Previously unreleased, this collection of Spirituals never received the approval of the Canadian-born bass-baritone George London (1920-85) for release when it was prepared in 1963.
Category: Reviews
LOEWE: Lieder and Balladen
Of the nineteenth-century composers of music for solo voice, Carl Loewe (1796-1869) is one of the most voluminous, with his songs, with his works in this genre filling seventeen volumes in the uniform edition.
The Deepest Desire
“In choosing the program for a debut recital disc, perhaps an artist should be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task: how in the world do I begin to sort through the wealth of masterpieces at my fingertips, daring to stamp a select few with my voice?”
MASSENET: Werther
Who is the most annoying character in opera? Preziosilla from Verdi’s Forza del Destino drives some to distraction, while others wish the conspirators in Ballo would assassinate Oscar in act one.
ENNA: Lille pige med svovlstikkerne
ZEMLINSKY: Die Seejungfrau
Walt Disney has colored our perception of fairy tales, turning them, whatever their source, into egalitarian morality plays:
Frederica von Stade sings Mozart and Rossini arias
Frederica von Stade was just about 30 years old in 1975, when she recorded these Mozart and Rossini arias with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart.
ìPoppeaî – Heartless in L.A.
After the successful premiËre of Monteverdiís ìLíIncoronazione di Poppeaî (Saturday, November 25th) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, General Director Placido Domingo spoke warmly and cogently about this early Italian masterpiece, about its free-flowing music and the perfect relevance of the text to todayís world with all its greed, ambition and self-seeking.
Houston ìrescuesî Hansel and Gretel
HOUSTON — “Hansel and Gretel” has taken a beating in recent seasons, as over-zealous directors — aping the excesses of Eurotrash Regieoper — have made Humperdink’s largely innocent retelling of the Grimms’ tale the victim of hyper-active imaginations.
Sweet was the Song
I doubt that this recital disc, recorded in 2004, could have been intended as a memorial to Arne Dorumsgaard, who died in March of 2006, but the composer’s centrality to the program, and the poetic themes of death, sleep, and mortality that recur in the Elizabethan texts, enable such an interpretation.
CHARPENTIER: Le Malade Imaginaire
On the 10th February 1673, only a few months after their first collaboration, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as MoliËre (1622-1673), and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) presented at the Palais Royal’s theater Le Malade Imaginaire, a comÈdie ballet (a comedy with incidental music in the form of interludes built around a secondary plot).