Recently in Recordings
15 Nov 2005
The Lieder of Richard Strauss lend themselves well to various interpretations that bring out different aspects of the music. »
13 Nov 2005
This production, from Glyndebourne in 1975, is a treasure of literate, artistically informed stagecraft. Opera is meant to be seen as much as heard, and productions like this prove that good staging brings a score alive. »
13 Nov 2005
This is the third re-issue (in Europe anyway) on CD of the only existing studio recording of Stiffelio. Luckily it is a rather good one as its live competitors are not recordings for eternity. Neither Limarilli in 1968 nor Del Monaco (at his coarsest in 1972) have much sense of style, let alone a knack for true Verdi-phrasing. Not that José Carreras is flawless. »
09 Nov 2005
Tchaikovsky counted Sleeping Beauty as one of his best works. The idea came from Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), director of the Russian Imperial Theatres from 1881 onward. He had staged several of Tchaikovsky’s operas, and he wanted Tchaikovsky to produce a ballet score with him. »
09 Nov 2005
The formidable Straussian Sir Georg Solti wrote that after the 1929 death of Strauss’s long-time librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Strauss lived for another twenty years, but he never again wrote a great work.” »
09 Nov 2005
Khachaturian was one of the few Soviet composers of the Stalin regime to overcome his public demotion in 1948. Even though he was removed from his job and his works disappeared from the theatres, Khachaturian moved to the world of film music and waited for the storm to blow over. »
08 Nov 2005
This anthology, a twentieth-anniversary commemoration of Aled Jones’ first recording for the Welsh company, Sain, is a re-issue of that 1983 recording, “Diolch â Chân,” along with several other tracks from the mid-1980’s. Jones stepped out of the choir stalls at Bangor Cathedral to become a highly marketed treble, and his relative celebrity, as attested here, was well deserved. »
06 Nov 2005
Born in Bologna on January 22, 1756, Righini’s musical career started early when he was a choirboy at San Petronio. When he was nineteen, Righini made his professional singing debut as a tenor in Parma, and one year later he joined the Bustelli Opera in Prague. »
02 Nov 2005
Rossini’s masterpiece is based on Beaumarchais’ first of three plays—Le Barbier de Séville, La folle journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère Coupable—detailing the adventures of Figaro, a barber from Seville, Spain. Rossini was not the first, nor the last composer to set the story to music: Giovanni Maria Pagliardi, Friedrich Ludwig Benda, Johann André, Francesco Morlacchi, Miguel Nieto and Gerónimo Jiménez, Nicolo Isouard, and H. R. Bishop are some of the names that come to mind. »
01 Nov 2005
Not long ago the record label Delos announced that they would embark on a series of studio recordings of highlights from operas. This intriguing idea seemed to address the recording crisis spawned by the shrinking market for full studio sets, with their high cost for both producer and purchaser. »
01 Nov 2005
In 1682 the Archbishopric of Salzburg celebrated its 1100th anniversary with an appropriately festal service in the Cathedral, depicted in an engraving by Melchior Küsel. Küsel’s engraving is a striking image, bringing into harmony the grand scale of the building (not yet one hundred years old), the ornamental richness of the interior, and the strong subdivisions of its space. »
30 Oct 2005
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy, musicologist, astronomer, archeologist, poet, writer, teacher, and one of the most important and prolific composers of his generation. Yet, Saint-Saëns’ reputation has, for some time, mainly rested on his instrumental works the “Organ” Symphony, the overture Carnival of the Animals and his oratorio turned opera, Samson et Dalila. »
30 Oct 2005
Manon Lescaut was Puccini’s first big success, and his first contribution to the repertory. Yet it’s popularity has always lagged behind that of the composer’s following three mega-hits La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, as well as some later successes such as Turandot and even Gianni Schicchi. »
30 Oct 2005
If Rossini could set a laundry list to music, then Ewa Podleś is one of the few candidates available to sing it. In this CD, recorded live at the Polish Radio Hall in Wroclaw (Wratislavia), during the thirty third International Festival Wratislavia Cantans Music and Fine Arts, the Polish contralto gives ample proof of her status as one of the great singers of her generation. »
27 Oct 2005
Naxos is perhaps the only significant major label regularly releasing complete opera sets. A few have won widespread praise, and certainly the prices, at super-budget level, make them attractive to both first-time buyers and those whose collections scarcely justify an additional set. »
26 Oct 2005
Beethoven Shines Thru the Mix In the best of all possible worlds this recording of arias and show tunes would have been done in the original languages, the language of composition, with the vocal sounds intended by Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Wagner and others who defined great singing. »
26 Oct 2005
Here we have another part of John Eliot Gardiner’s remarkable Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, undertaken to perform—and record live—all of Bach’s surviving church cantatas at many different churches in a single year. »
26 Oct 2005
Piotr Anderszewski is a talented young pianist, who makes Szymanowski’s music come alive in his recent recording of three of the composer’s major pieces. »
