Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CDs 

Schoenberg: Soloists, Berliner Philharmoniker / Kirill Petrenko (Berlin Philharmoniker Recordings 3 CDs & Blu Ray) ★★★★★

The first thing that sets this set apart is its appearance, more objet d'art than CD box set. On the shelf it will eclipse everything else. Designed by American artist Peter Halley in multi-coloured panels it opens out to reveal a hardback book, complete with notes and in-depth essays, and the four discs in individually colour-themed holders. The set retails at around £60 but quality isn't cheap and beyond its handsome appearance this set has genuine musical quality too with one of the world's great orchestras under their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko who gets right to the heart of each of works performed, which were captured in concert between 2019-2024. Schoenberg's best known orchestral works are here starting with the late romantic Mahleresque 'Verklärte Nacht' ('Transfigured Night') Op.4 in its lusher 1943 version for string orchestra. In the Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 Petrenko wisely opts for the original scoring for 15 solo instruments which keeps the piece's sharp thorny edges which were blunted in the later orchestral version. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, that most mercurial of soloists, makes one hear the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Op. 36 afresh, finding lyricism as well as acerbity. Petrenko and his elite band ensure that the Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 are individually etched. The real gem in this set is a rarity, Schoenberg's oratorio 'Die Jakobsleiter' ('Jacob’s Ladder') which the composer toiled away at for a decade but never completed; This performing edition was arranged by his pupil Winfried Zillig. The music's idiom is between Schoenberg's early atonalism and his later twelve-tone system and its very ambitious requiring eight soloists, all excellent here, plus the Rundfunkchor Berlin and four offstage conductors. The latter are required because the singing forces are spread around the Berliner's auditorium so that the often complex lines and interchanges become much clearer and revealing. Seeing the forces in action, on the Blu Ray disc, helps greatly and for those with a home cinema system setup for Dolby Atmos sound there's a special treat, a Blu Ray audio track with orchestra and singers pinpointed around an array of speakers which is really amazing.

Donizetti Songs Volumes 5 & 6:  Ermonela Jaho (soprano) & Carlo Rizzi (piano) (Opera Rara 2 CDs) ★★★★★

This latest release in Opera Rara's Donizetti Song Project maintains the amazingly high standards of their previous releases. Every lover of the composer's operas will find many hours of musical pleasure in this series which explores songs, around 200 of them, many of which have never been heard in the last century. This double disc set features 18 songs in Italian and 19 songs in French, performed by two artists integral to Opera Rara's success, Artist Ambassador Ermonela Jaho and Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi. The Project's curator is Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker and once again he has unearthed some delightful songs captured in the warm acoustic of All Saints’ Church, in East Finchley, London, providing the perfect blend for Jaho's voice and Rizzi's Steinway grand. The elegantly produced set has a fascinating booklet essay by Mary Ann Smart which succinctly tells us why there is so much to enjoy within. "Listening to Donizetti’s songs sometimes feels a bit like reading his journal or sneaking glimpses into his private life", she writes, "In one sense, the songs were every bit as public as the operas." The team of Jaho and Rizzi bring the songs, and the individual occasions they were composed for, vividly to life. In “Dell’anno novello” we are in the midst of a New Year's party, the wine flows, gaiety abounds and Jaho is at her most sparkling. On stage Jaho explores tragedy with immense vocal power and emotional conviction, absolutely necessary for a song like “Non m’ami più” where she pleads with the false lover not to break the heart of her successor and in “Ah! ingrato, m’inganni” where Jaho excoriates her unfaithful lover in true diva style. She can be plaintive too as in “Venne sull’ali ai zeffiri”, a threnody for the untimely death of Donizetti's great contemporary, and rival, Vincenzo Bellini. The later French songs show Donizetti's more daring harmonic language and his “Un voile blanc couvrait la terre”, a mother's lament for her dead child, is a tour-de-force for Jaho and Rizzi's sympathetic accompaniment. A highly recommended set.

Mahler: National Symphony Orchestra / Noseda (NSO label CD & SACD) ★★★★★

Mahler's Symphony No.7 has the reputation of being "difficult": it's usually the last of his symphonies that conductors come to and the least popular of his purely orchestral works. I've never understood this perhaps because I came to it on LP as a youngster with no preconceptions and fell in love with its uniquely wonderful sound world. Conductors and listeners are said not to "get" the concluding Rondo Finale fifth movement as if its exuberance, a blaze of sunlight after the night-music and sardonic scherzo, were not self-explanatory. Gianandrea Noseda is a conductor who certainly does get this symphony, revelling in its mercurial moods and changing colours and backed by some excellent playing from the NSO, refined, rumbustious and romantic in turn as required. He eschews extremes of tempo, for example resisting the temptation to milk the luscious fourth movement Andante Amoroso: at 12.08 it flows naturally poised between Boulez's astringent and unyielding 10.38 in Cleveland and Levine's indulgent 14.42 in Chicago. The wide-ranging recorded sound of Washington's Kennedy Centre allows detail to emerge clearly, the first movement's mournful tenor horn for example, and doesn't become congested when Mahler launches volleys from the enormous percussion section. Noseda's finale is exuberant and is a fitting climax to a thoroughly satisfying performance captured in genuinely hi-fi sound.

