BMOP/sound, the in-house record label of Boston Modern Orchestra Project, has released several new recordings, including one of works by Eric Nathan and another of works by Harold Shapero, all led by music director Gil Rose. The Cleveland Orchestra has launched “TCO Classics,” a free on-demand streaming series of audio recordings from six decades of the orchestra’s live-performance archive. The collection includes concerts led by music directors Franz Welser-Möst, Christoph von Dohnányi, Lorin Maazel, and George Szell, as well as principal guest conductor and musical advisor Pierre Boulez. The Experiential Orchestra has released Ethel Smyth’s rarely performed opera The Prison, on the Chandos label. Music Director James Blachly conducts the work, which also features soprano Sarah Brailey, bass-baritone Dashon Burton, and a chorus of singers from throughout the U.S. Colorado’s Fort Collins Symphony has released a digital recording of its February 2020 performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 on its YouTube channel. The performance, led by Music Director Wes Kenney, was recorded in a 360-degree format that allows viewers an inside view of the orchestra. The virtual-reality project was produced in conjunction with B Sharp Arts Engagement, a community collaborative program of Dementia-Friendly Communities of Northern Colorado. The Harlem Quartet has released Cross Pollination, a new CD of music by Debussy, Bolcom, Gillespie, and López-Gavilán; the quartet’s members are violinists Ilmar Gavilán and Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky. Cellist Inbal Segev and the London Philharmonic are featured on a new Avie recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Anna Clyne’s 2019 work DANCE, conducted by Marin Alsop. The Minnesota Orchestra’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, conducted by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, has been issued on BIS Records as part of the orchestra’s cycle of Mahler symphonies. The New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University (Allendale, Michigan) has released Dawn Chorus, a work celebrating the country’s National Parks, on Innova Recordings. The New York Philharmonic’s 2019 world premiere performance of David Lang’s opera prisoner of the state has been issued in digital and physical formats on the Decca Gold label, with Music Director Jaap van Zweden conducting the orchestra and soprano Julie Mathevet, tenor Alan Oke, baritone Jarrett Ott, and bass-baritone Eric Owens. The pan-American ensemble Orchestra of the Americas is featured in a new recording of music by Manuel de Falla and Enrique Granados, led by Carlos Miguel Prieto, on the Linn Records label. Performances were recorded live in Mexico City in summer 2019. The Philip Glass Ensemble’s new recording of the composer’s 1970 work Music in Eight Parts has been issued on the Orange Mountain Music label; the music was recorded by ensemble members in isolation at their homes in April 2020, and produced by Music Director Michael Riesman. The San Francisco Symphony’s live recordings of Michael Tilson Thomas’s From the Diary of Anne Frank and Meditations on Rilke have been released in digital and SACD formats on SFS Media, the orchestra’s in-house label. Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny are featured in Meditations on Rilke; mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard serves as narrator for From the Diary of Anne Frank.
Sony Classical has released a 75-CD set of recordings featuring violinist Isaac Stern, who would have turned 100 on July 21, 2020. Also out from Sony Classical is a ten-CD set featuring recordings made between 1957 and 1962 as part of a collaboration between Columbia Masterworks and the Fromm Foundation; composers represented in the CD set include Elliott Carter, Luigi Dallapiccola, Lukas Foss, Ernst Krenek, Benjamin Lees, Jerome Rosen, and Ben Weber. The Fromm Foundation, based at Harvard University, has commissioned new compositions and contemporary-concert series including Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, and the Fromm Concert Series at Harvard. Musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile are featured in Not Our First Goat Rodeo, a follow-up to the same musicians’ 2011 album The Goat Rodeo Sessions, on the Sony Music Masterworks label. British-American French horn player Sarah Willis, a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, is featured on Mozart y Mambo, a new Alpha Classics recording featuring Willis and the Havana Lyceum Orchestra and other Cuban artists performing Mozart works, plus two Mozart-inspired mambo compositions and original arrangements of Cuban classics.
