Recently in Reviews
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. »
13 Oct 2005
OMAHA — Having first heard Anna Christy a few years ago in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, she clearly had a bright future ahead of her. On Tuesday, this opinion was not only reaffirmed, but it is now manifest that this lovely and elegant soprano is well on her way to becoming one of the great coloraturas of the 21st Century. »
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. »
04 Oct 2005
Konrad Jarnot is a young baritone who brings a wonderful vitality to the music he has recorded. He also has another Oehms release, a selection of Lieder by Gustav Mahler, which is engaging for the strong sense of line he brings to that repertoire, which is precisely what he brings to this collection of French vocal music. »
04 Oct 2005
The biographies of the two composers whose works are represented on this disc, Sergei Prokofiev and Ottorino Respighi, share many common threads. In addition to moving in similar circles early in their lives (for example, both studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and both were later connected with Diaghilev), they similarly composed in totalitarian regimes at the end of their careers. »
03 Oct 2005
Since its inception in 1980, the biennial Boston Early Music Festival has grown to international stature of the first rank, and while its programming is diverse in scale and repertory, its focus in recent years has been on full-scale productions of baroque opera, including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Rossi’s Orfeo, Cavalli’s Ercole Amante, Lully’s Thésée, and this past summer, Mattheson’s Boris Goudenouw. »
30 Sep 2005
For the most part, the posthumous reputation of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-43) resides on the composer’s instrumental works and of all his vocal music, his two oratorios, Elias and Paulus are familiar to the general public. »
29 Sep 2005
Since 1995 the mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender no longer performs as a singer, but has devoted her recent career to directing. »
29 Sep 2005
With this CD, Naxos continues its well deserved reputation for producing recordings at affordable prices, and more often than not, but not limited to, music that is rarely performed, or with a limited audience. »
28 Sep 2005
The Very Best of Thomas Hampson is an excellent selection on CD of Hampson’s recordings from various points in his career. The American baritone is one of the international stars of classical music for both his roles on the opera stage and his work as a recitalist. »
28 Sep 2005
This is one of the most enchanting and lovely ballet performances that I have ever seen, and believe me I have seen quite a few! First performed in Paris on May 12, 1832, La Sylphide marks the advent of Romanticism in ballet. »
28 Sep 2005
On Christmas 1999, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists with conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner set out on one of the most unusual musical tours ever undertaken. »
28 Sep 2005
J. S. Bach’s large output of church cantatas and their prominence in his duties as Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig have made them central to our modern understanding of Bach. »
27 Sep 2005
Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is a tour de force that can tax a conductor and orchestra in live performances. While it often takes several sessions in the studio for performers to match the required intensity of playing with exuberance that is also part of the work, some live performances convey that fine balance immediately. »
26 Sep 2005
Yiddish is a language based on medieval German that developed separately from modern German. It spread throughout Eastern Europe, where it acquired words from Hebrew, as well as Russian, Polish, and other Slavic languages. »
26 Sep 2005
In addition to some notable, recent recordings of selected Lieder by Robert Schumann (1810-56), two comprehensive editions of the composer’s works in this genre are underway, one by Hyperion, which is almost complete and another that is just starting on the Naxos label. Performed by Thomas E. Bauer, baritone and his wife, the pianist Uta Hielscher, the first volume is as promising as it is ambitious. »
26 Sep 2005
Paul Hillier has written the book on Arvo Pärt, quite literally. He has spent significant time with the Estonian composer interviewing him, working with him, and studying his music. He has not only authored the only text researching Pärt's music and background, but Hillier also seems to one of the first to perform and record his music, thereby exposing it to the general public. »
26 Sep 2005
Now this is one beautiful piece of music, a setting of the text of the “Song of Songs,” taken from the Hebrew Bible by the composer Jorge Liderman. Liderman is Argentinian by birth, now on the composition faculty of the Department of Music at the University of California at Berkeley. His work shows a distinct ability at the craft of composition: this is a very attractively put together work. »
25 Sep 2005
Glimmerglass Opera has been doing innovative and often remarkable work for a number of years. Thankfully, many of their productions have been shared with the New York City Opera and, thus, with a large opera-going public. »
25 Sep 2005
Based on a tongue-in-cheek poem by young Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Glinka’s second opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) is an epic adventure tale, in which three rival Russian knights roam the land in search of a Kievan princess kidnapped by a sorcerer. »
24 Sep 2005
This newly re-mastered recording was originally released in 1954 by Columbia (Qcx 10111/12), later reprinted by EMI (C163-00981/2), and it includes, besides Giulieta Simionato in the title role, three other members of the original 1953 production at La Scala: tenor Cesare Valleti, and bass Mario Petri in their respective roles of Lindoro and Mustafà and Conductor Carlo Maria Giulini. »
24 Sep 2005
Audiences accustomed to hearing the grandeur of Shostakovich’s early symphonies may initially be disillusioned when listening to his Thirteenth Symphony for the first time. »
22 Sep 2005
With a career spanning the monarchies of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I, Thomas Tallis’s musical pragmatism became both a necessary and distinctive trait. »
22 Sep 2005
Among Gaetano Donizetti’s compositions are just over a dozen one-act operas. Save for his one (Venice 1818), a genre that many twentieth-century historians considered respectable primarily because of contributions made to it by Gioachino Rossini, the Donizetti’s other single-act works generally have been brushed aside as less important than the larger operas. »
22 Sep 2005
This recording of Musica Nuptialis celebrates occasional music and does so in a fittingly occasional manner. »
22 Sep 2005
Baritone Lado Ataneli’s self-titled debut CD contains an impressive selection of arias intended to showcase the singer’s style, range, and versatility. »
22 Sep 2005
In 1728 John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera was produced in London as a sardonic response to the ongoing craze for Italian opera seria. »
22 Sep 2005
Among recent recordings of music by Gustav Mahler, the 2004 release of the composer’s Second Symphony conducted by Claudio Abbado stands out as an intense and highly charged performance. »
22 Sep 2005
Schoenberg, born in Vienna in 1874, is remembered as a composer and a music theorist. He held strong attitudes toward the craft of composition and its pedagogy, which have been received as the beginnings of a theory of music, though Schoenberg denied ever attempting to create a systematic theory. »
21 Sep 2005
When I was a young child, my mother purchased a blouse and brought it home to the acclaim of my aunts and older sisters. "Oh, that's smart!" they pronounced, cooing and stepping back to admire the thing. Not a little bit jealous, I was taken aback. »
19 Sep 2005
“I send my heart up to thee, all my heart in this, my singing” Robert Browning.
The title of this CD is taken from the text of one of Amy Beach’s Three Browning Songs, which close the program. Given Deborah Voigt’s ability to sing this program with completely natural expression and crystal clear diction while maintaining a consistently high standard of vocal production and musicianship, it is easy to believe that in her singing she shares with us something of what is most dear to her own heart. Fortunately for us, in doing this she is also giving us a fine recording of American art songs, some of which will be quite familiar to many listeners, others of which will be wonderful new discoveries. »
