There are three new albums on Naxos worth exploring this month: wind band music by Salvador Brotons that includes his Symphony No. 6 and Symphonic Movement No. 7; Patric Standford’s Symphony No. 1 and Cello Concerto; and Argentinian composer Osias Wilenski’s Oboe Concerto and other works.
If you can get past the numinous packaging of Voces 8’s new album Lux on Decca, there are some good things to be found on it, including works by Ola Gjeilo, John Tavener, Eriks Esenwalds, Rihards Dubra, Patrick Hawes, Will Todd and Paul Mealor. The modern works are broken up with some appropriately spiritual, though always welcome, lollipops: Tallis’s O Nata Lux, Allegri’s Miserere and a section from Rachmaninov’s Vespers.
Jagoda Szmytka’s new CD Bloody Cherries on WERGO explores physicality of sound and how it relates to the physicality of performance. It includes 7 works: 3 for amplified ensemble, the others for various combinations of amplified ensemble, amplified voices, transducer, electric guitar, cello, flute, piano and drums. The other new release on the label is a programme for saxophone, including works by Arturo Fuentes, Paulo Ferreira Lopes, Juan Camilo Hernández Sánchez, Phivos-Angelos Kollias, Tom Mays, Bernd Schultheis and Agostino Di Scipio.
There are two works for keyboard on Divine Arts. Masque is a follow-up album to Carson Cooman’s well-received disk of organ music Litanies. It features his Preludes and Fugues 1–9, Preghiera and Symphony for Organ played by Erik Simmons on the instrument at Laurenskerk, Rotterdam. Beyond the River God, finally, features the harpsichord music of Graham Lynch and François Couperin.