Benjamin Britten takes the spotlight with new recordings of select choral works for the holidays and his Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings (featuring Steans Music Institute alumn and rising star Laurence Kilsby.) Also on the list, the National Symphony Orchestra presents two symphonies by seminal American composer William Grant Still, maestro Giovanni Antonini adds the latest volume to his Haydn 2032 project, and the Birringer Duo present works by Amanda Röntgen-Maier for violin and piano.
New Releases November 3: Britten, Haydn, and Still
Laurence Kilsby (Photo: Karoline Heller)
The Sinfonia of London led by John Wilson presents the third in a series of albums of English music for string orchestra. The centerpiece is Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, featuring hornist Christopher Parkes and rising star British tenor Laurence Kilsby, an alumnus of the Steans Institute and recent First Prize winner at the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. Eugene Goossens’s By the Tarn, John Ireland’s Concertino Pastorale, and William Walton’s Sonata for Strings complete the program comprised of works by four composers whose lives and music making were intertwined.
This twentieth volume of the complete Haydn symphonies, led by Giovanni Antonini, highlights the popularity of Haydn’s music in England during the 1790s. Although Haydn was unable to travel to London himself, no fewer than eleven of his symphonies were performed during the twelve evenings of the first season of the Grand Concert in 1782 – the year of the death of Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, who directed this series of concerts in London. This volume also pays tribute to him: alongside Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 76, 77, and 78, the Kammerorchester Basel and Giovanni Antonini have recorded J.C. Bach’s Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6, published in 1769.
Violinist Lea Birringer and pianist Esther Birringer present a program of three composers who all had connections musically and socially. Amanda Röntgen-Maier (1853-1894) was a Swedish violinist and composer. She was the first woman to graduate as Music Director from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She was taught by Carl Reinecke in Leipzig, and married Julius Röntgen a composer and pianist, and the son of her violin teacher Englebert Röntgren, the leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Her output is slender, but includes a violin concerto, a piano trio, a piano quartet and a string quartet, as well as the violin sonata and short pieces for violin and piano featured here. Amanda was friendly with Anton Rubinstein, Ethel Smyth, Joseph Joachim, Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Edvard Grieg, a group that regularly attended the musical salons and recitals given by Julius & Amanda around Europe. Works for violin and piano by latter two (Schumann’s Three Romances and Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major) complete the Birringer sisters’ album.
Led by Gianandrea Noseda, the National Symphony Orchestra presents William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 2 “Song of a New Race” and Symphony No. 4 “Autochthonous.” Bringing together two of his most significant large-scale works, the program highlights Still’s pivotal contribution to 20th century American orchestral music and offers a vivid portrait of his evolving artistic vision. These symphonies lie at the core of Still’s output, each engaging deeply with themes of cultural identity, national character, and the diverse influences that shape the American musical landscape. Heard together, they reveal the breadth of Still’s symphonic voice and help address the limited recorded representation of his major orchestral works.
The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin led by Justin Doyle present an album of choral music by Benjamin Britten marking the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. At the heart of the program are A Ceremony of Carols, A Boy was Born, and the Missa brevis in D, complemented by A Hymn of St. Columba and The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. The recording also features the boys of the Staats- und Domchor Berlin, harpist Anna Viechtl, organist Marcel Andreas Ober and pianist Philip Mayers. While conceived as a Christmas release, the album follows no conventional festive arc. For Doyle, the repertoire is closely bound up with his own biography. A former chorister at Westminster Cathedral, he encountered several of these works as a boy. For the new recording, he also worked from scores containing Britten’s handwritten annotations, gaining insights into the composer’s sound world and performance practice.
