Category: Recordings

Why should anyone buy a German language broadcast of a delicious French opéra-comique?

John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage continues to echo with the release of concert
recordings of this historic millennial tour.

As familiar Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser is, the opera benefits from solid performances that bring together fine singing, exquisite orchestral playing, and effective staging, and the Metropolitan Opera’s 1982 production conducted by James Levine gave audiences an exemplary performance that remains a touchstone for this work.

If there ever was a moment where architecture and music became passionately tied to one another, it would be when the polychoral music of the 16^th century was tied to St. Mark’s
cathedral in Venice.

Carmen was one of Victoria de los Angeles’ favorite roles and she brought to it much that we
hear on this recording of French songs: a winsome voice without heavy vibrato, a close attention to musical detail, and an evident understanding of the French words that she conveys, if not with an impeccable accent, at least with a convincingly understandable pronunciation.

Yes, the German title must be employed for this filmed Nozze en Deutsch from 1967.

Recorded on 28 March 1970 in Rome, this recording of Parsifal makes available a live
performance conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, one of the foremost interpreters of Wagner’s works in his day.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words is well known, both as a familiar part of modern Lenten devotions and also as something of a stylistic oddity, I suspect.

From the 2005 season of the “reborn” La Fenice comes this Dynamic DVD of Wagner’s Parsifal.

In dedicating much of his creative life to the Thomaskirche, the German musician Günther
Ramin left his mark on the musical life of Leipzig, and his legacy includes a fine recording of
Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45.