Dvorak: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Martín (MSO label 2 CDs & SACDs) ★★★

This team of the MSO and their chief conductor Jaime Martín follow up their excellent recording of Dvorak's fifth and six symphonies with another Dvorak double, No.8 in G, arguably the composer's finest symphony, with No.2 in B flat. The latter is seldom heard either in the concert hall or on disc and was only performed once in Dvorak's lifetime and then only after he reduced the dense orchestration. While I welcome the chance for it to be heard outside box sets of the complete symphonies it is not one of the composer's finest. Dvorak's symphonies are rich with memorable and fertile melodies but here, oddly, all four movements begin with material unrelated to their main theme. It is also Dvorak's longest symphony and the material doesn't merit the prolixity: Kertesz's vintage Decca recording with the London Symphony Orchestra clocks in at 54.10 with Martín at 58.18. Turn to the recording of the eighth symphony and we're in a different musical world with the orchestra and conductor relishing the abundance of Bohemian melodies - the MSO wind players having a fine time - and the Allegro grazioso third movement is irresistible and the fourth movement builds to a terrific climax. The recording quality, especially on SACD, is full-bodied and wide ranging. For potential purchasers a lot depends on their desire for a recording of No.2. Try sampling it first - you may find your opinion of it exceeds mine.

Tippett, Britten, Walton: Hammond, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Vass (Bis CD & SACD) ★★★★

Clare Hammond's discography reveals her to be an enterprising and adventurous performer, an advocate of contemporary British music and Polish repertoire. Even when being seemingly mainstream she's transgressive; an earlier disc for Bis, 'Etude', has no Chopin but Lyapunov, Unsuk Chin, Szymanowski and Kapustin, likewise 'Etudes' was devoted to the 18th century compose Hélène de Montgeroult. Her latest disc has three well-known composers but the works performed are relatively obscure, definitely not concert hall regulars, and strain the sides of piano-and-orchestra form. Walton's Sinfonia Concertante for Orchestra with Piano Obbligato started life as a ballet score for Diaghilev, who rejected it, and the composer recycled it as a neoclassical work in 1943. Hammond, with excellent orchestral support under conductor George Vass, reveals both the work's meditative side - sample Variations 6 'Nocturne' and 10 'Adagio' - and revel in the extrovert Walton we hear in his symphonies and overtures in the 'Tarantella'. The pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War 1, commissioned some fine works for the left hand including concertos by Ravel and Prokofiev. Benjamin Britten's 'Diversions' was one too and deserves to be better known with its ingenious variations and, like Ravel's work, makes a musical virtue of Wittgenstein's physical limitations. Hammond and Vass reveal how rich was the imagination of a composer in his twenties. Tippett's Piano Concerto was inspired by listening to Beethoven's fourth and while their music is worlds apart he used the structural soloist versus orchestra and shifting alliances between groups of instruments effectively. An immensely rewarding disc with recording quality which matches the exquisite playing.

Bliss: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Seal (Chandos CD & SACD) ★★★★★

A few weeks ago in this column, while reviewing a Somm set of live BBC broadcasts of Sir Arthur Bliss's music, I bemoaned the fact that he received less attention than his British contemporaries like Walton. Right on cue this brilliant new disc of two major Bliss scores arrives from Chandos in sparkling performances conducted by Michael Seal, a familiar face from his extensive work with the CBSO. Bliss wrote his score 'Miracle in the Gorbals' for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1944 choreographed by Robert Helpmann, a photograph of that production is on the booklet's front cover. Bliss conducted the suite from the ballet on disc (EMI) but Seal gives us the complete score of this allegorical work about a mysterious Christ-like figure (The Stranger) who brings back to life a girl drowned in the Clyde but he is knifed to death by the repressive forces of authority (The Official). The score is suitable melodramatic and lurid with Seal exploiting Chandos' vivid recording with some explosive timpani in the opening overture and the jazzy 'Dance of Deliverance' buzzes and thrums with energy with brass and tom-toms erupting from the speakers. A huge amount is packed into the 37 minute score and it rebuts any lazy generalization that English music of this period is tame or prim. Seal also gives us the first recording of the full score, all sixteen sections, of Bliss's 1972 'Metamorphic Variations'. It's a work that needs several hearings to reveal its merits, but Bliss's orchestration is masterful and the BBC Philharmonic's brass and percussion section (aided by the spectacular recording quality) are most impressive in the 'Funeral Processions' variation.

Handel: Lieberson, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Bicket (Avie CD) ★★★★★

This recording was originally released in 2004 and became an instant classic due to the phenomenal singing of the American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whose interpretation of Handel arias had the perfect setting with the original instrument orchestral support under Harry Bicket. Tragically she died from breast cancer in 2006 aged only 52 and at the height of her powers, having switched from being a viola player to singing in her thirties. This 21st anniversary edition has been remastered in stereo and includes an amazing 12-channel Dolby Atmos track for those with a suitably equipped home cinema set up and this landmark recording has never sounded better. Lieberson wedded warmth of tone and vocal security to immense emotional intensity nowhere better exemplified than in Handel's solo cantata 'La Lucrezia' which excellent support from a small instrumental group of Harry Bicket (harpsichord & chamber organ), Stephen Stubbs (lute & Baroque guitar), Phoebe Carrai (cello) and Margriet Tindemans (viola da gamba). The disc concludes with Ombra Mai Fu' from 'Serse' the perfect farewell from this greatly missed singer. There's more to savour including selections from 'Theodora' and two more arias from 'Serse'.