Joseph Moog BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 - Four Pieces for Piano Op. 119

 

PIANO CONCERTO No. 1 - FOUR PIECES FOR PIANO Op. 119

 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko STRAVINSKY Petrushka

 

PETRUSHKA

 

Viktoria Mullova / Misha Mullov-Abbado MUSIC WE LOVE

MUSIC WE LOVE

 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphony No. 7 "Antartica" - Symphony No. 9

SYMPHONY No. 7 - SYMPHONY No. 9

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

THE LARK ASCENDING - FANTASIA ON A THEME BY THOMAS TALLIS

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vassily Petrenko ELGAR Sea Pictures - The Music Makers

                                            SEA PICTURES - THE MUSIC MAKERS

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 4, 5 & 8

                                                   VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 4. 5 & 8

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-3

                                                        VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 1-3

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 6 & 9 "Kreutzer"

                                                      VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 6 & 9

Chen Reiss / Academy of Ancient Music / Richard Egarr IMMORTAL BELOVED

                                                           IMMORTAL BELOVED

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition

Vasily Petrenko is the Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Between 1994 and 1997, Petrenko was Resident Conductor at the St Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre in the Mussorgsky Memorial Theatre. During this time he gained an enormous amount of operatic experience and he now has over 30 operas in his repertoire.

Petrenko is equally at home in symphonic and operatic repertoire. On the symphonic front, he has previously worked with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Swedish Radio, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and NDR Hanover, BBC Wales, Cadaques and Castille y Leon Orchestras in Spain.

A Russian orchestral showcase from Vasily Petrenko and the award willing Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra present a programme of Russian orchestral classics - with some surprises.

Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Khachaturian’s sumptuously romantic suite from his ballet ‘Spartacus’ with its famous ‘Adagio’ keep company with Kabalevsky’s fizzing overture to his opera ‘Colas Breugnon’ and Schehedrin’s ‘Naughty Limericks plus a wistful Rachmaninov song in beautiful orchestral arrangement.

Joseph Moog LISZT Between Heaven & Hell

Joseph Moog has an enviable reputation as a Liszt interpreter with two earlier albums devoted to the composer being praised by the critics: “these recordings shine with an overall mastery and insight… rival discs by Brendel and Zimmerman in particular may thrill and delight the most discerning Lisztian, but even in this company Joseph Moog holds his head high” - Gramophone

On his new Onyx album, ‘From Heaven To Hell,’ Moog programmes works that traverse a wide range of emotions, from the divine and heavenly to the demonic.

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Andrew Manze is widely celebrated as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation. His extensive and scholarly knowledge of the repertoire, together with his rare skill as a communicator and his boundless energy, mark him out. Manze’s position as Chief Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover has been extended until 2023.

James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after violinists on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favourite guest of many of the world’s most respected conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Stéphane Denève, Mark Elder, Iván Fischer, Edward Gardner, Paavo Järvi, Juanjo Mena, Gianandrea Noseda, David Robertson and Donald Runnicles

Leonard Elschenbroich / Alexei Grynyuk BEETHOVEN Sonatas for Cello and Piano

The five cello sonatas span Beethoven’s three creative periods, with the audacious op.5 sonatas dating from the early years on his time in Vienna as a piano virtuoso and aspiring composer (1792-9), the great op.69 sonata is from the period that saw the composition of symphonies 4-8, the violin concerto, Mass in C and the String Quartets op59. The two op102 sonatas are from the cusp of the ‘late’ period, this is the time of the 9th Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the great string quartets op127 – 135 and the last five piano sonatas.

The cello and piano are truly equal partners in all these works, and Beethoven exploited the full range of the cello placing great demands on the player. The op.17 sonatas from the 1790s was composed for horn and piano. The transcription is believed to be by the composer, or at least approved by him.

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra STRAVINSKY The Firebird RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Le Coq d'Or

After the critically acclaimed Rite of Spring (ONYX4182) the award - winning team of Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO continue their survey of the Stravinsky ballets with The Firebird. As with the earlier album, the coupling is a fascinating one. Stravinsky was Rimsky’s star pupil, and his influence on Stravinsky can be detected clearly in the opulent and exciting score of The Firebird. Rimsky’s Golden Cockerel suite was arranged from music from his 1909 opera based on the story by Pushkin.

