Last January, Grammy-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods premiered a new trio formation with soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Conor Hanick on a national tour that included a performance at University of Chicago. Woods’s highly personal new album features works performed on their debut tour. Randall Scotting’s latest album with the Academy of Ancient Music distinguishes the American countertenor as both a scholar and an ideal interpreter of 18th century opera seria. Isata Kanneh-Mason records music by a composer who has factored greatly in the pianist’s career. German pianist Esther Birringer offers a survey of 15 appealing works from Bach to Einaudi. Finally, the Danish-Swiss violinist Niklas Walentin presents seven brand new concertos by Nordic composers.
New Releases Apr 14: Seth Parker Woods, Randall Scotting, Isata Kanneh-Mason, and more
The latest album from countertenor Randall Scotting celebrates Nicolò Grimaldi, the castrato who conquered the opera world under the stage name Nicolini (1673 – 1732). The repertoire features rarely performed arias and duets from the early 18th century, nine of which have never been recorded before and have not been heard since Nicolini’s lifetime. While Nicolini is best remembered today for the music Handel wrote for him, Scotting’s program revives works by a range of composers who wrote for this castrato including Francesco Gasparini, Nicola Porpora, Riccardo Broschi, Francesco Mancini, Attilio Ariosti, and Giovanni Antonio Giaj. Divine Impresario takes its title from Nicolini’s unique role as both performer and visionary. “When I think about Nicolò Grimaldi, the word that comes to mind is impresario,” explains Scotting. “Not in the limited sense of a theatre manager, but rather as a creative force who shaped the artform itself. Nicolini wasn’t content just to stand and sing; he directed performances, he reworked libretti, and he elevated the standard of acting in opera.” Holding a PhD from the Royal College of Music in London, Scotting is also that rare performer who has trained extensively as a scholar – a background that served him well in researching and bringing to life the repertoire he performs here. After extensive research into Nicolini’s performing career, Scotting sought out manuscripts from archives in England, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Choosing the best of what he found, he then meticulously created modern performing editions for all the music on his third solo album with the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Laurence Cummings, with guest artist, soprano Mary Bevan.
The third solo album from German pianist Esther Birringer surveys music by 15 different composers, bringing the masters such as Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and others into dialogue with modern voices like Lera Auerbach, Ludovico Einaudi, and Valentin Silvestrov. “The term spectrum is usually associated with physics: when white light passes through a prism, it breaks into a full rainbow of colors,” says Birringer. “These colors have always existed but become visible only through refraction. Music works in much the same way. The pieces on this album act as a prism, unfolding fundamental human emotions into their infinite facets. With this recording, I wish to pay tribute to the timeless power of music, resonating across the entire color palette of the human soul. The program follows an inner logic of emotion, timbre, and the moment—each piece forming its own microcosm and inviting the listener to lose themselves within it.”
Cellist Seth Parker Woods, Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, presents a new album exploring identity, intimacy, and human connection with music by André Previn, George Walker, Tania León, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The album’s title is drawn from Toni Morrison’s poetry – setting the tone for a program that elevates the everyday into something resonant and revelatory. “I’m still on that quest of understanding myself through different lenses,” Woods notes – those inherited, encountered, and continuously evolving. The album opens with Previn’s “Shelter” from Four Songs on Poems of Toni Morrison, performed with soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Conor Hanick. George Walker’s Sonata for Cello and Piano is a meditation on relationship and communication. Woods emphasizes the composer’s synthesis of jazz-inflected rhythms, lyric warmth, and modernist edge, immersing the listener in a soliloquy of unrequited love and self-witness. Lyric devotion takes on a spiritual dimension in León’s “Oh Yemanja” from Scourge of the Hyacinths, and the album concludes with Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Piano and Cello, performed with longtime collaborator Andrew Rosenblum. Woods describes the work as “a link to the memoir of my life”. Woods asserts that From Ordinary Things is an album shaped by friendship and by the belief that meaning is forged through connection.
Isata Kanneh-Mason’s latest recording stems from a long and personal relationship with the composer’s music, which reached a major public milestone when she made her BBC Proms solo debut in 2023, performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Since she first heard the concerto at the age of 18, the work and has been a key part of Kanneh-Mason’s concert life. She has performed it with orchestras across the UK, Europe, and North America, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Bremer Philharmonic, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in the United States, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Ryan Bancroft at the BBC Proms. The album recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra, also under Ryan Bancroft, places the Concerto at the center of a wider program exploring the composer’s piano music across different periods and styles including early pieces such as the Toccata, Ten Pieces for Piano, and the striking Sonata No. 3, works that already show Prokofiev’s restless imagination and rhythmic bite. These sit alongside piano transcriptions from popular works for the stage: Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, and The Love for Three Oranges, whose March and Scherzo capture the composer’s satirical edge. Completing the program is Troika from Lieutenant Kijé, a piece full of colour and character that reflects Prokofiev’s gift for memorable melody and vivid storytelling.
This album comprises world premiere recordings of seven new Nordic violin concertos by Veronique Vaka from Iceland, Sunleif Rasmussen from the Faroe Islands, Andrea Tarrodi from Sweden, Aksel Kolstad from Norway, Arnannguaq Gerstrøm from Greenland, Joel Järventausta from Finland, and Poul Ruders from Denmark. Composed for violinist Niklas Walentin and the Danish Chamber Players, these commissions reinterpret the Romantic violin concerto into a condensed chamber music format that was suggested by the many limitations and restrictions on large gatherings imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Each composer approached this new miniature concerto format differently. Several of the concertos have nature themes: Vaka’s work is about glaciers, Gerstrøm’s is about creaking ice, and Tarrodi’s is a new Nordic interpretation of the four seasons. In some pieces, local folk music of the individual country can be heard in the tonal language and the instrumentation. The concertos also have very different structures: Ruder’s and Rasmussen’s are in three movements; Kolstad’s, Vaka’s and Gerstrøm’s are written as long one-movement pieces; Tarrodi’s is in four parts, one for each season; and Järventausta’s comprises six short, reflective movements. Each work was recorded in a circle, with the intention of giving the listener a cinematic feeling like entering a Nordic landscape of sounds.
