Coupling the 1899 Verklärte Nacht with the 1946 String Trio – a late 12-note work – raises the possibility of special pleading: buy the disc for Schoenberg’s reassuringly familiar Romantic composition, and you might be converted to the more difficult one too. As a marketing strategy, that seems reasonable; both performances here could persuade a variety of listeners. You’d expect a big-gestured, strongly characterised reading with Walter Trampler and Yo-Yo Ma augmenting the Juilliard Quartet in Verklärte Nacht; and though these players sometimes take a larger-than-life approach to the score’s dynamic markings, the results never struck me as inappropriate. This 1991 performance is real chamber music; if the case notes hadn’t revealed that Trampler and Ma play second viola and second cello respectively, I wouldn’t have been sure who were the guests. Like many leading string players, at least one musician adds some irritating breathing noises to the quite close-miked recording. The 1985 recording of the trio benefits from the continuing vitality and real musicality, as well as experience, of three of the Juilliard Quartet’s members. There is much to enjoy as well as simply admire here.

-- Keith Potter, BBC Music Magazine

This is an especially significant release in Sony's distinguished “Masterworks Heritage“ series, returning the Symphonies 97 and 99 (recorded in 1957) to the catalog and comprising the first stereo release of each. Sonically this transfer offers radical improvement over the old Epic LP of four decades ago. The early stereo image, if not particularly directional, provides greater spread than did the monaural engineering of the Epic disc and, of greater importance, tames the occasionally painful shrillness of that earlier edition. Moreover, this 99 is Szell's only recording of the work and is thus an essential component of his discography. It and 97 receive fleet, tautly controlled readings stamped by textural clarity featuring well-defined winds and brass and benefiting from Szell's sensitivity to motivic structure. I had always thought this 97 to be more intense than the conductor's stereo remake (currently available on a bargain Sony CD), but comparison reveals that this is mainly an illusion created by the dryness of the Epic version, recorded in a Severance Hall lacking the shell that was later added to enhance resonance and was in place when the remake was produced.

The reading of 98 (recorded in 1969) has been on CD for some time and should be more familiar. It is generally stylish, but a bit too bland and comfortable, lacking the flair and animation of the magnificent Toscanini and Colin Davis versions. In the main, however, this is a welcome reissue. Exposition repeats are observed in the first movements of 98 and 99, but not in the finale of the former or in the initial movement of 97.

-- Mortimer H. Frank, FANFARE

Night of the Four Moons [is] a typical example of [Crumb's] richly allusive style from that time, with references to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony clothing settings of poems by Lorca... it's wonderful to hear again the late Jan DeGaetani's performance of Night of the Four Moons; nobody has sung Crumb's music of that period with more intensity or understanding than she did.

-- Andrew Clements, The Guardian [6/19/2008]
reviewing Night of the Four Moons, previously reissued as part of Bridge 9253


I love Miller's performance of these crazy piano works. He is extremely animated and theatrical amidst the formidable obstacle course that the performer faces in this work. He is called to strum the strings inside the piano, scream, whoop and holler, preparing the strings, etc. In the 4th cut on side 1, the performer is instructed: "serene, desireless, like a Nirvana-trance!" O.K. Miller makes it work. it's really fantastic. I have become quite attached to these performances to the exclusion of all others.

-- WFMU
reviewing Makrokosmos Vol 2 on LP

This is also available in a Deluxe CD & DVD Set.

Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project has been on a mission to promote innovation and cross-cultural understanding through the arts for the last 15 years. The newest chapter comes with the Sony Masterworks release of the new album A Playlist Without Borders.

The vision of Yo-Yo Ma's limitless collective, the Silk Road Ensemble, is as timely as ever: to connect the world's neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences. From flashy surf guitar sounds to ninth century Chinese poetry, from modular playlists to Egyptian rhythms, the Silk Road Ensemble mixes the modern and the traditional, breaking boundaries of ethnicity and era. A Playlist Without Borders demonstrates once again that there are no barriers for those approaching music with an open mind.

