Year: 2006

This new Naxos recording offers a rare opportunity to hear three little-known works by one of the 20th century’s greatest composers – The Execution of Stepan Razin op. 119, October op. 131, and Five Fragments for orchestra op. 42, by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75).

Is this the application of Peter’s Principle on Ruperto Chapi’s music as Chris Webber, editor of www.zarzuela.net preaches, or is this proof of Chapi being “undoubtedly the most important Spanish
composer of stage music of all time” as the sleeve notes tell us?

Its foundational interest in affective response made the early Baroque era a time rich in the nurture of highly impassioned music and text. Little surprise then that laments, with their characteristic emotional intensity, were particularly at home on the early seventeenth-century stage and in the chambers of the nobility.

Whatever its flaws – and it has them – this Zurich Opera production of Debussy’s PellÈas and MÈlisande boasts qualities that carry it very far from the standard view of those opera goers who considers the work dry, dull, and depressingly long.

Recorded approximately 35 years ago in September 1971, Bernard Haitinkís performance of Gustav Mahlerís Eighth Symphony remains a classic account of the composerís demanding score.

Refreshingly modern and familiar at the same time, the Lieder of Willy Burkhard (1900-55) are better known in his native Switzerland than anywhere else.

Most Opera Today readers are probably familiar with Gian Carlo Menotti largely through his operas (The Medium, The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Telephone, and others), and, if they teach or coach voice, may be more familiar than they’d like to be with pieces like “This is my box” and “Monica’s Waltz”, which have long been mainstays of the
“American aria” branch of repertoire for young singers.