Richard Watkins & Julius Drake – The Romantic Horn (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Richard Watkins & Julius Drake – The Romantic Horn (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:01 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records

This recording presents a selection of some of the most well-loved works for the horn. Titled The Romantic Horn, the works highlight the lyrical gems of the European repertoire for the instrument, with works by Beethoven, Schumann and Scriabin.

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Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake – Songs by Schubert Vol. 3 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake – Songs by Schubert Vol. 3 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:26 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Wigmore Hall Live

Ian Bostridge, one of the outstanding tenors of our time, earning widespread praise for his intelligent and nuanced performances, resumes his partnership with Julius Drake for their latest disc of Schubert Lieder. From Schubert s joyful tribute to the natural world in Der Einsame to the desolation of Der Wanderer an den Mond , this delicately shaped programme explores the theme of longing in various guises. This release, the third volume in this Wigmore Hall Live series, captures some of the most exquisitely crafted songs of the 19th century.

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Ian Bostridge & Julius Drake – Schubert 4 – Wigmore Hall Live (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ian Bostridge & Julius Drake – Schubert 4 – Wigmore Hall Live (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:25 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Wigmore Hall Live

Ian Bostridge, ‘one of the world’s great lieder tenors’ The Telegraph, praised for his sensitive and distinctive performances, is joined once more by Julius Drake as they continue to explore the genius of Schubert’s songs. From the strikingly dramatic ballad ‘Der Zwerg’ to the melancholic tenderness of ‘An Den Mond’, the duo examine the emotions of every word and every note in this delicately curated programme, recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 16 May 2015.

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Christoph Pregardien, Julius Drake – Schubert: Poetisches Tagebuch (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/352,8kHz]

Christoph Pregardien, Julius Drake – Schubert: Poetisches Tagebuch (2015)
Digital eXtreme Definition FLAC Stereo (tracks) 24-bit/352,8 kHz | Time – 01:12:30 minutes | 3,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: spiritofturtle.com | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records

In the years 1819-20, especially, Schubert was frequently drawn to the early poetry of Friedrich Schlegel, who by middle age had morphed from Romantic pantheist to conservative (some would say bigoted) minence grise in Viennese literary circles. Im Walde (which appeared after Schubert’s death under the title Waldes-Nacht) is a darkly ecstatic paean to the numinous powers of the forest. Filled with mysterious rustlings and murmurings (the ‘Forest Murmurs’ of Siegfried are already in view), and picturesque details – say, the lightning flashes and growling thunder in verse two – this torrential outpouring is Schubert at his most exalted and visionary. (more…)

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Howard Arman, Julius Drake, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks – Dvořák: Stabat Mater, Op. 58, B. 71 (1876) [Live] (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Howard Arman, Julius Drake, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks – Dvořák: Stabat Mater, Op. 58, B. 71 (1876) [Live] (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:51 minutes | 565 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

The “Stabat mater” by the Bohemian composer Antonin Dvořák, well-known in its later orchestralversion, was initially composed with piano accompaniment. This rarely-heard original version has now been recorded for this new album from BR-KLASSIK, featuring the excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus under the direction of Howard Arman, and accompanied by Julius Drake on the piano. The young Dvořák was a well-studied and experienced church musician. Having graduated from the organ school in Prague, he spent three pious years as an organist in the city’s St. Adalbert’s Church. The search for a “truly sacred music” preoccupied him from the very start. The contemporary Caecilian Movement for church music reform led him, like many of his colleagues, to re-examine the Palestrina style, which represented a return to the more modest, less ostentatious and yet at the same time contrapuntally ingenious church music of a previous epoch. He duly composed a ”Stabat mater” without orchestral splendour and with a simple piano accompaniment. Shortly before Dvořák wrote down this first version of his ”Stabat mater” between February 19 and May 7, 1876, a heavy blow had struck the young family. On December 19, 1875, his daughter Josefa died two days after she was born. (It was only in August 1877 that the composer returned to the”Stabat Mater” again, orchestrated the work, and completed it on November 13. The premiere of that later version took place on December 23, 1880 in Prague). – Dvořák did not set all the verses of the hymn to music, and chose an ensemble of four soloists, a choir and a piano. This original version from the spring of 1876, with its seven-movement structure, is not a fragment, draft or piano reduction but an independent and self-contained work in its own right. In the autumn of 1877, when he composed the missing four verses and scored his ”Stabat mater” for a large orchestra, he effectively created a new and different work.

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Bejun Mehta, Julius Drake – Down by the Salley Gardens: 20th Century English Songs (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Bejun Mehta, Julius Drake - Down by the Salley Gardens: 20th Century English Songs (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Bejun Mehta, Julius Drake – Down by the Salley Gardens: 20th Century English Songs (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:06:31 minutes | 607 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Bejun Mehta had a rich musical career even before he switched voice type from baritone to countertenor in the late 1990s. He had been an acclaimed boy soprano, studied as a cellist, and been a successful record producer, with his album of Janos Starker playing the Bach cellos suites winning a Grammy. As a countertenor he has forged an impressive international career since the turn of the century, joining the burgeoning ranks of outstanding countertenors that began to appear about that time. Mehta has a natural, unmannered voice that’s strong and even throughout his range. Vaughan Williams’ Bright is the ring of words puts both the power and subtlety of his voice on display. The album doesn’t particularly showcase the coloratura suppleness of which he is capable, except in the goofy faux-Handelian setting of Old Mother Hubbard by Victor Hely-Hutchinson. These songs are notable for a straightforward, graceful lyricism that’s well-suited to Mehta’s unaffected voice. He brings plenty of expressiveness to the emotionally varied repertoire, from the heated romantic fervor of Roger Quilter’s Take, o take those lips away, to the melancholy of the title track. It’s only in Michael Tippett’s realization of Purcell’s Music for a while that Mehta’s interpretation falls short; he doesn’t convey the oddness of the combination of the music’s gorgeous lyricism and creepy strangeness. The title track refers not to the famous setting by Britten, but a version by Ivor Gurney. One of the appeals of the album lies in the relative unfamiliarity of most of the repertoire and the real obscurity of some of it, and it’s a pleasure to have it brought to light. Julius Drake, a masterful accompanist and a frequent collaborator of Mehta’s, plays with deftness and idiomatic sensitivity. The sound of Harmonia Mundi’s CD is clean, open, and nicely ambient. –AllMusic Review by Stephen Eddins
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Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake – Paradise Lost (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake - Paradise Lost (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake – Paradise Lost (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:58 minutes | 1015 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré’s Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell’s Sleep, Adam, sleep with its references to Genesis.
But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms’s Salamander, Wolf’s Die Bekehrte or Ravel’s Air du Feu. In Das Paradies und die Peri, Schumann conjures up the image of Syria’s rose-covered plains. Bernstein also transports us to the desert with Silhouette..
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