The only true Purcell opera – the others considered to be semi-operas, a format closer to musical theatre – Dido & Aeneas is a masterpiece that offers such musical density that the piece was destined to radically influence the tastes of English society, which quickly embraced the arrival of entirely sung operas. The work was created in London in 1896, in a version that was surely more complete than the one that we possess today, according to the libretto by Nahum Tate which mentions a prologue of music that has since been lost. Taking on the myth of The Aeneid, the opera is a loose adaptation of Book IV of the work by Virgil. The British ensemble La Nuova Musica – whose recording of Couperin’s “Tenebrae Readings for Holy Wednesday” on harmonia mundi we so admired in 2016 – offers us a luminous and balanced version of the work, accompanied by a cast of top-notch soloists, Fleur Barron and Matthew Brook being first in line. A record released by PentaTone, this sneak preview is presented exclusively by Qobuz for download until September 21, 2023. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

This album of Villa-Lobos' piano music contains works that may be well known in Brazil but are hardly familiar elsewhere, and for most listeners, they will be real finds. The centerpiece is the group of ten excerpts from the set Cirandas ("Round Dances"), which are almost like a Brazilian version of Bartók; they are rooted in folk music but diverge into concise little statements exploiting the motivic and harmonic possibilities they represent. Almost everything here, as the album's title suggests, is Brazilian in flavor, but never in the usual ways; New York Skyline Melody (1939) is only a possible exception. The album ends spectacularly with the Liszt-level virtuosity of Rudepoêma, whose title suggests "Savage Poem" rather than rudeness. This fascinating work is a musical portrait of Artur Rubinstein, and when that pianist pointed out the meaning of the name, Villa-Lobos responded enthusiastically, "Yes! We are both savages!" The work is an excellent addition to the virtuoso repertory, and pianist Wilhem Latchoumia handles it confidently. Throughout, he has praiseworthy control over a wide variety of material that illuminates many strands of Villa-Lobos' musical personality. The La Dolce Volta label contributes excellent sound from the Metz Arsenal on an album that may well become one of the sleeper hits of the 2023 holiday season.© James Manheim /TiVo

The neutral graphics and title (derived from the novelist Marguerite Duras) of this ECM release give little clue as to what's inside, and even for those who pursue it further, seeing the name of Russian spiritualist George Gurdjieff in the track list might give the impression that the contents are more new agey than they really are. It's true that mystical belief is one of the strands knitting together this exceptionally well-chosen program, but there are many others. They include an Eastern orientation in musical matter as well as attitude, proto-minimalism, and the use of improvisatory procedures. These show up in greater or lesser degrees in the music of all four of the composers represented: Gurdjieff, Federico Mompou, François Couturier (the pianist here, whose background is partly in jazz), and Armenian priest-composer-musicologist Komitas Vardapet, often known simply as Komitas, represented by a single work, Chinar es. The connections are new and delightful; for example, Mompou is not thought of as a mystic, but the writings of St. John of the Cross had a major impact on what he did. The story of the music by Gurdjieff is told in the notes: he was not really a composer, but he knew a good deal of music from Central Asia, filtered it through his own sensibility, and then hummed or whistled it (or played it in a rudimentary way) for composer Thomas de Hartmann, who notated and harmonized it. Hartmann's realizations were piano works, but here they are arranged by the performers for cello and piano. This, they point out, sends Gurdjieff's melodies back in the direction of their ensemble origins. Elsewhere the liberties are even greater; Couturier's own compositions have an improvisational bent, and three times the players join separate pieces together. This is especially effective in the case of Gurdjieff's No. 11 and Mompou's Fêtes lointaines No. 3, with its evocation of distant bells (as annotator Steve Lake points out, a major preoccupation of Arvo Pärt, who may well have been influenced by Mompou and perhaps by the other composers here except for Couturier). All this is backed up by masterful engineering from ECM stalwart Manfred Eicher; good sound from ECM is expected, but here it is crystalline. A superb release, even for those who think they don't like mystical composition.© TiVo

