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Stravinsky in Hollywood, a film by Michael Capalbo, tells the story of an "old school" European artist knocking heads with the brash New World. The documentary uses a combination of existing archival footage (some never before seen), interviews with Stravinsky and his assistant Robert Craft, and premieres several big studio film scenes of the 40s with music Stravinsky wrote for them.

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BEST OF VERDI ARIAS

Giuseppe Verdi:
La traviata: E strano! … Ah, fors e lui … Sempre libera / De’ miei bollenti spiriti / Di Provenza il mar, il suol
Rigoletto: Questa o quella / Caro nome che il mio cor / La donna e mobile
Don Carlo: Io la vidi e al suo sorriso / O don fatale
Aida: Celeste Aida / Numi, pietà del mio soffrir!
Il trovatore: Stride la vampa! / Ah! sì, ben mio … Di quella pira I vespri siciliani: Mercé, dilette amiche
Un ballo in maschera: Ma se m’è forza perderti
La forza del destino: Pace, pace mio Dio! / O tu che in seno agli angeli
Otello: Piangea cantando nell’erma landa / Ave Maria, piena di grazia / Niun mi tema

featuring
Nino Machaidze, soprano
Daniela Dessì, soprano
Dimitra Theodossiou, soprano
Marcelo Álvarez, tenor
Francesco Meli, tenor
Leo Nucci, baritone

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English
Running time: 110 mins
No. of Discs: 1

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Rossini wrote L’equivoco stravagante (‘The Curious Misunderstanding’), his first full-length opera, when he was only 19 years old. As its title suggests, the plot of this dramma giocoso offers a panoply of absurdist stagecraft with one character being led to believe that the work’s heroine is in fact a castrato trying to avoid military service. Full of his trademark buffo humour, melodious and musically buoyant, the opera ran foul of the censors and was swiftly banned, which accounts for its rarity in performances and recordings. The new edition of the score used in this production corrects numerous previous errors.

Blu-ray pressing. Paul Anka is known as the last great crooner. On this live release, Anka promotes his successful Rock Swings project by performing many of the tracks live alongside his own classics including 'Diana', 'My Way', 'New York New York', 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' and more.

When the revered writer Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873, Verdi was unable to bring himself to attend the funeral. Instead he composed his monumental Messa da Requiem in Manzoni’s memory and conducted its first performance on the first anniversary of the writer’s death. In addition to its profound spirituality, the work also brings together all the finest qualities familiar from Verdi’s operas, qualities that include endless melodic lines and powerful musico-dramatic effects. The present performance was recorded in Los Angeles’s legendary Hollywood Bowl in August 2013 and brought together three superstars from the world of music: the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the tenor Vittorio Grigolo and the bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, all of them at the top of their form. “It was an important and exceptional evening … That experience involved a radical and wondrous rethinking of the Requiem on Dudamel‘s part.” (Los Angeles Times)

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Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 8 October 2011

Bonus:
- Verdi’s Backyard – A documentary by Sergej Grguric

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM 2.0 / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese (concert) / English, Italian (documentary)
Running time: 95 mins (concert) + 52 mins (documentary)
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 50)

From grand spectacles to poignant close-ups, experience Helgi Tomasson's bravura interpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet like you've never seen it before. With passionate choreography, spine-tingling swordsmansip, and a celebrated score by Sergei Prokofiev, San Francisco Ballet's passionate retelling of the Bard's greatest tragedy has packed houses around the world. Romeo & Juliet is one of the Company's most popular and widely toured ballets and has been seen by more than 200,000 people since it premiered in 1994. Choreographed by Helgi Tomasson, with sets and costumes by Jens-Jacob Worsaae, this visually stunning production and the brilliant dancers of San Francisco Ballet bring this powerful and touching tragedy - and Renaissance-era Verona - vivdly to life. "Tomasson lifts Shakespeare's complex and familiar language off the gilded pages and translates it into lucid classical choreography that is visceral, fresh, and ultimately sublime" (Huffington Post).

A performer of fierce integrity and dazzling communicative power, young French pianist Lucas Debargue became the most talked-about artist of the fifteenth International Tchaikovsky Competition. Placed Fourth in the final round, he was however awarded the coveted Moscow Music Critic's Prize as a player whose 'incredible gift, artistic vision, and creative freedom have impressed the critics as well as the audience.' This film offers unique insights into Debargue's life as a musician at the beginning of a remarkable career, with rehearsals and concerts from Moscow to Chicago via Weimar and Salerno, revealing talents as a composer and jazz improvisor and his first-time entry into a world of recording studios, touring and fame, in a crucial year of discoveries. TRACKS on Blu-ray - 1.���Lucas Debargue - To Music 2.���Caravan 3.���Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5 (excerpts)

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Using the new Polish National Chopin Edition, acclaimed pianist Eldar Nebolsin and Poland’s national orchestra conducted by the renowned Polish conductor Antoni Wit, here present fresh interpretations of Chopin’s great works for piano and orchestra. The Second Piano Concerto was written before the first and completed in 1830, the year in which the composer set out for Vienna and then Paris. Chopin’s Variations on Là ci darem la mano, bear witness to his admiration for Mozart, instilled by his earliest teacher, the Bohemian Wojciech ?ywny. The Grande Polonaise brillante in E flat, Op. 22, was written in Vienna, and later augmented with the introductory Andante spianato.

Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Launched by its prologue Das Rheingold (8660374-75), Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) - one of the supreme works in the history of music - continues with Die Walküre. Part II of the tetralogy centres on the young lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, whose relationship angers Ficka, goddess of marriage, and on the disobedience of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde who is sent to carry out Fricka’s wishes. Performed by an all-star international cast, the work features thrilling set-pieces such as Wotan’s Farewell and the Ride of the Valkyries.

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Celebrating his 75th birthday with a programme of Stravinsky, Hummel and Beethoven, “everything about Mariss Jansons exudes joy and sovereignty,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung. This thrilling, varied concert was recorded in January 2018, with Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra demonstrating the close relationship which has developed between them over the past 18 years. This recording also features a stellar quartet of soloists partnering with one of this fine orchestra, playing under the conductor who, even at 75, continues to inspire them to great artistic heights. Born in 1943 in the Latvian capital of Riga, Mariss Jansons grew up in the Soviet Union as the son of conductor Arvid Jansons, studying violin, viola and piano and completing his musical education in conducting with high honours at the Leningrad Conservatory. Further studies followed with Hans Swarovsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971 he won the conducting competition sponsored by the Karajan Foundation in Berlin. His work was also significantly influenced by the legendary Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, who engaged Mariss Jansons as his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1972. Over the succeeding years Mariss Jansons remained loyal to this orchestra, today renamed the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, as a regular conductor until 1999, conducting the orchestra during that period on tours throughout the world. Since 2003 Jansons has been Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

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REVIEW:

Beethoven insisted that the keynotes of his Mass were cheerfulness and gentleness, and these qualities are evident in a tenderly shaped Sanctus and Benedictus.

– Gramophone

“Occurrence is the third, and at least for now the last, in a hugely illuminating series devoted to works by contemporary Icelandic composers, as performed by Iceland’s 70-year-old national orchestra. Speaking for myself – and surely for many others, as well – the series has been a milestone project, one that any conscientious collector of symphonic music simply must have on the shelf. Across three albums now, Sono Luminus has capitalized shrewdly on swelling global interest in the music of Daniel Bjarnason and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, using their works as a means by which to introduce seven more composers with original, substantial voices. Three of the composers represented on Occurrence return from previous installments in the series. In addition to Bjarnson – who also has served as an insightful, sympathetic conductor throughout – we hear new works from Þuri´ður Jonsdottir, whose Flow and Fusion opened the initial disc, Recurrence, and from Haukur Tomasson, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was a highlight of the second release in the series, Concurrence. These repeat engagements prove serendipitous, showing off fresh facets of these newly familiar creators. One, Bjarnason’s own Violin Concerto, scarcely requires introduction, having proved its merits and attractions already on concert platforms around the globe since its 2017 world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. Pekka Kuusisto, the violinist for whom the piece was written, demonstrates his consummate skill as a technician, a melodist, a collaborator and – not least – a whistler, and the orchestral accompaniment, no surprise, is vivid and alert.

REVIEW:

‘Recurrence’, ‘Concurrence’, and now ‘Occurrence’. The Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s three-disc survey of new orchestral music from its homeland has reached its end point and it’s easy to conclude that no country on earth has reinvented the language of the symphony orchestra on such distinctive and locally relevant terms as this one. So much so that a Canadian such as Veronique Vaka can fall for Iceland and cook up a piece like Lendh, an extraordinary canvas with an umbilical connection to the landscape of the place. Lendh is a marvel.

Haukur Tómasson’s In Seventh Heaven is full of ear-catching orchestration, as raw and unconventional as Jón Leifs’s, ulterior harmonies tugging while colours shift as rapidly as the Icelandic weather above. The orchestra’s handling of the exposed passages for high strings and characterised woodwind-writing demonstrate technically how far it has come in the past decade alone.

Þuríður Jónsdóttir's Flute Concerto, "Flutter", features sampled insect noises and other electronics, including a promotion of the ubiquitous Nordic pedal note to a general hum. Structurally it feels like a road movie – a journey through textural landscapes more than anything developmental.

Conductor Daníel Bjarnason own Violin Concerto has dedicatee Pekka Kuusisto’s puckish spirit all over it, from the infectious soloist whistling (used to moving effect when it returns late on as the violin’s sole accompanist) to the grunge-improvisatory elements and clear-cut, eyemoistening tune.

As an appendix we hear from a dead composer, Iceland’s great 12-tone pioneer Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson (1938-2005). His Adagio for strings and percussion of 1980 marked a shift in style following the death of his wife and a battle with the bottle. This is a bleak, translucent elegy that places unison sheets of wannabe-lyrical string melody over held pedal notes and drones, ending with a sudden rush of air as the last pedal falls away. A quizzical gesture to wrap up an outstanding and historic series, one that affects the mind as much as the ears. 

