One of Roussel’s most performed orchestral works, The Spider’s Banquet was composed during his earlier impressionistic period, and depicts the beauty and violence of insect life in a garden. Roussel’s experiences as a lieutenant in the French Navy first introduced him to Eastern influences, and the ‘opera-ballet’ Padmâvatî was inspired by his later visit to the ancient city of Chittor in Rajasthan state of western India. It uses aspects of Indian music to evoke this city’s legendary siege by the Mongols. This is the fifth and final volume in Stéphane Denève and the RSNO’s acclaimed survey of Roussel’s orchestral works. 

PURCHASE TITLE AT AMAZON.COM

This is the second volume in a series devotes to the works for strings by Bela Bartok with James Ehnes the featured soloist. Earlier this year, Ehnes recorded the Violin and Viola Concertos, which made Disc of the Month in Gramophone magazine. On this new recording, he turns to the Violin Sonatas and Rhapsodies, complemented by the earliest surviving work by Bartok for violin and piano, an Andante. Of the two sonatas, the Sonata in C Sharp minor is the more traditional in terms of its structure and characterized by a mood that is sometimes exhilarated, sometimes turbulent – but always virtuosic.

PURCHASE TITLE AT AMAZON.COM

March 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Xavier Montsalvatge, one of the most important Spanish composers of the 20th century. Included on this anniversary CD are some of his finest pieces: the famous “Cinco canciones negras,” a poignant song cycle featuring infectious Latin American rhythms; the “Poem Concertante,” first championed by the internationally acclaimed violinist Henryk Szeryng, and the “Concierto breve” for piano and orchestra. This recording has assembled three world-class soloists: American pianist Jenny Lin, mezzo-soprano Lucia Duchonova, and American violinist Rachel Barton Pine.

PURCHASE TITLE AT AMAZON.COM

From the foreword by Edward Higginbottom: “When I wrote the entry of Francois Couperin for the New Grove Dictionary of Music, I read through every single extant piece of his music – that is, apart from three motets which had not been published at the time, and which were unperformable because they lacked string parts (long since lost). Subsequently, I came to see that these three motets – Resonant organa, Ornate aras, and Exulten superi – were among the best. The challenge was to restore them. This I have done by composing string parts that Couperin might have written. These motets, newborn and set in the context of a selection of other sacred music – motets choisis – reveal Couperin as a master not only of keyboard music but also of vocal.”

Star baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky has chosen art song repertoire of great intensity and emotion for his Russian home country for his first CD release: 26 featured romances by Sergei Rachmaninov include such popular songs as “Spring Waters, Op. 14/11” or “in the silence of the mysterious night, Op. 4/3.” Together with his longstanding duo partner, Estonian pianist Ivari Ilja, they have frequently performed many of these songs to great critical acclaim.

“Mr. Hvorostovsky used the infinite shadings of his luxuriously dark and dusky voice to illuminate the yearning nuances of bitterness and regret…[H]is admirable range of expressive and dynamic shadings [was] aptly mirrored by Ivari Ilja, an exemplary accompanist.”- The New York Times

PURCHASE TITLE AT AMAZON.COM

In this celebrated Glyndebourne Festival production, David Hockney’s designs for director John Cox reinterpret the Hogarth etchings that inspired the opera’s libretto, written for Stravinsky by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. In 2010, this revival under Glyndebourne’s Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski, captured the opera’s neo-classical spirit and its juxtaposition of whimsy, cynicism, and compassion, prompting the Financial Times to call it “as enjoyable a performance of Stravinsky’s opera as any that has come along.”