Mundy.

Featuring works by composers spanning multiple generations—from the late Gloria Coates to emerging talents Tom Metcalf and Joel Järventausta—the Kreutzer Quartet’s latest album highlights the quartet’s unique role as both interpreters and collaborators. Three of the featured compositions emerged during the global pandemic, reflecting resilience through artistic partnership. With themes ranging from water to profound social responses, the album showcases the quartet’s enduring commitment to innovation and dialogue within the contemporary classical landscape.

Italian violinist Davide Alogna, a champion of Italian twentieth century repertoire, is the soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra for a program of new works for violin and orchestra. Each work on the program is tonal, often cinematic, and around 5 minutes in duration, serving as an accessible introduction to the composer. The collection showcases eleven composers, several who are new to the WFMT library, including Derek A. McKinney and Sophia Serghi. Alogna performs on a 1690s ‘Stevens’ Stradivari, considered one of the best-sounding Stradivari instruments ever created.

This album spotlights Gabriel Fauré’s orchestrated songs and his music for the stage, of which his suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande includes some of his best-loved music. Performances of Fauré’s spectacular Wagnerian drama Prométhée are a real rarity, while the Shylock Suite, based on Shakespeare, contains some of his most elaborate symphonic music. Fauré orchestrated only a small number of his more than 100 songs. Star Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught performs three of these orchestrated songs, as well as Mélisande’s Song and an air from Prométhée. Jean-Luc Tingaud, a specialist in both symphonic and operatic French repertoire, leads the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

Singer-songwriter and composer Rufus Wainwright scored his epic Dream Requiem for orchestra, chorus, soprano and narrator. In June 2024, it received its world premiere in Paris with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the chorus and children’s choir of Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck with Meryl Streep as the narrator and soprano Anna Prohaska. Dream Requiem combines words from the Latin Mass for the with Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.”

Composed during the pandemic, Wainwright says he wrote it “for the people we have lost in this crisis, for the past from which we are cut off and for the future to which we do not yet know how to connect, a Requiem for human contact, solidarity and the human voice that have all become dangerous and contagious.”