Over 500 of Schubert’s songs, recorded between 1966 and 1972 by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore, are reissued here on CD. It is a well-packaged, value-for-money set (the three volumes are also available individually), with each volume in a sturdy box and the individual CDs in slip-covers, to minimise bulk. There are no details of contents on these plain, numbered slip-covers but the booklets are well laid out with translations of all the songs. An alphabetical listing of this massive collection would have been very useful. Vol. 1 begins with some of the earliest songs and has over 100 settings from Schubert’s most prolific year, 1815. Fischer-Dieskau’s technical mastery of effortless long phrases and his expressive delivery of dynamic details ensure that many of the most basic strophic songs yield delightful moments. ‘Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren’ is taken at pitch in A flat, which lies quite high for Fischer-Dieskau; some other songs are transposed, but never more than a third. Just when one feels nearly overwhelmed by the rather morbid Matthisson and Mayrhofer settings, along come some gems like Schlegel’s ‘Der Schmetterling’ or Hölty’s ‘Seligkeit’ – ‘Bliss’ in translation and in execution. Although the order of the songs in Vol. 2 is basically chronological, there are small deviations which provide coherence and contrast and give many of these nine CDs the feel of a recital programme. The vocal risks taken by Fischer-Dieskau to achieve intensity and depth of characterisation afford immense insights, thus minimising any reservations. The contrast and drama of ‘Prometheus’, the insistent ardour of ‘An Sylvia’, then his disarmingly simple delivery of the Seidl ‘Wiegenlied’ – this is a feast of versatility and artistry. The partnership of these two great Lieder exponents – Gerald Moore’s contribution as a musically onomatopoeic piano partner (one brief example, the chiming of the bell in ‘Das Zügenglöcklein’) cannot be considered mere accompaniment – continues through to profoundly moving performances of the song-cycles in Vol. 3. These recordings are refreshingly unreverberant, and both performers are in good perspective. Each of the Vol. 3 song-cycles is already available separately and now there is even a new Fischer-Dieskau Winterreise available on Sony Classical. This is his seventh commercial recording of the work, made in 1990 accompanied by Murray Perahia. At 65, Fischer-Dieskau’s voice no longer maintains its unique seamless sheen but, though he cannot consistently guarantee the quality of his baritone sound, through his extraordinary mental and physical techniques he gives a gripping performance of mature reflection, aided by Perahia’s positive, interactive playing. This is surely Fischer-Dieskau’s last word on the cycle.

-- Elisse McDougall, BBC Music Magazine

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein and singer-songwriter Tift Merritt join forces for the first time in Night, a unique collaboration merging classical, folk, and rock worlds, exploring common terrain and uncovering new musical landscapes.

Night features new songs written especially for the duo by Brad Mehldau (I Shall Weep at Night) and Patty Griffin (Night), as well as Tift Merritt's own songs (Only in Songs, Still Not Home, Colors, Feel of the World), and classical selections (an arrangement of Schubert's Night and Dreams, Bach's Prelude in B minor). The album also includes the world premiere recording of The Cohen Variations by Daniel Felsenfeld, a solo piano piece commissioned by Dinnerstein based on one of her favorite songs, Leonard Cohen's Suzanne.

A CHRISTMAS STORY, THE MUSICAL is based upon a cherished movie classic that's enchanted millions. The musical features a score by the young Richard Rodgers Award winning newcomers, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, whose off-Broadway musical, DOGFIGHT, recently opened to positive reviews. The book is penned by Joseph Robinette, and is based on the writings of radio humorist Jean Shepherd and the 1983 holiday film favorite. Tony Award.-winner John Rando (URINETOWN) directs the production with choreography by Warren Carlyle (CHAPLIN, FOLLIES, AN EVENING WITH HUGH JACKMAN).

This recording restores a different variety of "period performance" to the catalog. Recorded in mid-1952, the opera is performed in English (in the Martin translation) by most of the cast that gave the premiere of the Met's 1951 production. 'Cosí fan tutte' was thought to be improved most by leaving a lot of it out. Dorabella and Ferrando lose their second act arias as well as the usual omission of the little duet in act I. Aside from the absence of vocal embellishment and the sheer weight of the forces used, the performance is surprisingly close to historically informed performance practice. Tempos are fleet, the recitatives--albeit much abridged--are accompanied by a piano, and the tone is conversational.
The four lovers were cast with big voices that today would be associated with Verdi. Of the women, Eleanor Steber's weighty and beautifully sung Fiordiligi and, in contrast, the quite young Roberta Peters' very pert Despina are the standouts. Richard Tucker as Ferrando is the best of the men, very funny and surprisingly fluent, deploying his golden tone in a role unexpected in light of his fame as a Verdi singer. An interesting window on the history of Mozart performance.

Casals directed Mozart with regimented authority... Of the piano concertos, however, the hitherto unreleased K466 proves unexpectedly serviceable, although Serkin's account of K482, exultant and miraculous, utterly transcends Yvonne Lefebure in the other work.

-- Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine

This was the first ever recording of Wozzeck, and Mitropoulos's handling of the score has seldom been equalled, let alone surpassed. The sheer fire and passion of his reading are remarkable.