24 Oct 2005
“Das Wunder Karajan” – “the miracle of Karajan” – is a phrase associated with the conductor since he was thirty years old, and that phrase holds true in his recorded legacy. In addition to recent DVD releases, EMI has issued a series of CDs in its “The Karajan Collection,” which preserves many fine studio recordings. »
24 Oct 2005
The rich legacy of Herbert von Karajan includes a number of recordings with various orchestras around the world, and among them is the Philharmonia Orchestra, which is documented in the CD entitled Philharmonia Promenade Concert. As Richard Osborne recounts in the notes that accompany this release, Herbert von Karajan made a number of recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra between 1948 and 1960. »
24 Oct 2005
In a richly Bohemian folk-style, the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben produced a collection of enchanted poetry that inspired Antonín Dvořák to compose his expressive array of hauntingly dark tone poems. Ultimately, the main character of each poem suffers a tragic consequence for their transgressions, ranging from the thoughtless utterances of a frustrated mother, to disobeying a parent, to murder. »
21 Oct 2005
In recent years orchestras like the London Symphony have begun to release their own CDs, in lieu of pursing contracts recording firms. While the implications of this are best left to another discussion, it is significant to see that Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra now has its own label, and among its recordings is a fine live performance of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 in C minor, led by its conductor laureate, Bernard Haitink. This recording is actually made from performances given on 18 and 20 February 2005, and preserves an outstanding recent interpretation of this enduring work by Bruckner. »
21 Oct 2005
Das walisische Label SAIN (das walisische Wort für "Sound"), gegründet 1969 von Dafydd Iwan, Huw Jones und Brian Morgan Edwards, hat einen starken sozialen und politischen Anspruch und ist darauf spezialisiert, CD's mit jungen Sängern und Liedern aus Wales und in walisischer Sprache herauszubringen. »
21 Oct 2005
SAIN (the Welsh word for 'sound', and pronounced like the English word 'sign') is Wales' leading recording company, founded in 1969 in Cardiff by Dafydd Iwan, Huw Jones and Brian Morgan Edwards. The label has a strong social and political message, and for the first few years, SAIN specialised in songs by young singers, many of them concerning the national and linguistic resurgence of Wales, which had begun in the 60's. »
18 Oct 2005
You may never have heard of Lennox Berkeley. But his music was admired by many of the most notable composers of the mid-20th century—Britten and Poulenc were close personal friends, and he has a dedicated band of admirers today (there is a Lennox Berkeley Society). Yet, for one reason or another, Berkeley has never become a household name. »
18 Oct 2005
The “XL” of the title of this recording is, as the program book notes, a double reference. First, read as Roman numerals, it points to the extraordinary number of voice parts in Thomas Tallis’ famous “Spem in alium” and its modern analogue here, Antony Pitts’ “XL,” a forty-voice setting of text from Psalm 40. »
14 Oct 2005
This Dynamic set spills over with rewards for opera lovers, especially those looking for something a little (or a lot) off the beaten path. »
13 Oct 2005
One can divide these recordings into two groups of two compact discs each. Much of the music of the two Mass settings offered here was composed in the mid 1770s. We have a young Mozart—twenty years old and in the employ of Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg when he composed this Credo Mass—and the veteran Franz Joseph Haydn, twice Mozart’s age and firmly settled at the Esterhazy court, when he completed the Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei movements of the Missa Cellensis, a work he had begun in 1766 with the Kyrie and Gloria movements. »
11 Oct 2005
The genre of grand opera is not traditionally associated with Jacques Offenbach’s posthumous reputation. Yet as demonstrated by the performances documented in the present recording and essays in the accompanying notes, a revision of our assessment of Offenbach’s strengths is long overdue. »
10 Oct 2005
“Teseo” is one of those “might have been” Handel operas that for one reason or another has never quite made the big time in a high profile, major house performance during our current period of baroque revival. However, this is not something that worries the enterprising likes of the Lautten Compagney Berlin and its Music Director Wolfgang Katschner nor the countertenor-turned-stage director Axel Kohler: for them this rather rare oddity of Handel’s genius is simply too good a chance to miss. »
08 Oct 2005
In recent years the few recordings of Mahler’s Lieder with piano accompaniment demonstrate the delicacy of the music in this format and its connections traditional Romantic Lieder. To such fine examples as those by Stephan Genz (on Hyperion) and Thomas E. Bauer (on Ars Musici), Konrad Jarnot is a fine addition. »
06 Oct 2005
Once hailed by the Nazis as a symbol of Aryan supremacy, Carmina Burana has come to be recognized as a powerful expression of the gluttony and depravity present in a medieval, pagan society. An effective performance of Orff’s musical adventure must allow audiences to envision the “imagines magicae,” or magical images conveyed through the convergence of music and choreography. »
