Featured below: David Quigley, Víkingúr Ólafsson, Christina Pluhar, Danish String Quartet, and Hélène Grimaud.

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Each week The Journal of Music compiles news on new and recent releases in contemporary, classical, jazz, traditional, folk, indie and more. Please send details of all releases to newreleases [at] journalofmusic.com.

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David Quigley: Piano Nocturnes
Avie Records
17 August 2018

In his first release on the Avie label, Irish pianist David Quigley explores the solo piano nocturne, beginning with John Field and touching on versions of the form by both usual and unexpected composers, including Philip Martin, Orrotino Respighi and Clara Schumann. The album was recorded at the Elgar Concert Hall at the University of Birmingham (where Quigley is a member of the piano faculty) and is sensitive and nuanced without over-romanticising its subject. 

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Víkingur Ólafsson: Johann Sebastian Bach 
Deutsche Grammophon
7 September 2018

Ólafsson is a musician of widely varied interests – as well as being a performing pianist, he founded the Reykjavik Midsummer Music festival, created the Icelandic classical music television series Útúrdúr, and founded his own record label, Dirrindí. This album of Bach solo works, and the upcoming album of ‘reworks’ of Bach works showcases this playfulness and invention, and his playing on this album of Bach solo piano works is sparkling and bright with exceptional clarity.

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Christina Pluhar: Himmelsmusik
Warner Classics
5 October 2018

Harpist and early/Baroque music specialist Christina Pluhar directs her ensemble L’Arpeggiata in this album of songs and cantatas by seventeenth-century German composers. The album is rigorous in its realisation and rich in musicality in these emotional renditions of works by composers such as Johann Christoph Bach and Philipp Heinrich Erlebach. 

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Danish String Quartet: Prism I
ECM
21 September 2018

This is the first album in a planned series of five under the title of Prism that will see the Danish String Quartet placing one Beethoven String Quartet next to one J.S. Bach fugue, and one other related work from the string quartet canon. For this first release, it’s Beethoven’s op. 127 in E-flat major and an arrangement by Mozart of Bach’s fugue in the same key, placed with Shostakovich’s last quartet, No. 15 in E-flat minor. The Shostakovich is the real stand-out on the album – an intimate performance with considered tone. 

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