Month: December 2005

As the second of four of the thematically organized recording of the Complete Songs of Gabriel FaurÈ (1845-1924), Un paysage choisi is an excellent offering of chansons that concern selected natural places, that is to say, the ìchosen landscapeî indicated in the title of this volume.

Sergei Prokofievís Ivan the Terrible? Which one? Prokofiev composed music for Sergei Eisensteinís film (part 1, 1942-44; part 2, 1945) about the sixteenth-century ruler, and the score is catalogued as op. 116. After the composerís death, music for the film was arranged first into an oratorio (with speaker, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) by Alexander Stasevich (1961) and later into a concert scenario by Christopher Palmer (1990).

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Ives; both known more for their symphonic music than anything else, receive superb tributes in these recordings of some of their early songs. Only two years separate the birth dates of these composers; but the musical language each speaks seems to put far more distance than that between them.