Category: Recordings

Some opera sets are meant to be an introduction to the work presented. They contain a booklet which tells you about the life of the composer, the history of the work, some analysis, a synopsis of the story, and maybe (if you’re lucky) the libretto translated into your language.

This recording features piano works by the pillars of nineteenth-century Romantic piano composition (Chopin and Liszt), the Spanish-speaking musical nationalists (Granados, Ginastera, and de Falla), and the Russian composer-pianists (Scriabin and Rachmaninov) who reinterpreted the Romantic spirit in new and innovative ways for the piano.

Mozartís Requiem has become widely-known and popular since the 1984 movie Amadeus. Left incomplete at his death, his student and assistant Franz Xaver Sussmayr (1766-1803) completed the work from Mozartís notes.

Could La Traviata be the opera with the most versions available on DVD? The appetite for the doomed heroine never wavers.

If Richard Wagnerís music may be seen to pervade the late nineteenth century, an area that is rarely discussed is his influence on song.

Everyone is familiar with the waltzes and polkas of the ìWaltz King,î Johan Strauss II, along with his father Johann I and his brother Josef.

Verdiís smash hit of 1844 is a relative rarity these days. As Stefano Olcese notes in his booklet essay for a new Dynamic recording, the opera calls for daunting vocal display from tenor, soprano, baritone, and bass.

The richness of the Ars Antiqua flourishing in Paris in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marks the time as one of high cultural achievement, drawing nurture from the contemporaneous rise of the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the University of Paris.

It would be presumptuous of me to go through the entire plot of The Magic Flute, given its historical and popular significance with all classical music devotees.

This recording is a grouping of various compositions by J.S. Bach, which are not solely dedicated to the trumpet, but provide some of the most demanding repertoire for the instrument prior to the nineteenth century.