The loss of one sense, it is said, makes the other keener. What the concert pianist, organist, and composer Josef Labor lost in eyesight when smallpox left him blind at age three, must have been added to his ears. Although roughly a Brahmsian (and a friend of the composer), Labor wrote in an original style, informed by his knowledge of and love for early music. As a piano teacher, he taught Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Schindler, and Paul Wittgenstein. The connection to the Wittgenstein family explains his many works for piano left hand, including the two Clarinet Trios on this set (the clarinet was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s instrument) which are coupled with his Clarinet- and his Wind Quintets.

REVIEW:

From the evidence here, there is no question that Labor had studied Brahms well and produced startlingly effective facsimiles. Sample the finale of the Trio in G minor for clarinet, viola, and piano left hand; it could easily be taken for a forgotten Brahms work. Labor did not manage Brahms' exquisite combination of limpid tunes with dizzying structural complexity, but at times, he came very close. All but one of the pieces here receive their world premieres. A few other pieces by Labor have surfaced, but these are fortunate to receive the fluent performances with which they're favored here. This release is certainly of interest to lovers of pre-WWI Vienna and those interested in the Wittgenstein family, but also to those beyond.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Martinů is a musical chameleon. On the one hand, there’s an unmistakable from to his output, on the other hand, he would adopt and adapt just about any style that happened to be en vogue or to his liking. These two one-act operas, presented on record for the first time in their respective versions, are a case in point. There’s that cracking little shocker that is Knife Tears (in its original French version), in which Martinů set an absurdist libretto to the sounds of Le Jazz Hot, Stravinsky, and anything in between. This is juxtaposed with the English version of his Comedy on the Bridge (the one that helped this work to brief fame), which is wildly different (if anything more in the style of Hanns Eisler), despite being separated by a mere seven years.

REVIEW:

Martinů’s short one-act operas make for a bright and entertaining double bill, and they receive bright and entertaining performances on this new recording from the Staatsoper Stuttgart under its music director Cornelius Meister. First up is Les larmes du couteau, a surreal farce from 1928 and the height of Martinů’s Paris period...A banjo strums drolly through the chamber-size score; there are the usual foxtrots and at one point the heroine Eléonore slides into a sultry and distinctly Weill-ish song to the moon. This is the first time, apparently, that the opera has been recorded with the original French text and Elena Tsallagova, as Eléonore, makes it sound effortless.

The Comedy on the Bridge is a more substantial proposition, composed as a Czech radio opera in 1935 but revised and staged in the USA in 1951 in the English version that is recorded here. Václav Klicpera’s plot – four characters, in wartime, are given permission to step on to a bridge but are forbidden from leaving it – must have had a personal resonance for the much-exiled Martinů. And yet the musical-dramatic world that he creates is recognisably kin to Smetana and Janáček: the bickering sweethearts, the querulous schoolmaster and the lyrical, dancing warmth that offsets what might otherwise have been a very black comedy indeed. The ensemble cast here sounds fresh and committed, enunciating clearly while Meister finds both the bite and the tenderness in Martinů’s lilting melodies and toytown march tunes. A little gem.

-- Gramophone

In 1908, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote his play The Blue Bird (L’Oiseau bleu). Having proved a good source of operatic subjects before (Pelléas et Mélisande, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue), it is no surprise that composers jumped at the opportunity to write music to this latest. The French composer Albert Wolff made an opera of it that, though premiered at the MET, has since been forgotten. But even before that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt put it on as an adapted Christmas play in Berlin and he had none less than Engelbert Humperdinck write the incidental music to it. The music was never published until Steffen Tast found the score and salvaged it for us to hear. A sweet story and sweeter still music by Humperdinck newly discovered? Why, that’s in and of itself as though it was Christmas!

REVIEW:

Steffen Tast really deserves credit for restoring this work to the repertoire and for giving such a fine and dedicated traversal of the music. One only has to listen to the stately but regretful theme as the children take leave of their grandparents in the land of memories to get a sense of Mr Tast’s rapport with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. This music bears a strong resemblance to Mahler, but just until the solo violin takes over with a sentimental theme that is lusciously played by the un-named concertmaster. Tast elegantly shapes the beautifully sketched musical themes for Bread, Fire, Water, and Milk, who all become characters in the play. The Rundfunkchor Berlin gets to briefly display their talents in a Christmas carol arranged in two parts, and then later in a wordless chorus for the expectant mothers welcoming their unborn children. Overall Tast skillfully reveals the richness of Humperdinck’s orchestration in an carefully judged reading of this important score.

