Category: Recordings

You will wonder what designer Rosalie could have been thinking when she put Brunnhilde in trousers twice as wide at the waist as the soprano wearing them, with a nippled plastic bustier above.

Johanna Kinkel (1810-1858) was a talented contemporary of Fanny Hensel, and other fine musicians of the first half of the nineteenth century. Her legacy includes some fine Lieder, which are collected as An Imaginary Voyage through Europe in an arrangement that represents the various themes she explored in her music.

The little heard “Adelia, o la figlia dell’arciere” (Adelia, or the Archer’s Daughter) stands between Donizetti’s Parisian successes “La fille du regiment” and “La favorite” in the prolific composer’s oeuvre.

Although few composers have been so closely associated with a single work, Johann Pachelbel, whose canon for three violins has achieved canonical ubiquity, was a prolific composer with a number of vocal works to his credit.

Released as part of Orfeoís series entitled Festspiel Dokumente, this recording makes available on CD the concert performance at the Salzburg Festival of Anton Brucknerís Seventh Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic that Hans Knappertsbusch conducted on 30 August 1949.

The first opera performance I consciously attended while being definitely hooked to the genre due to records, was Guillaume Tell more than 40 years ago.

Released in celebration of the recent Mozart year, Tutto Mozart! is a collection of nineteen arias, duets and other ensembles from the composerís operas that feature the baritone Bryn Terfel.

Founded in Oxford in the early 1990ís, the ensemble Charivari AgrÈable looks to seventeenth-century composers with Oxford connections as the basis for their recent recording, ìThe Oxford Psalms.î

Edita Gruberova’s North American fans, who can only hold onto dim hopes that someday the
European superstar will return to these shores, can always seek to sate their desire for her artistry by picking up the latest CD from Nightingale Classics.

“They are boys, and they sing, but don’t call them choirboys. ‘Libera’ prefer to be called a vocal group ó a real boy band, if you like.”