January 2017 Catalogue Prices valid until Friday 24�� February 2017 unless stated otherwise 0115 982 7500 Cover photo taken from Chandos CHAN0816 [email protected] ’Concertos of Josef Guretzky’. 1 Welcome! Dear Customer, Happy New Year! We hope you have all managed to enjoy the festive season. At Europadisc, we have always held the tradition of closing for a full week in between Christmas and New Year, allowing us to have a decent break to spend time with our families. We should now be ready and raring to go for another year! Please remember that Monday 2 January is a bank holiday, so we will be re-opening at 9am on Tuesday 3 January. 2016 felt like a good year for new releases, with several orchestral releases being particularly strong. In 2015, for the first time, we picked out our top 10 recordings for that year and published the results online. All were picked from the weekly review we produce (sent out via email) and this year we have decided to do the same thing, but also publish the results in our catalogue. You will therefore find our Top 10 Recordings of 2016 on the opposite page, with our ‘Disc of the Year’ award going to Thomas Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony’s stunning performance of Mahler’s Symphony no.10. All ten discs are currently available at reduced prices, but please note that these will expire on 27 January. Moving on to what is new for 2017 - special highlights in January include some particuarly strong releases from Naxos, namely Shostakovich from Boris Giltburg (Disc of the Month, see below), Bernstein from Marin Alsop, Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ from Hans Graf and Ravel from Leonard Slatkin. Hyperion also have a pleasing quartet of issues, including Bach from Iestyn Davies, Bruch from Jack Liebeck, Kozeluch from Howard Shelley (the ‘Classical Piano Concerto’ series) and a disc of Cello Encores associated with Rostropovich from Alban Gerhardt. Other titles we are excited about are Sibelius Songs from Gerald Finley (Chandos), Tchaikovsky Symphonies from Vasily Petrenko (Onyx), a recital on the new organ in the Paris Philharmonie from Olivier Latry (Erato), and a disc of original compositions by Nigel Kennedy (Neue Meister). We have a bumper crop of special offers to launch the year with! The complete catalogues of Brilliant Classics, Supraphon, Ondine, LPO, Alto and Telarc are all reduced, plus all full-price titles from the wonderful Harmonia Mundi. You will also find a special offer online on the Orange Mountain label that we sadly didn’t have room to print. Please also forgive the lack of images amongst the special offers this month - there simply wasn’t the space! Hopefully this will be compensated for by the rich variety of titles available. Everything can of course be seen in much greater detail on our website. Here’s to another great year of classical recordings! The Europadisc Team DISC OF THE MONTH Shostakovich: Piano Concertos 1 & 2 £7.95 + String Quartet no.8 (arranged for piano by Boris Giltburg) or pay just Boris Giltburg, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko £4.95 Naxos 857 3666 if your order value Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos span a period of almost thirty years. The youthful exceeds £50* First Piano Concerto is a masterful example of eclecticism, its inscrutable humour and * to qualify for the special price, seriousness allied to virtuoso writing enhanced by the rôle for solo trumpet. Written as your order value must exceed a total of £50 excluding this a birthday present for his son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is light-spirited with a recording and before any hauntingly beautiful slow movement. With the permission of the composer’s family, applicable carriage charges. Boris Giltburg has arranged the exceptionally dark, deeply personal and powerful String Offer available while stocks last. Quartet No.8, thereby establishing a major Shostakovich solo piano composition. Boris Giltburg took first prize at the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, having won second prize at the Rubinstein in 2011 and top prize at Santander back in 2002, and subsequently appearing across the globe. Notable débuts have included a South American tour in 2002 (and every season since), with the Israel Philharmonic in 2005, the Indianapolis Symphony in 2007, a tour of China in 2007, and at the BBC Proms in London in 2010. He has appeared with Marin Alsop, Martyn Brabbins, Edo de Waart, Christoph von Dohnányi, Philippe Entremont, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neeme Järvi, Kirill Karabits, Emmanuel Krivine, Hannu Lintu, Vasily Petrenko, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Tugan Sokhiev and Yan Pascal Tortelier, among others. In 2014 he began a long-term recording plan with Naxos. 