-- MusicWeb International

The closest Leo Blech (1880–1959) gets to fame these days is being mistaken for Ernest Bloch. Actually, some might still remember his seminal work as an opera conductor in Berlin, where he worked for almost half a century (except for the Nazi years, when he lived in exile, avoiding a far worse fate). But his compositions – either operas or involving the voice in some other way – have disappeared from the repertoire. What a shame, because his music is, while less probing than that of his contemporary Bloch’s, very much charming in the style of, say, Humperdinck or Rheinberger. This release constitutes the first part of an upcoming celebration of Blech by Capriccio, which will later release a 2-CD recording of his opera The Alpine King and the Misanthrope.

REVIEW:

In the times we are living through, the music of Leo Blech recorded for this CD could be characterized as eco-music. The majority of the works describe nature in an idyllic, idealized state, as we wish it back only too gladly.

Now Leo Blech had to contend with quite different problems during his lifetime. As a celebrated conductor with Jewish roots, he was ostracized by the Nazis in the mid-1930s, was forced into retirement and went into exile.

For Leo Blech, music and nature were undoubtedly a refuge to a peaceful world. This is reflected in his compositions, beginning on this recording with Waldwanderung, an atmospheric contemplation of nature interpreted by the Aachen Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Ward with fine texture, lyrical wind choir and delicate string sounds.

Overall, we are dealing with extremely sensitive interpretations. Especially in the works with vocal instrumentation, Christopher Ward lets the orchestra sing and the great potential of the wonderful melodies come to full fruition.

The symphonic poem Die Nonne, on the other hand, is gripping and highly dramatic. The historical and emotional connection with Leo Blech, who was born in Aachen, repeatedly drives the entire ensemble to committed interpretations. In the end, the result is a coherent and noble homage to the composer Leo Blech

-- Pizzicato

Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalog. The keyboard mavens: Ton Koopman in Bach-Senior, the great Christine Schornsheim in Bach-Sons Concertos, and Tzimon Barto, the muscular master of the soft touch, in Brahms. Wind-aces Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute), and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) playing baroque and classical period masters. The trusty Petersen Quartet and the inquisitive Linos Ensemble, who have always been an essential element of the repertoire exploration that soon became Capriccio’s hallmark, and the arch-musician Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov representing true highlights among the high strings. A generous and tasty synopsis of what this plucky label is about!

After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi was an exceptional, extraordinary talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor, or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was politically as well as artistically particularly tricky, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and own distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional technique to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance, and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

REVIEW:

Radu Paladi (1927-2013) was an important musical personality in Romania—as a composer, conductor, interpreter, and pedagogue.

We are dealing here with very expressive music that focuses on emotion.

The piano concerto, with Oliver Triendl as soloist, starts like a whirlwind, and all the musicians put their full energy into this at times ecstatic bundle of music. A wonderful contrast is provided by the second movement, a lament in which soloist and orchestra listen very delicately into the silence. Eugene Tzigane stretches the tension to bursting point and shapes the climax of the movement passionately and stirringly. The finale, in turn, is a single bubbling fountain of virtuosity and tonal brilliance.

No less expressive is the Violin Concerto from 2002, which begins with a moving elegy that suddenly leads into an orchestral outcry. Here, too, the performers live the music with every fiber of their souls, especially again in the slow middle movement. There is a little wink in the finale with the surprising reminiscence of Vivaldi’s Seasons as well as lively folk dances, brilliantly played by Nina Karmon.

The two concerti are accompanied by Eugene Tzigane’s colorful and rousing interpretation of the symphonic suite ‘Das Zauberflötchen’.

-- Fanfare

Music by the marvelous, criminally underrated composer and “Aural Alchemist” Charles Koechlin is always a discovery and invariably. “Koechlin can daub with notes as Seurat daubed with bright pigments on canvas [he] could, whenever he wished, bathe his music in the impressionist glories of Debussy and Ravel or give it the delicacy of Fauré and then toughen it up with some Roussel-like grinding rhythms.” (Robert Reilly)

Koechlin is an impressionist dreamboat. With a title like The Seven Stars Symphony (the seven are Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin) and following so closely on the heels of the equally enchanting Vers la voûte étoilée (Toward the Vault of the Stars), you’d think the work was some spectacular colorist bonanza of celestial ambitions. Actually, it’s Koechlin’s ode to his favorite film characters as portrayed by these actors – but no less bewitching for it.

