We reveal who’s recording what and where...
Pianist Samantha Ege was in the studio in late December to record an album called Black Renaissance Women. It features works by trailblazing composer-pianists, many of which are premiere recordings. They include Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite, Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement and Helen Eugenia Hagan’s Piano Concerto in E minor. Lorelt releases the album in March.
Staying at the keyboard, prize-winning Japanese pianist Mao Fujita was recently signed to Sony Classical. The young musician has wowed juries and audiences at festivals and competitions worldwide, and is set to launch his major recording career with an album of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas. Sony releases the recording in the Autumn.
Sony also recently annouced a new recording project by Ivo Pogorelich. It was the music of Chopin which launched the pianist’s career in 1981, and he returns to the composer for the first time in 20 years. The new album, set for release in February, features a pair of Nocturnes, Piano Sonata No. 3 and the Barcarolle in F sharp major.
Prokofiev is the focus of a recent recording by clarinettist Ian Scott and pianist Jonathan Higgins. The pair recorded transcriptions of suites from Cinderella and Romeo & Juliet at St John the Evangelist in Oxford. Each transcription, including some by Scott himself with Malcolm Macmillan, is a premiere recording and you can hear the results in the summer on Divine Art Records.
The Czech Philharmonic has recently announced that is is joining forces with Pentatone Records, who will distribute the orchestra’s state-of -the-art recordings.
Their first release, planned for early March, is an August 2020 recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, conducted by Semyon Bychkov at Prague’s Rudolfinum and featuring soprano Chen Reiss.