Recently in Recordings
08 Oct 2006
Among the exciting new releases in Naxos’s series of 21st Century Classics is a compilation of four works by Wojciech Kilar (b. 1932), which include two symphonic compositions and two vocal pieces. »
08 Oct 2006
This is a recital disc notable for the compelling presence and intimacy of the vocal performance. »
05 Oct 2006
Among the outstanding interpreters of Mahler’s music, Pierre Boulez stands out for his recent recordings of the composer’s symphonies. Having worked with various international orchestras, Boulez has been preserving on CD some finely shaped performances, and if he intends to create a cycle akin to those of other conductors, he is wisely recording the works one by one and not necessarily in the order in which they were composed. »
02 Oct 2006
The daily Anglican liturgies of Morning and Evening Prayer feature the recitation of the complete Psalter (apportioned in a monthly cycle), and in cathedrals and collegiate chapels, the chanting of the psalms has been cultivated to a degree of great refinement and beauty. »
29 Sep 2006
Of late opera stagings often seem to be slotted into one of two categories: the "traditional," with sets as the original libretto detailed and singers in period costumes; and "non-traditional," "regie theater," or "Eurotrash," what you will. »
29 Sep 2006
Having spent the better part of its life at full-price, the Solti/Nilsson Salome now appears as a mid-priced re-issue. »
29 Sep 2006
This 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth must be heaven not only Amadeus lovers but also for those with a general inclination toward classical era music. »
29 Sep 2006
While most of the familiar Lieder repertoire stems from the nineteenth century, the powerful attraction the artform spurred composition in this genre through the mid-twentieth century. »
28 Sep 2006
Vanity publishing is not for the print world only, as a release from a company called Jeremiah Productions, called "That's Amore," proves. »
27 Sep 2006
According to Giancarlo Landini, author of the very interesting and detailed sleeve notes, Labo “has been sorely neglected, if not totally forgotten”. »
26 Sep 2006
CPO has recently given us a lot of wonderful Lehar recordings like Eva, Der Rastelbinder or Der Sterngucker (admired by Hofmannsthal who exclaimed after a performance: ‘I wish, Lehar had composed Rosenkavalier’). »
25 Sep 2006
In the 1930s, Poulenc’s turn to writing sacred choral music such as the Litanies à la vierge noire and the Mass in G was closely linked to his new embrace of Roman Catholicism following the death of a close friend, the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud. »
25 Sep 2006
The Bach Passions combine drama, sublimity of expression, and deeply devotional reflection in such a powerful way that we invariably tend to set them apart from other liturgical works. »
25 Sep 2006
Maybe a looking glass will help you to decipher the reprint in this CD’s inside cover of a small article on the soprano by Terry McEwen, who was Manager of the Classical Divison of London Records at the time of recording. »
25 Sep 2006
Deutsche Grammophon was one of the many labels for which Nilsson recorded and the company decided to commemorate her passing by offering us most of her not so very large catalogue. »
25 Sep 2006
We are reasonably sensitive, I suspect, to the number of ways in which venue can shape the nature and success of musical performance. »
24 Sep 2006
The best Norma on DVD treats the viewer to a blurry picture of washed-out colors and remote, compressed sound. »
24 Sep 2006
The better can be the enemy of the good and this recording proves it. »
24 Sep 2006
In her debut recording the young Roumanian soprano Katarina Jovanic demonstrates her talent in performing an intriguing selection of Lieder by Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss. »
24 Sep 2006
Myto does many an opera-lover a service by offering this enjoyable recording of Rossini's French grand opera, here called Moïse. »
24 Sep 2006
For a period of close to half a century, French grand opera, as exemplified by the works of Giacomo Meyerbeer and his school, was the preferred form of music for the theatre (i.e. opera) in most of the civilized world. »
22 Sep 2006
It is somewhat ironic that until recent years Italy has generally been slow to take a leading role in the historical performance movement: ironic in that historically Italy both dominates and defines the early baroque style and ironic in that that style enshrines the primacy of text— the Italian text. »
20 Sep 2006
The first thing I noticed in the liner notes was the bold print claiming Cimarosa was born in 1797 and died in 1848, which correspond exactly with Donizetti’s lifespan. »
12 Sep 2006
Robert Ashley has the uncanny ability to sprinkle diamonds amidst great swaths of apparently trivial and quotidian detritus–diamonds that trigger the nervous system in an intensely stimulating fashion. »
12 Sep 2006
The later Günter Wand was a remarkable interpreter of Bruckner’s music, as is demonstrated in this live recording from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. »
09 Sep 2006
Sony Records occasionally still sends the odd CD to reviewers hoping they will give it notice. »