REVIEW:

The Basel Symphony Orchestra’s performance under Ariane Matiakh has a wonderful lithe elegance, which matches the beauty and refinement of Koechlin’s writing in every respect.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Charles Koechlin was a prolific composer with a list of works encompassing more than 200 opus numbers. His interest in film stars resulted in several compositions, the most spectacular being The Seven Stars’ Symphony written in 1933. He was a skilled orchestrator as evidenced in this work. He employs a gigantic orchestra, comprising substantially expanded woodwind and brass sections, including an alto saxophone, a large assortment of percussion, and in the third movement, an Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, invented just a few years before the work was written. Stylistically there are influences from most French composers, from Berlioz and Fauré (who was his teacher) to a modernist like Messiaen. Formally it isn’t a symphony, rather an orchestral suite in seven movements, each movement a portrait of a famous actor in Hollywood at the time the suite was composed, but all of them are still well-known today. His interest in movies emanated from the then quite recent arrival of the sound film, when he saw The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings.

That [Lilian Harvey] was the ageing composer’s dream-girl, is clear from the second movement of the symphony: jolly and charming, light-toned music with glittering flutes creating an aura around her. It is the shortest movement, lasting just over two minutes. The contrast between Harvey and the cool and mysterious Greta Garbo is striking. This is slow, almost melancholy music, and the use of the Ondes Martenot with its eerie glissandi paints a picture of an icy Nordic princess...Clara Bow['s] movement is racy and full of life – the scherzo of the symphony, and the finale is rather boisterous, presumably illustrating the hectic stream of fan letters – in January 1929 she received 45,000 letters!

...Marlene Dietrich is still well-remembered...Her movement is slow and beautiful with a deep clarinet solo featured. It is a set of variations on a theme that is built on the letters of her name. [Emil] Jannings’ movement is dramatic and dark, and the end is gloomy. The final movement is devoted to Charlie Chaplin, and it is by far the longest, occupying more than one third of the total playing time of over forty-three minutes. Though it refers to some of his merry pranks in silent movies like Gold Fever and Circus, a surprisingly large part of the movement is contemplative and chamber-music like, transparently orchestrated.

This effort by Sinfonieorchester Basel under Ariane Matiakh fills the need [for new recordings] admirably. The playing is excellent and the recording very good. Whether the work is the masterpiece some pundits maintain is another question. Koechlin’s masterly orchestration cannot be called in question, and that is reason enough to wallow in the music...This issue is well worth getting to know.

--MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He is one of the few Jewish composers who survived the terror of World War II. His tale of survival is complicated and involved him, as a Czech Jew, having to seek refuge in post-war Germany, whereas contemporaries and colleagues like Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, and Hans Krása died in the concentration camps. He saw his music as “a bridge” between the Slavic East and the West and admitted at one point that his musical starting point was Schoenberg. Audibly more present than Schoenberg, however, is a central European Impressionism, synthesized with complex rhythms.

REVIEWS:

Of these three works, the concerto is the most engaging. With the other two, you can respect the composer’s integrity and firmness in not compromising his vision. That said, they’re best appreciated by dedicated fans of 20th Century modernism as their dense, fragmented, dissonant textures aren’t easy to take straight. The performances sound accomplished. Pianist Jonathan Powell contributes not only a strong reading of a difficult work, but also enlightening program notes on the work itself.

-- American Record Guide

Of its time: the three works here date from 1936 (the First Symphony), 1948 (the first of three piano concertos) and 1966 (Rhythmophonie, a very up-to-the-mark title). Always tonally based at root, the works reflected Winterberg’s stylistic preoccupations and enthusiasms, whether Schoenbergian expressionism in the rather fine symphony, a beguiling mix of neoclassicism and romanticism in the concerto – which deserves to be a hit in this marvelous account by Jonathan Powell – or the slightly self-conscious modernism of Rhythmophonie. The last-named is longer than the symphony and concerto combined, a tour de force, rather choreographic in effect. Its slightly abrupt conclusion is typical of the composer.

