Category: Recordings

Among the choral music of Anton [Antonin] Dvorak, the familiar Stabat Mater, Op. 58, is known to modern audiences through various live performances and recordings.

A nostalgic charm permeates these filmed productions from the early 1970s of Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmerman and Mozart’s Die Zauberflˆte, collaborations between the Hamburg State Opera and German TV director Joachim Hess.

The opera highlights series from Classics for Pleasure continues its recycling of the EMI catalogue with selections from two of Herbert von Karajan’s recordings.

With this recording of songs by Henry & William Lawes, musical brothers who flourished in Caroline England, countertenor Robin Blaze with lutenist Elizabeth Kenny continue their exploration of early English song for Hyperion, and the results are stunning.

The title of this recording ìJoy: the Laments of Gilles Binchoisî introduces a seeming contradiction, one that plays on a contemporaneous description of the composer as “pÈre de joyeusetË”óthe father of joyóin tension with an affinity for melancholy in his works.

Even though it is one of the important operas of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenbergís Moses und Aron is, perhaps, more esteemed than performed.

Premiered in 1926, Paul Hindemithís opera Cardillac is a three-act work based on E. T. A. Hoffmannís short story Das Fr‰ulein von Scuderi.

In the 1983 production designed, staged, and directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, this recording of Richard Wagnerís Tristan und Isolde is a solid and well-thought performance that has much to offer.

Recorded between 1938 and 1942, the excerpts from performances of Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, and Daphne at the Dresden Staatsoper are all conducted by Karl Bˆhm.

At the centenary of the birth of the conductor Herbert von Karajan various commemorations are occurring, an among them is the concise CD and DVD release by Deutsche Grammophon, with both discs bound into a booklet that includes a short prose tribute to the man illustrated with some well-chosen photographs from various parts of his career.