Immerse yourself in album-length explorations of works by Chicago’s Shawn E. Okpebholo, pianist-composer Stephen Hough, as well as the 20th-century master William Walton and Romantic era great Robert Schumann.
Plus, uncover music by Shostakovich and peers that was censored by the Soviet authorities, and take part in an Americas-spanning celebration of Latin rhythms.
This new release features world premiere recordings of Shawn E. Okpebholo’s complete song cycle Songs in Flight. Drawing inspiration from 18th and 19th century print advertisements for the recapture of runaway enslaved individuals, Songs in Flight explores their untold stories with texts by poets Tsitsi Jaji, Crystal Simone Smith, and Tyehimba Jess. The work incorporates styles including spirituals, folk tunes, elegies, and protest songs, each movement offering a unique historical narrative.
Performers include an array of Grammy Award-winning and -nominated artists known for their dedication to cultural and historical music projects: singer and multi-instrumentalist, Rhiannon Giddens, soprano Karen Slack, countertenor Reginald Mobley, baritone Will Liverman, and pianist Paul Sánchez. Saxophonist Julian Velasco joins in two of the four additional songs included after the cycle.
Founded in 2019, the New York-based chamber orchestra Parlando is the brainchild of conductor Ian Niederhoffer, a Musical America “New Artist of the Month” and BBC Music Magazine “Rising Star.”
In the ensemble’s debut album, Niederhoffer explores from the 20th century as a tool of cultural resilience in the face of censorship, particularly in the Soviet Union. The album opens with a selection from Shostakovich’s controversial opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, arranged by Niederhoffer. American violinist Aubree Oliverson is soloist for the Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra by the Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer Mieczysław Weinberg, whose career was shaped by persecution during Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaign. The final work, featuring timpanist Andrew Beall, is the Symphony for String Orchestra and Timpani by the Armenian composer Edvard Mirzoyan, the son of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.
To incorporate Parlando’s mission of integrating performance with storytelling, Niederhoffer has included his spoken program notes to the tracklist. “I hope they’re able to add the weight of history to this wonderful music and paint a more vivid, complete picture of the story of Soviet censorship and cultural resilience.”
The prolific recording artists Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson present works by Sir William Walton (the first in a new series of recordings) featuring Charlie Lovell-Jones as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Leader of the Sinfonia of London, the 26-year-old Welsh violinist has been recognized as one of the most promising international soloists of his generation. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, Walton’s Concerto premiered in 1939 in a performance by Heifetz and the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński. Inspired by Walton’s friend and lover Alice Wimborne, the work is extremely lyrical and passionate in nature, sporting a wild, virtuosic “Tarantella” as the second movement.
The album includes a four-movement orchestral suite from Walton’s first grand opera, Troilus and Cressida, and an early overture, Portsmouth Point, which premiered in 1926.
The duo of violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien present their tenth album for Hyperion Records. Previous collaborations for the label include acclaimed recordings of the complete violin sonatas of Brahms, Mozart, and Felix Mendelssohn, as well as complete works for violin and piano by Schubert and Ravel. “In a word, delicious” was Gramophone’s verdict on the duo’s last recording. Their new album features the complete violin sonatas of Robert Schumann. The critical reception of Schumann’s violin sonatas—like that of much of the composer’s late output—has vacillated over the course of the intervening centuries. Written for and first performed by some of the leading violinists of the day, all three are now recognized as masterpieces.
Formerly known as Philharmonie zuidnederland, Philzuid is the only professional symphony orchestra in the south of the Netherlands as well as one of the largest in the country. Founded in 2013 and based in Eindhoven and Maastricht, Philzuid was created by merging the Brabant Orchestra and the Linburg Symphony Orchestra. Chief Conductor Duncan Ward leads a high energy performance of Philzuid’s 2024 New Year’s program which centers Latin rhythms and American dance with works by Gershwin, Montsalvatge, and Bernstein, as well as the premiere recording of the swinging Cuban Suite by Cuban composer Jenny Peña Campo. The orchestrated version of Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras features Adriana Bignagni Lesca, a rising star mezzo-soprano from Gabon with a rich contralto hue.
The theme for the latest album from the prolific virtuoso pianist-composer and polymath Sir Stephen Hough is nostalgia.
This album centers the premiere recording of his first piano concerto, recorded by the composer with The Hallé under Sir Mark Elder. Its subtitle “The world of yesterday” deliberately places the work in a broader context of the pianist-virtuosi of yesteryear who composed and performed their own piano concertos as they toured the world. The short Sonatina nostalgica, utilizing a romantic musical language of yesteryear, was written for the 70th birthday celebration of a friend and fellow student of Hough’s teacher Gordon Green. Finally, the Partita was commissioned for the winner of the 2017 Naumburg Competition, Albert Cano Smit. Hough characterizes the nostalgic and celebratory five movement work as “unashamedly drawing on some early twentieth-century influences and tonal gestures.”