-- Gramophone

When Capriccio started out in 1982, still producing LPs and tapes, it was the first digital Beethoven Symphony cycle with the Dresden Philharmonic and Herbert Kegel that first turned heads. Several other key projects were pivotal to the label quickly establishing a reputation as a source of quality music and performances. Foremost among them, never out of the catalogue and still loved today, are the recordings with Sandor Végh. Then, in the mid-nineties those of Sir Neville Marriner’s, who, after long being synonymous with the Philips label, recorded widely for Capriccio, both with his Academy Of St Martin in the Fields and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Contemporaries of Mozart’s that have emerged on Capriccio include Joseph Martin Kraus, François-Joseph Gossec, and Jan Ladislav Dussek. They are performed by early music and classical period Capriccio-favorites such as Concerto Köln or the CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra. This box set features the label’s most important ensembles, orchestras, and conductors, from the classical period to the 20th century, when, in 2005, Capriccio released the first complete Shostakovich Cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra and Dmitrji Kitajenko.

You might consider him one of the many Missing Links between Frédéric Chopin and Karol Szymanowski, who shaped Polish music between the second half of the 19th century and the dawn of modernism… but somehow never entered the repertoire. We are dealing with a composer of the high, late-romantic tradition – a style that Stojowski never found any reason to reject and with a strong gift for melody. His work proves the composer’s deft hand at colorful instrumentation, which suggests Russian and French influences. Entering the U.S. in 1905, he enjoyed a fine reputation as a composer, pianist, and increasingly pedagogue but his lack of presence on the continent meant that Stojowski faded into obscurity.

REVIEW:

There is so much music of genuine interest and reward in both works that their relative neglect is a surprise. Hopefully the excellence of this disc will encourage listeners and performers to seek out this music. Another disc of real interest and value from the ever-impressive Capriccio catalogue.

-- MusicWeb International

His works have accompanied generations of beginner instrumental students on their first foray into contemporary music. But with works like his Concerto for Piano, Strings, and Percussion Jenö Takács clearly placed himself in a line with the great paragons Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Early he started out with the impressionist coloring and the influences of Hungarian folk music. Studying with Joseph Marx added a strict contrapuntal note to it. Getting to know Bártok further increased the Hungarian element (topicality, rhythm, bitonality). Jenö Takács was a humanist, a ‘musical cosmopolitan’, an eyewitness of almost the entire 20th century.

REVIEW:

The Serenade after Ancient Contradances from Graz consists of six cheerful movements for string orchestra, similar in style to Grieg’s Holberg Suite. It is relatively brief (7 minutes), and the tossed-off ending leaves me wanting more of its enjoyable swagger.

Takacs wrote the Concerto for piano, strings, and percussion in 1947 and revised it a few times. The piano part is steely as in Bartok’s concertos, but simpler textures and relatively more conventional harmonies make Takacs more approachable. Although there are many scintillating passages, a lot of the material seems to be waiting for another theme to take the lead—except it never does. The sections never quite build into something sweeping and fulfilling.

The Passacaglia is one of his most serious pieces, though it is not forbidding, even when it pushes up against the boundaries of tonality. The dramatic arc is quite satisfying.

The Three Pieces for string orchestra are cleverly thought-out and should be better known.

The playing in everything is wonderful; Karmon has a lush tone, and Triendl’s piano is fire and steel. The sonics are reverberant, and the string orchestra glows.

-- American Record Guide (Stephen Estep)

It took Frank Martin a long time to heed his deep-seated inner calling to write a Requiem: 'What I have tried to express here is the clear will to accept death; to make peace with it.' The Requiem was composed in 1971/72, Martin utilizes the whole bandwidth of orchestral sound and explores all opportunities for interplay among the vocalists, as well. Leoš Janácek’s setting of the Otcenáš, the Lord’s Prayer, is not a conventionally religious work. The Czech composer was more interested in its social aspects than any theological musings. Conductor Leif Segerstam, Chief conductor of ORF Vienna radio Symphony Orchestra from 1975-1983 loved to surprise his public with non-mainstream repertoire. Two of these live recordings are now restored, re-mastered and first time published for the future.

REVIEW:

Frank Martin’s operatic background is to the fore in his setting of the Requiem. Written towards the very end of his life he had apparently delayed setting the text and once completed declared that his work was now done. Some decidedly 20th Century techniques, such as semi-spoken passages, can be heard in this music which is full of drama and displays a real affinity with the text. Janacek’s settting of the Lord’s Prayer is apparently written from a more detached view, with the composer apparently less committed to the meaning of the text in itself. However, this is still moving music, making for a fine pairing of lesser known liturgically inspired 20th Century (the Janacek only just!) works.