The legendary British composer will always be most identified with his breakthrough long-play composition "Tubular Bells" and the way it was used to illuminate fear in The Exorcist. The happy truth is that since then he's amassed an incredible catalog of over 20 albums featuring just about every instrumental form but jazz: pop, classical, new age, world music, computer game, film soundtrack, etc. The title of his 2008 45-minute classical-influenced opus Music of the Spheres is a reference to the prolific and eclectic composer's feeling that all music should aim to represent the spiritual or otherworldly elements of life -- something beyond the mundane and everyday. He accomplishes that via the sheer hypnotic beauty of the gentler passages and the percussive drama of others, both of which characterize the multi-movement opening track, "Harbinger," which lives up to its title as a preview of the overwhelming, ethereal joys to come. Mike Oldfield is a highly accomplished film composer and it would be easy to imagine gorgeous, sweeping pieces like "Animus" and "Silhouette" behind pastoral romantic scenes, and action-packed, percussively dense expressions like "The Tempest" building some heavy suspense for some nail-biting plot. Completely recorded by an orchestra at Abbey Road studios and featuring Oldfield himself on guitar, Music of the Spheres -- which features guest performances by world-renowned young soprano (and Decca labelmate) Hayley Westenra and classical piano phenom Lang Lang -- is huge in scope yet at heart simple and emotionally direct on a purely melodic level. While the piece was entirely conceived, produced, and written by Oldfield, he turned to popular modern classical composer Karl Jenkins to translate his ideas into traditional classical notations arranged for orchestra -- a great departure from the artist's usual array of studio-only wizardry. Jenkins, who once played oboe on a live BBC recording of "Tubular Bells" in 1975, gets a co-production credit, and with good reason. Oldfield scored his music via a computer program called Logic, while Jenkins used Sibelius to create the musical notation. Oldfield recorded an elaborate demo using orchestral samples, then handed it over so that Jenkins could add the human touch by re-recording it by an orchestra of classical musicians. It's a rich, heartfelt collaboration that breaks new ground for both men. Oldfield had no trouble declaring that he was almost moved to tears while listening to Music of the Spheres come alive at Abbey Road. It's a primitive spiritual and emotional response that every listener would later relate to.© Jonathan Widran /TiVo

Caruso, Pavarotti, Mario Lanza and many others have all succumbed – with more or less success − to the charms and spells of southern popular songs, filled with sunlight, liveliness and joy of life. Dazzling Latvian mezzo soprano Elīna Garanča takes her shot at this tradition with her first “non-classical” album, released under the Yellow Label of Deutsche Grammophon. Exploring a predominantly masculine repertoire, she masterfully proves music has no barriers and that joy belongs to everyone.Living in the Canary Islands, Elīna Garanča has selected a few pearls, not necessarily the rarest, from the Spanish repertoire, as well as some works from Italy and Latin America, with bespoke arrangements often prepared by her husband and conductor Karel Mark Chichon, who leads the Philharmonic Orchestra of Gran Canaria for this performance. The result is a commingling of songs and extracts of zarzuelas and tangos, including Yo Soy Maria by inevitable and dear Astor Piazolla.The perfect opportunity to experience Elīna Garanča’s irresistible velvety voice and her God-given ability to sing anything with the same enthusiasm. The purity of her vocal line and ability to alter her tone to match the repertoire bestow a new dimension to these popular miniatures, and contribute to slimming, almost abolishing the boundary between opera and popular music. © François Hudry/Qobuz

When it comes to posterity, Vivaldi has been quite lucky. Thanks to a series of happy accidents, his personal manuscript collection has survived through the centuries, allowing his music to be preserved and later played and recorded. Contralto Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone, the director of the Accademia Bizantina, drew from this invaluable batch of nearly 450 compositions to develop this album’s program of sacred music dedicated to the alto voice.This recording includes two “introdutioni” for alto, a kind of motet whose form would have been devised by Vivaldi for his Venetian work for the Pietà. You can also find the vespertine hymn Deus tuorum militum for alto and tenor (Alessandro Giangrande), as well as a Regina coeli, a Marian antiphon played on Easter Sunday.At the heart of this album is a violin concerto written for the day of the The Assumption of Mary (August 15th). The importance of this celebration in the Italian liturgical calendar is underlined here by a score of an unusual length for a Vivaldi concerto, with it being divided into two orchestral parts that exchange a sometimes and sometimes joyous dialogue. Written for his student Anna Maria, the solo violin part preserved in the archives is played here by Alessandro Tampieri, who has once again enriched it with a very virtuoso "capriccio" of his own making. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Early punk backgrounds and the like behind them, Perry and Gerrard created a striking, dour landmark in early-'80s atmospherics on their first, self-titled effort. Bearing much more resemblance to the similarly gripping, dark early work of bands like the Cocteau Twins and the Cure than to the later fusions of music that would come to characterize the duo's sound, Dead Can Dance is as goth as it gets in many places. Perry and Gerrard's wonderful vocal work -- his rich, warm tones and her unearthly, multi-octave exaltations -- are already fairly well established, but serve different purposes here. Thick, shimmering guitar and rumbling bass/drum/drum machine patterns practically scream their sonic connections to the likes of Robin Guthrie and Robert Smith, but they still sound pretty darn good for all that. When they stretch that sound to try for a more distinct, unique result, the results are astonishing. Gerrard is the major beneficiary here -- "Frontier" explicitly experiments with tribal percussion, resulting in an excellent combination of her singing and the rushed music. Then there's the astonishing "Ocean," where guitar and chiming bells and other rhythmic sounds provide the bed for one of her trademark -- and quite, quite lovely -- vocal excursions into the realm of glossolalia. Perry in contrast tends to be matched with the more straightforward numbers of digital processing and thick, moody guitar surge. The album ends on a fantastic high note -- "Musica Eternal," featuring a slowly increasing-in-volume combination of hammered dulcimer, low bass tones, and Gerrard's soaring vocals. As an indicator of where the band was going, it's perfect.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

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