This was the first ever recording of Wozzeck, preceding Karl Bohm's sumptuous DG account by 14 years. As the only mono Wozzeck in existence, therefore, it is the least adequately recorded (the orchestra is at times somewhat recessed) and it has long been famous for the conspicuous inaccuracy of most of its cast: the Doctor sings only an approximation of his written notes most of the time, and both Marie and the Captain rewrite some passages quite startlingly. But listening to it again on these beautifully presented, carefully remastered CDs I was astonished at how little these flaws matter; indeed Mitropoulos's handling of the score has seldom been equalled, let alone surpassed. The sheer fire and passion of his reading are remarkable, but so is his vivid response to the detail and the colour of Berg's score. Again and again he seems more aware than most conductors of precisely why this or that scene uses a particular musical form or dance rhythm. And he shows at times an astonishing boldness: it was decidedly risky, with singers and players quite unfamiliar with the idiom, to take the fugue in Act 2 scene 2 as fast as Mitropoulos does, but the sense of cruelty as Doctor and Captain goad Wozzeck with Marie's infidelity and as the one reliable thing in his confused world crumbles is as intensely horrible and pitiful as Berg obviously intended it to be.

But I would hate to give the impression that this is a superbly conducted Wozzeck let down by substandard singing. Mack Harrell, who stands out for his commendable accuracy, is an understated Wozzeck but not, I think, an under-acted one. His is not a familiar name now, but his inflexion of the role of Nick Shadow (in Stravinsky's first recording of The Rake's Progress) and of the beautiful lines of Virgil Thomson's Blake Songs are etched in my memory; so is his finely detailed portrait of Wozzeck as a fundamentally decent man driven to murder and suicide by a desperation that he cannot express. He was a singer of rare intelligence and sensitivity. Eileen Farrell, for all her occasional lapses, is a sympathetic, often moving Marie, and although Ralph Herbert is a conscientious rather than a vivid Doctor, 'vivid' is a positive understatement for Joseph Mordino's Captain. He is often inaccurate as to pitch but his rhythms are precise and his acting needle-sharp. Indeed it is hard at times to believe that this is a concert performance: the oppressive atmosphere of the barracks, the hectic whirl of the dance scenes, the horrifyingly abrupt violence of the murder are as gripping as in any live recording in a theatre.

Erwartung was also a firstever recording, made in a studio that sounds rather airless because of the close focus on Dorothy Dorow's pleasing but small voice. Her efforts are little short of heroic (she sings fewer wrong notes than most exponents of the role), but the emotional range of her reading is perhaps inevitably rather narrow. Mitropoulos's understandable reluctance to obliterate her with orchestral exclamations leads to a lyrical but small-scale reading, the work's extremes unexplored. The Krenek, however (recorded, astonishingly, on the same day as Erwartung: a total of 45 minutes of hugely demanding music), is quite a discovery: an extended and passionately expressive elegy on the death of Webern, performed with intense eloquence. It is not otherwise available on CD and it adds very considerably to the value of Mitropoulos's historic, far from outdated Wozzeck.

-- Gramophone [2/1998]

[This] record has a considerable extra in Falla's Harpsichord Concerto. This dry but oddly attractive work is admirably played by Kipnis with leading members of the NYPO. Their performance is excellent. Boulez understands this sort of work completely and directs an admirable performance.

-- Gramophone [8/1976]
reviewing the original LP release of the Falla Concerto

Direct from the Metropolitan Opera’s archives, this complete performance of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment is taken from the historic Saturday afternoon broadcasts and is newly re-mastered from the original source.

• Soprano Lily Pons is at her most charming and vivacious in the role of Marie, the heroine of Donizetti’s beloved opera comique. The cast also includes Salvatore Baccaloni and Irra Petina
• Gennaro Papi, a former assistant under Arturo Toscanini, conducts this performance which includes an added aria from the French version of Lucia di Lamermoor
• 2 CDs taken from the December 28, 1940 Broadcast

Written entirely for violin, orchestra, band and voices and inspired by the elements air, earth, fire and water, Nigel Kennedy’s Four Elements takes the listener on a multi-genre musical journey of exhilaration, contemplation and celebration. This work is a suite of pieces which Nigel originally conceived as his own 21st-century response to Vivaldi’s baroque masterpiece in the sense of creating programmatic, pictorial music based on an underlying theme. A notable new ingredient in the mix is the electronic drum programming by Damon Reece, who has worked with Massive Attack and Goldfrapp. Singers featured on the album include Zee Gachette and Xantoné Blaq, a former member of Amy Winehouse’s band.