-- Lark Reviews

A superbly performed selection of Dohnányi works from players entirely immersed in his musical voice, led by a conductor who inspires them all the way.

Of the works Ernst von Dohnányi wrote for the stage, only his ballet pantomime The Veil of Pierrette received any particular acclaim. His concert music, meanwhile, was much more warmly received. With this already sixth recording of his late romantical, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition, Capriccio presents three of his concerts. Apart from two piano concertos and two violin concertos, Ernst von Dohnányi wrote three more, which are concertos in all but name Variations (for piano and orchestra), Concertino (for harp and chamber orchestra), and Konzertstück (for cello and orchestra); the names subtly hinting at their specific character.

REVIEW:

Variations on a Nursery Theme, an unjustly neglected and once-popular work, receives a truly superb performance. Similar delights abound in the rarely heard Concertino for harp. A superbly performed selection of Dohnányi works from players entirely immersed in his musical voice, led by a conductor who inspires them all the way.

-- Gramophone

Since the beginning of Capriccio's catalog, the sacred repertoire has held a very special place among the label's recordings. Started with the most famous boys' choirs in the former German Democratic Republic (such as the Dresden Boys' Choir and Thomanerchor Leipzig), continued with boys' choirs in the West (including the Vienna Boys' Choir, Tölz Boys' Choir, and Regensburger Domspatzen), and up to artists like the Rheinische Kantorei with Hermann Max, top-tier ensembles have filled the gaps in recording history. Here, long-silent cantatas and oratorios by Zelenka, Hasse, Telemann, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach appear having been revived by Capriccio. This 40th Anniversary Box includes several remastered versions of long-out of print records, as well as a representative selection of niche- and standard repertoire productions.

REVIEW:

It must not have been easy to select which music to include in this commemorative package for the 40th anniversary of the Capriccio label, but the truth is that the more than 10 hours of music that they offer us is exquisite and an excellent example of the trajectory of this record label...which has always opted for the opening of new territories.

Let's highlight the obvious: the ten albums are dedicated to religious music mostly performed by groups of German origin, such as Das Kleine Konzert and La Stagione. They offer works by authors who are consecrated today, but were not always so much when Capriccio bet on them, as in the cases of C.P.E. Bach and Telemann.

The care of the sound recording (from the first minute of the beautiful first disc with Monteverdi's Vespers) makes it possible to distinguish all the flourishes of this music, either with its melodic ornaments, or with its intricate contrapuntal textures, such as in Bach's Motets, given by a boys' choir, the Rostocker Motettenchor. And it also has a section dedicated to 19th century music, with Schubert's Hymns, Brahms's German Requiem, and music by Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn. All recorded between 1983 and 2002, this music is a living testimony of the good work of this still-active label. Long live Capriccio!

-- Ritmo

Kapustin uses jazz as his musical language and then composes quasi-improvisations that sound as though they flowed right from Oscar Peterson’s or Erroll Garner’s fingers. He is one of the few who were able to have the structures of composition and liberty of improvisation come together to such an organic whole. After his first successful release with the piano- and double concerto of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, Frank Dupree presents the original jazzy solo piano pieces of the still mostly unknown master, enlarged with bass and drums. The genres of jazz and classical music melt together into a fascinating new formation.

REVIEW:

Nikolai Kapustin has been described as ‘A Russian in Gershwin’s clothing’ and on listening to this disc it is immediately understandable as to why. Like Gershwin Kapustin was classically trained (by Alexander Goldenweiser among others) and never considered himself a jazz pianist though as he explained he had to become one to create and play his compositions.

All the selected pieces that German pianist Frank Dupree has put together for this disc were originally written for piano solo. Frank has cleverly used the piano’s left hand plus harmonic structure to form the double bass part while drummer ‘Obi’ Jenne does improvise upon the other two musicians’ product. All three musicians are at the top of their game here and make the most powerful case for the chosen material. The result is a hugely enjoyable disc of brilliantly scintillating jazz that has a smile on its face from beginning to end. I had come across the composer last year and enjoyed what I heard but can honestly say that the addition of bass and drums has lifted the compositions to a new level and made them more enjoyable and I believe will attract a wider audience. This can only do the reputation of Nikolai Kapustin a great deal of good and open up his other compositions to greater public interest.