08 Sep 2006
Callas fans better skip this review, as they won’t like the tone, the words, or whatever slights real or imagined they may perceive. »
08 Sep 2006
At the expense of stating a truism, the music of Gustav Mahler, like that of other composers, is best experienced live in the concert hall. »
08 Sep 2006
This Fanciulla is such a wonderful issue because, for once, none of the three protagonists ever recorded their role commercially, so that one is spared the many doublings often met in live recordings. »
07 Sep 2006
During the last few years Antoni Wit has recorded Mahler’s symphonies one by one, such that he is building a fine cycle for the Naxos label. »
31 Aug 2006
The program for this recent recording from the choir of Westminster Cathedral presents sacred choral works by Brahms and Rheinberger, anchored at one end by Brahms’s youthful Missa Canonica and at the other by Rheinberger’s Mass for Double Choir in E-flat, Op. 109. with a handful of motets by Brahms in between. »
29 Aug 2006
This cast looks quite promising on paper. However, I cannot honestly say these big names keep their promise, except for the comprimario-singers. »
29 Aug 2006
I can readily understand why Bayreuth refuses to perform Richard Wagner’s third opera. »
29 Aug 2006
Verdi responded to the death of Rossini in 1868 by planning a collaborative Requiem Mass, drawing on the contributions of thirteen “distinguished” composers. »
28 Aug 2006
Francis Poulenc is well known for the religious works that comprise much of his oeuvre after he was traumatized by the accidental and premature death of his friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud in 1936. »
28 Aug 2006
The music of John Dunstable embodies many of the characteristics that so dramatically set the music of the emerging Renaissance apart from its Medieval forebears. »
28 Aug 2006
Sometimes an invidious comparison cannot be avoided, and such is the case with two recent DVD versions of Georg Frederic Handel's masterpiece, Giulio Cesare. »
25 Aug 2006
The English “Oxbridge” choral tradition tends to be a cohesive one, most often with choirs of men and boys receiving similar training, singing a largely shared repertory in similar venues and in similar contexts. »
25 Aug 2006
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have a particular affinity for pre-modern polyphony, as their long discography, teeming with the music of the Eton Choirbook, assorted Renaissance masters, Handel, Bach, and others, amply shows. »
25 Aug 2006
Some argue that Bayreuth ushered in the modern era of regietheatre in opera productions with its now-legendary centennial Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed by Patrice Chereau. »
25 Aug 2006
In Turkey recently, we visited a second-grade classroom, where our guide invited the children to sing songs for us. »
25 Aug 2006
It seems only natural that the quality of radiance should quickly come to mind in contemplating the twelfth-century Basilica of Saint Denis, where luminous stained glass creates colored walls of mystical light. »
25 Aug 2006
Pentatone Classics joins some smaller recording companies staking out niche markets as the biggest labels continue their enforced retreat from the classical marketplace. »
25 Aug 2006
In recent European reviews, Teatro Regio di Parma’s DVD of their 2004 Verdi Gala was generally labeled as worthless. »
25 Aug 2006
Tower Records online DVD page shows eleven available incarnations of Verdi's classic La Traviata, four of which have appeared in the last year, including one filmed at the reopening of La Fenice in Venice, and a Zurich production reviewed recently for Opera Today by yours truly. »
25 Aug 2006
This installment of the estimable Bach Cantata Pilgrimage recordings brings together cantatas from the middle of the Epiphany season, along with a “refugee” from Trinity XXIV), and the well-known motet, “Jesu, meine Freude.” »
25 Aug 2006
This is a most sympathetic performance, though perhaps being a Fleming helps. In my small country on the frontier of Northern and Southern European influences, many musical styles made their entrance and became popular. »
25 Aug 2006
Internationally acclaimed soprano, Solveig Kringelborn, now has recorded a delightful selection of late nineteenth-century German Lieder on the NMA label. »
25 Aug 2006
In making words sing, to use a phrase from a recent study of the poetics of vocal composition, Aribert Reimann (b. 1936) does not emulate another composer as much as he makes fashions his own lines and punctuates them with accompaniments that serve as a means of accentuating the text. »
25 Aug 2006
We can easily imagine the pleasure that Bach must have taken in presiding over a household that was both large and talented enough to form its own complete ensemble. »
25 Aug 2006
Had Plato been a 19th century opera fan, would the philosopher have been so sure that there exists an ideal version of each and every opera, in the way that all chairs come from one immutable concept of "chair"? »
13 Aug 2006
Myto is always generous with its timings, usually producing very full CD’s and thus of necessity offering a bonus if a performance doesn’t fill the whole of the record. »