2 OUR TOP 10 FROM 2016! Europadisc Top 10 Recordings from 2016 Special prices available until 27�� January 2017 Disc of the Year Mahler Symphony no.10 Seattle Symphony, Thomas Dausgaard £9.95 Seattle Symphony Media SSM 1011 “More than half a century since Deryck Cooke’s ‘performing version of the draft’ first saw the light of day, and three-and-a-half decades since Simon Rattle’s groundbreaking Bournemouth recording of the score, this new recording from the Seattle Symphony and Thomas Dausgaard may well be the finest hour-and-a- quarter yet for Mahler’s ‘Tenth’. As with Osmo Vänskä’s recent disc of Sibelius’s Third, Sixth and Seventh symphonies, an old-world conductor and new-world orchestra join forces to give us a performance that raises the bar to new levels, with stunning recording and playing of shocking immediacy and expressive involvement. There are plenty of moments where you have to remind yourself that this is ‘just’ a normal CD rather than an all-the-frills SACD or DVD-audio, so vivid and detailed is the sound, but it’s the performance (taken from live concerts) that is the real clincher here.” (Full review available online) Bach, JS Dowland Feldman/Crumb Actus Tragicus Lachrimae or 7 Teares Piano Works Vox Luminis Phantasm, Kenny Osborne £11.01 £10.36 £9.95 Alpha ALPHA258 Linn CKD527 Hyperion CDA68108 “These are recordings which make one “As with their highly acclaimed recording “Hyperion’s recording captures every wonder anew at the accomplishments of of William Lawes’s Royall Consort Suites, nuance of these acoustically extreme the young Bach, and offer new perspectives Phantasm raise the art of consort playing works, and Osborne’s playing is matchless on familiar works. Beautifully recorded and to new heights on this disc, with ... For lovers of penetrating and beguiling presented, it’s a must-have disc.” performances that transcend pigeonholing pianism, this is an absolute must.” as mere ‘early music’.” Honegger/Ibert Howells Gal/Mozart L’Aiglon Collegium Regale Piano Concertos Montreal SO, Nagano Trinity College Choir Briggs, Woods £14.95 £9.95 £9.95 Decca 4789502 Hyperion CDA68105 Avie AV2358 “...this is a real triumph for conductor Kent “Underpinned by the cathedral’s splendid “Sarah Beth Briggs’s brilliantly alert and Nagano, the Orchestre Symphonique de Harrison & Harrison organ, the choir’s engaging performance, expertly partnered Montréal and Decca. Opera lovers owe singing from the very opening Jubilate is by Woods and the RNS, will surely bring it them a huge debt of gratitude in at last robust yet beautifully shaped, with an the recognition it deserves as one of Gál's committing this work to disc in a splendid underlying purity of tone that reflects the major works… outstanding in every way, state-of-the-art recording.” very finest of the English choral tradition.” essential listening!” In War & Peace Scarlatti, D Sibelius Baroque Opera Arias 18 Keyboard Sonatas Symphonies 3, 6 & 7 DiDonato Sudbin Minnesota O, Vanska £10.95 £9.95 £9.95 Erato 9029 592846 BIS BIS2138 BIS BIS2006 "...the highlight of the ‘War’ section must “...this is unquestionably the most “Vänskä sets new standards with this cycle, be one of the most memorable accounts of captivating Scarlatti recital in decades, a and this final disc exceeds expectations, Dido’s Lament you’re ever likely to hear, celebration not so much of pianism as of both musically and sonically. A new beautifully contained, with exquisitely the inexhaustible qualities of the music benchmark for the new millennium, at the hushed tones... One of the most striking itself. Even the most die-hard of Baroque same time worthy to stand alongside the and affecting discs of the year." purists would be moved by this glorious very greatest performances of the past.” disc. Superb in every 3respect!” PRIORITY NEW RELEASES Sony and DHM New Year’s Concert 2017 £11.95 88985 376152 (2CD) due 9/1 This is world-renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s New Year’s Concert debut and he will now become the youngest ever conductor of one of the world’s most spectacular classical music events. Dudamel's skillful conducting and dedication to music drew international attention while he was just in his twenties and continues to attract diverse audiences throughout the world. It is not least thanks to an illustrious succession of great conductors that the Vienna New Year’s Concert remains unique, ushering in the New Year in a way that has often been imitated but never equaled. Its universal popularity is undoubtedly due to the direct – or deferred – live broadcast from the flower-filled Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. The first broadcast went out on Eurovision in 1959, the first colour relay in 1967. Now the concert is shown in countries throughout almost the entire world. It continues to be works by members of the Strauss family – Johann Strauss Father and Son as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss – that are central to this media event.