Category: Reviews

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.

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.

Having spent the better part of its life at full-price, the Solti/Nilsson Salome now appears as a mid-priced re-issue.

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.

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.

Vanity publishing is not for the print world only, as a release from a company called Jeremiah Productions, called “That’s Amore,” proves.

According to Giancarlo Landini, author of the very interesting and detailed sleeve notes, Labo “has been sorely neglected, if not totally forgotten”.

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: ëI wish, Lehar had composed Rosenkavalierí).

In the 1930s, Poulencís turn to writing sacred choral music such as the Litanies ‡ 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.

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.