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring RACHMANINOV Spring DEBUSSY Printemps

Three works inspired by Spring – Stravinsky’s iconic and revolutionary 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring depicts Russian pagan tribes celebrating the emergence of Spring with frenzied dances and ritual sacrifice. The music has a rhythmic complexity and violence that caused a riot to break out at its premier in Paris. Rachmaninov’s Spring Cantata tells the story of a husband who has struggled through the harsh Russian winter knowing his wife has been having an affair with a younger man. He swears he will kill them, but on seeing the wonder of spring all around him, relents and forgives them both. Debussy’s early ‘Printemps’ of 1885 was said to have been inspired by Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’. Debussy was staying at the Villa Medici in Rome when he wrote this colourful and joyous work.

London Handel Orchestra and Soloists / Adrian Butterfield HANDEL Chandos Te Deum - Chandos Anthem No. 8

Before coming into contact with James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, Handel was is dire straits in London. His pension of £200 a year for teaching the Royal princesses had stopped, as had the public taste for opera. London had plunged into a hedonistic, alcohol- and gambling-driven lifestyle, where the bawdier things were the better. Brydges, one of the most colourful and roguish figures of the day, had built himself a vast palace (from wealth plundered whilst he was Paymaster General during the Spanish Wars of Succession) to rival anything the King could boast of – Cannons House in north London, set up as a rival court to King George I, where he employed Handel to replace Johann Pepusch as Kapellmeister. No surprise that the Earl has been described as ‘having no enmity with his conscience:’ The ‘King of Bling’ would have 13 Chandos Anthems and the Te Deum on this recording composed by a grateful Handel. It couldn’t last, though, and Handel was eventually lured back to the embrace of the Royal Court and London’s rediscovered love of opera. Now the 1st Duke of Chandos, Brydges had lost his vast fortune and his home in the South Sea Bubble financial crisis of 1720, and Cannons House was demolished, its treasures and features sold off. It was as if it had never been – except for Handel’s glorious music composed at Cannons House.

Joseph Moog DEBUSSY 12 Études RAVEL Gaspard de la nuit

Recipient of Gramophone magazine's Young Artist of the Year award in 2015, Joseph Moog has established an enviable reputation as one of the most exciting virtuosos of our time. With wide ranging repertoire that often takes him far off the beaten track, his Onyx Classics discography includes concertos by Rubinstein, Moszkowski, piano sonatas by Tchaikovsky and Scharwenka, and arrangements of Scarlatti sonatas by Friedman, Tausig, Gieseking and others. For his new album Joseph has chosen an all French program featuring Debussy's 12 Etudes, and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit - one of the most challenging works in the solo piano repertoire.

Philippe Graffin / Claire Désert SCHUMANN

Fine as Gringolts is, Graffin’s performance of the second sonata accompanied by Claire Desert, finds subtler colours and contrasts in the music while also coming across as more highly charged: very engaging. I also prefer Graffin’s programme. Having given us the one masterpiece among the three sonatas, he champions the arrangement of the Cello Concerto that Schumann made for his violinist friend Joseph Joachim. I approached this with suspicion but was won over.Not only does the music retain its character in the voice of the violin, but the result sounds more convincing than the concerto Schumann wrote expressly for the violin. Excellent accompaniment from the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrucken under Christoph Poppen, and a sweet-tasting filler in the shape of Clara Schumann’s three Romances for violin and piano." (Andrew Clark)

Graffin makes a very persausive case for the Cello Concerto on a violin." "Graffin is effortlessly excellent - producing a warm, well-focused sound - and he is very deftly partnered by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrucken Kaiserslautern. Christoph Poppen is the sensitive and rhythmically alert conductor. The rest of Graffin’s disc inludes Three Romances by Clara Schumann and a passionate, strongly propelled acount of the Second Violin Sonata in an absorbing partnership with the pianist Claire Desert that makes for impressive results." (Nigel Simeone)

James Ehnes JAMES NEWTON HOWARD - AARON JAY KERNIS Violin Concertos BRAMWELL TOVEY Stream of Limelight

This program features the world premiere recordings of three works written for violinist James Ehnes. Familiar to movie fans the world over, James Newton Howard has composed over 120 film scores. Upon being commissioned to write a violin concerto, Howard admitted to feeling, ''thrilled, excited, expectant and ultimately terrified.'' Pulitzer Prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis first composed for Ehnes in 2007 and a few years later his Violin Concerto followed. Bramwell Tovey and James Ehnes's musical relationship dates back to 1990, and they have performed together countless times. Stream of Limelight gives James's incredible technique ample opportunity to dazzle, and is a superb finale to this fascinating album of new compositions.