Among the orchestras with recent recordings news are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and Boston Baroque. Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen helms the LA Phil’s new all-Shostakovich album for Deutsche Grammophon, which includes the Fourth Symphony and the first-ever recording of the Prologue to the unfinished opera Orango. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra has also released a new Shostakovich recording: Symphony No. 11 (“The Year 1905”), on its own tsoLIVE label, a 2008 performance led by Music Director Peter Oundjian. This is the TSO’s seventh release on its tsoLIVE label; previous recordings include Elgar’s Enigma Variations, the fourth symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, and Holst’s The Planets. The Virginia Symphony has released An American Port of Call, a recording on the Naxos label of music by American composer Adolphus Hailstork, a professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. The recording, led by Music Director JoAnn Falletta and recorded live in Norfolk in May 2011, features five works by Hailstork: Symphony No. 1, commissioned by the orchestra; Three Spirituals; An American Port of Call; Fanfare on “Amazing Grace”; and Whitman’s Journey, Part One: Launch Out on Endless Seas. American Composers Orchestra, based in New York City, has released its third digital album, Orchestra Underground: X10D, featuring what it describes as “extreme music for extended instruments” by Keeril Makan, Evan Ziporyn, Fred Ho, Ned McGowan, and Neil Rolnick. The album consists of music performed by ACO between 2006 and 2008 as part of Orchestra Underground, ACO’s orchestral series at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. Instruments featured on the recording include electric guitar, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, contrabass flute, and a “cyborg” violin. The early-music ensemble Boston Baroque has released its first recording with the Scotland-based audiophile label Linn Records: Haydn’s The Creation, led by Music Director Martin Pearlman. The digital version was released on iTunes in July, and the North American commercial release of the two-disc hybrid SACD is set for August 28.
Posted July 20, 2012
