Orchestras in Indiana, Minnesota, New York, and Ontario (Canada) are among ensembles releasing new recordings. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s new Dvořák Cello Concerto, released in January on the Telarc label, is led by Jun Märkl with soloist Zuill Bailey; that recording also features two other Dvořák works, The Water Goblin (Op. 107) and In Nature’s Realm (op. 91). The Minnesota Orchestra has released a recording of Sibelius’s Symphony Nos. 2 and 5 on the Swedish BIS label, led by Music Director Osmo Vänskä in June 2011 at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. The recording is the first in the orchestra’s new Sibelius symphonies series, with the complete cycle of seven symphonies to be recorded by 2015, the composer’s birth sesquicentennial. The American Composers Orchestra has released “Emerging Composers Series: Vol. 1,” its second digital-download album, featuring music by Kati Agócs, Michael Gatonska, Fang Man, Clint Needham, and Gregory Spears. The ACO’s inaugural digital album, Playing It Unsafe—featuring world premieres performed between 2006 and 2009 as part of the ACO’s “Orchestra Underground” series Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall—was released in March 2011. The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada, has released the first commercial recording of Jonny Greenwood’s 20-minute string-orchestra work Popcorn Superhet Receiver on the Analekta label. The Greenwood work (heard in the soundtrack of the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood) is paired with two works by Nico Muhly—Wish You Were Here and From Here On Out—and for heart, breath and orchestra, the first orchestral work by Richard Reed Parry of the band Arcade Fire.
Posted March 2, 2012