– Gramophone

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Rameau’s first opera Hippolyte et Aricie delivered a lyrical tragedy of such extraordinary intensity it changed the course of French music, stunning and overwhelming its audiences. This breathtaking spectacle involves prince Hippolyte, who asks his mother-in-law Queen Phédre for help in wooing the beautiful Aricie, little knowing that Phèdre secretly wants Hippolyte for herself. In a single work Rameau re-invented tragédie en musique with dramatic expressiveness and shocking harmonic innovations. It is seen here in an acclaimed Opéra Comique production that personifies Rameau’s assertion that ‘music must speak to the soul, its true aim must be to express thoughts, feelings, and passions’.

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The award-winning Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has become one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras on period instruments. These concerts reveal some of the foundations of Beethoven’s genius, and capture vital performances from the 2020 SWR Schwetzingen Festival, the biggest radio festival for classical music in the world. Robert Schumann pointed out similarities between Méhul’s First Symphony and Beethoven’s Fifth, and these third and fourth concerts in the cycle also include a tempest by Holzbauer that precedes Beethoven’s by half a century, plus the little-known Le portrait musical de la nature by Justin Heinrich Knecht, a work that also anticipates Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. The first and second concerts are also available on Naxos.

Also available in DVD!

The award-winning Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has become one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras on period instruments. These concerts reveal some of the foundations of Beethoven’s genius, and capture vital performances from the 2020 SWR Schwetzingen Festival, the biggest radio festival for classical music in the world. These first two concerts of four see Beethoven’s revolutionary development through his first three symphonies set against C.P.E. Bach’s novel orchestration, Mozart’s pre-echo of a theme from the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, and Paul Wranitzky’s richly narrative Grande Sinfonie caractéristique, a work banned by the Viennese authorities of the day. The third and fourth concerts are also available on Naxos.

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Also available on standard CD

George Gershwin’s Concerto in F was a response to demands for a ‘proper concerto’ after the success of Rhapsody in Blue, avoiding programmatic content while providing a feast of tunes both uplifting and nostalgic. Originally intended as music for a film, his up-beat Rhapsody No 2 describes the bustling Manhattan cityscape while under construction. Sourced from his hit musical Girl Crazy, I Got Rhythm Variations was Gershwin’s last full score. Pianist Orion Weiss is one of the most sought-after soloists and collaborators of his generation of young American musicians.

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What a pompous and exquisite gala to celebrate opera legend Plácido Domingo in the breathtaking Arena di Verona! 50 years ago the young Madrilenian singer Plácido Domingo gave his debut at the ancient open-air theatre: the beginning of a lasting and exceptional relationship. To mark the anniversary, Domingo presents a programme entirely dedicated to Verdi, performing three of his most complex and majestic baritone roles. No effort was spared to create an unforgettable evening in a unique atmosphere in the completely sold-out amphitheatre, which has been at the heart of Italian entertainment for almost 2,000 years. Whether as Babylonian king Nabucco, Scottish general Macbeth or as Doge Simon Boccanegra: Domingo’s versatility and aura is more than impressive, with “top phrasing and articulation, his baritone with full and sonorous intonation and a unique timbre – all this substantiates his exceptional position” (Das Opernglas). At the side of Domingo shines an excellent cast including Anna Pirozzi and Arturo Chacón-Cruz, supported by a perfectly rehearsed ballet under the baton of conductor Jordi Bernàcer who sovereignly leads the Orchestra of the Arena di Verona from scene to scene. A triumphal, almost historic moment for Domingo and the Arena di Verona!

Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of Gotterdammerung revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, Gotterdammerung’s profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.

With Ruggero Leoncavallo’s rarity Zazá, the Theater an der Wien scored a coup with the grandiose house debutante Svetlana Aksenova in the title role. Christof Loy delivers a striking staging of the Verismo drama and conductor Stefan Soltez spiritedly leads the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien through the highly acclaimed evening. “It would take a whole newspaper page to praise all the performers appropriately”, praises Der Standard. Of particular note is Svetlana Aksenova as Zazá who “suffers the whole spectrum from intimate affection to raging jealousy and mute despair”, Nikolai Schukoff (Milio) “shows himself as a daredevil and a depressed mourner”, Christopher Maltman as Cascart “leads energetically and touchingly his already lost fight for his beloved.” An evening worth seeing and hearing!

In the garden of a Baroque villa, a chamber orchestra is playing Mozart’s wonderful quartets and quintets, and everywhere is pervaded with echoes and references to the composer’s world. As if by magic or conjured by the imagination, figures emerge from the shadows of the labyrinthine garden: they are Mozart’s characters, and they play with – or perhaps make fun of – the guests at the party, embroiling them in their well-known amorous dalliances. With lightness and irony, this journey into the universe of Mozart tips its hat to the 1700s also with the scenery and costumes, and fills the garden with fun and passionate virtuoso dances, which follow each other dynamically and quickly with constant changes in the mood. Like in a dream where everything is jumbled together, where reality and illusion merge.