21 of the 23 tracks on the disc are original compositions by Kapustin while the closing pair are his tribute to Ary Barosso’s Aquarela do Brasil and Kenny Dorham’s Blue Bossa. This is a delightful disc that will surprise and thrill every jazz piano fan who might not have thought a product of Soviet times could compose such life-affirming jazz.

--MusicWeb International (Steve Arloff)

The present release is the most comprehensive Bruckner Symphonies cycle, including all 19 available versions. Anton Bruckner burst out of the confines of the cathedral using that most secular of musical forms, the symphony. The creator of some of the 19th century’s greatest orchestral music, Bruckner cut a singular figure among his contemporaries. This new complete Bruckner Symphonies edition from Capriccio reassesses these enduringly enigmatic and complex works. Presented by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and featuring all 19 available versions, the cycle is scheduled for completion in 2024, Bruckner’s 200th birthday. The second release, of Symphony No. 8 (1890 version) is performed by Bruckner Orchestra Linz conducted by Markus Poschner.

‘I find myself increasingly occupied with matters of the human soul, its sublimation and spiritual abyss. Certainly my opera The Ocean Betrayed betrays this preoccupation. This music has been to Hades and back, with Monteverdi and myself.’ Hans-Werner Henze. Henze originated this storyline by following his fascination that he had of the work of the enfant terrible of post-war Japanese literature, Yukio Mishima (1925 - 1970), whose novel “Gogo no Eiko” forms the basis of the opera. This novel, like almost all of the author's creations, sketches a suffocating scenario of hopelessness in which the struggle for normality is doomed to failure. Henzes free-tonal score ties in with musically-dramatic principles of composition following the tradition of Richard Strauss. In symphonic interludes, the luxurious orchestra gives the eponymous hero a voice: the angry “betrayed sea.”

REVIEW:

Despite his stylistic adventurousness and position as a political outsider, Henze was the last composer in the German operatic tradition (think of it as Late, Late German Romanticism), and his score beautifully exploits the lush forces of the Vienna Philharmonic. Since, as he noted, “Mishima’s novel is teeming with references to all things French”, he adopts a French musical style, mixed with Japanese elements of rhythm and exotic percussion. The vocal lines are compelling, and conductor Simone Young reveals both the work’s dense beauty and the sustained, gut-wrenching brutality of the final scenes.

Josh Lovell’s sweetly smooth lyric tenor establishes a chilling contrast between Noboru’s youth and his malevolent nature and explains Ryuji’s easy affinity with the boy. Erik Van Heyningen’s powerful bass voice is a bit mature for the gang leader (“Number One”), but Henze’s writing demands it, and his vocal authority reflects his power over the others. Vera-Lotte Boecker is a magnificent singing actress; her lean and supple sound is perfect for the sensuous Fusako, and she glides effortlessly through the coloratura of the 13th scene, as Fusako imagines a happy future for the newly formed family. Bo Skovhus shouts a bit on fortes, but his singing in the gentler sections is appropriately ingratiating.

-- American Record Guide

Following the success of 100 Christmas Classics (Capriccio C7331) comes Christmas Meditation, featuring 100 choral and vocal works from across the centuries. The set encompasses sacred Renaissance treasures including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, Handel’s Baroque masterpiece Messiah (‘He shall feed his flock’) and classic Christmas carols such as It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Richard Storrs Willis and Franz Xaver Gruber’s Stille Nacht (‘Silent Night’). Featuring some of the most renowned choral institutions, Christmas Meditation offers listeners a classical Christmas to remember.

REVIEWS:

A rather sumptuous collection of seasonal choral works, instrumental pieces and carols. --BBC Music Magazine

After the success of the 5 CD box “100 Christmas classics” (Capriccio C7331), the new 5 CD box “Christmas Meditation” contains 100 choral and instrumental works from past centuries. It contains works from 43(!) composers, including excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bach/Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Baroque masterpiece Messiah, and traditional and classical carols such as "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by American composer Richard Storrs Willis, and Franz Xaver Gruber's "Silent Night”. With some of the most renowned choirs, “Christmas Meditation” offers you an unforgettable Christmas.

In addition to world-famous Christmas music, in this box you will also discover previously unknown but no less beautiful work by Bruch, Rheinberger, Carl Neuner, Wagenseil, Robert Fuchs, Johann Philipp Reichert or Johann von Herbeck. Cannot be missed!

--Stretto