The premise for this new issue from Alpha is supposedly the tension between light and dark, suggested in the French term ‘clair-obscur’, and explored through orchestral songs inclined towards a…
Category: Recordings
Three Engaging New Song Cycles, Sung to Perfection on an Award-Winning CD by Soprano Deborah Sternberg
The general level of musical performance nowadays has risen around the world. Well-tuned orchestras pop up everywhere, and highly capable fiddlers, keyboard-ticklers, and singers (I’m tempted to write, in the…
Proud Songsters: a luxury CD from alumni of King’s College, Cambridge
Compiled by nine former choral scholars of King’s College, Cambridge and recorded just before the worldwide pandemic transformed our lives, this anthology is a marvellous century-plus traversal of familiar and…
Four Song Cycles by Saint-Saëns, Superbly Rendered by the Mellifluous Baritone Tassis Christoyannis
I raved about Greek-born baritone Tassis Christoyannis’s CD of songs by Félicien David and a follow-up 2-CD set of songs by Édouard Lalo . In American Record Guide, the late…
Formidable performances from singer/director Nathalie Stutzmann in Contralto
We’re used to thinking of castrati as the operatic superstars of the 18th century. Even today one can readily bring to mind the names Farinelli and Senesino from among hundreds…
Schubert’s Women: a recital of poetry and song
Schubert’s Women, a programme of lieder and poetry,was born from a serendipitous collaborative pairing during a summer lieder master-course at the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden in 2017, which brought together the…
Paisiello’s 1785 Opera about “Trofonio’s Cave” Adds Welcome and Hilarious Complications to a Libretto Previously Set by Salieri
The opera world in Mozart’s day recycled successful plots and characters much as the worlds of film and Broadway theater do today. In October 1785, in Vienna, Antonio Salieri had…
Das Rosenband: Inga Kalna presents Strauss alongside some Latvian gems
It’s probably fair to say that Latvian composers don’t feature greatly on even the most avid classical music aficionado’s radar. When I reflect, only the names of Ēriks Ešenvalds and…
I wonder as I wander: an assured debut from James Newby and Joseph Middleton
Recorded only five years since his graduation from Trinity Laban, this is an excellent debut CD from the not-yet-thirty-year-old James Newby, already with a string of prizes including the prestigious Kathleen…
Purcell Royal Odes: music for royalty superbly fashioned by The King’s Consort
Robert King has been addressing the music of Henry Purcell for over thirty years, and his ground-breaking anthology of odes and welcome songs begun in 1988 brought fresh insights to…