Classical Music

The Rosary Sonatas not only deal with mysteries, they are themselves a mystery. With this violin cycle made up of fifteen sonatas and a solo passacaglia, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber created one of the most interesting works in the entire violin repertoire. Even today, the work is not completely decrypted in terms of its significance in assignment of the sonatas to the sacred Christian mysteries. The composer carries the scordatura technique to the extreme. This technique utilizes the tuning of the violin’s four strings to intervals other than the usual, and in this way demands constant concentration from the performer. For French violinist Helene Schmitt, the Rosary Sonatas are not merely a violinistic extreme sport. For her, this work is a musical act of faith. In this performance, a sonic cosmos opens up within the sonatas, singing, speaking, whispering, and even roaring from hardly audible sound to pure heavy metal. The listener will not cease to be astonished. Helene Schmitt’s full devotion to this music is apparent. Her continuo group, which is made up of internationally known performers, provides just the right support and timbres.

With the "Messa da Requiem“, Christian Spuck brought one of Verdi’s key works to the stage. In a large-scale co-production by the Ballett and Oper Zurich, the German choreographer and director ventured to portray an unusual interpretation of Verdi’s funeral mass in his scenic choreographic production. 36 dancers, the choir and supplementary choir of the Opernhaus Zurich as well as four highly acclaimed soloists joined together under the direction of Fabio Luisi for 13 wide ranging scenes dedicated to one of the most fundamental themes of humanity. Christian Spuck does not seek a mere religious interpretation of the liturgical text. Instead, he is interested in focusing on people who, in their vulnerability and helplessness, are in the search for comfort. In poetic tableaux he deals with basic human emotions and focuses on the feelings of fear, rage, pain, sadness and the search for redemption.

"• An album of three chamber works composed or arranged for violin, viola and two cellos – a rare and intriguing string collective. • A pupil of Rimsky-Korasakov and later teacher of both Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Anton Arensky's chamber works are considered amongst his finest compositions. • Ernest Sauter (1928-2013) gained his greatest degree of recognition as a composer for the ballet. The work heard herein, titled ""À la mémoire d'Arenski"", is a fitting companion to the Arensky work."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Hermann Prey's performance of Papageno was historic, and turned him into the most popular opera singer in Germany. This CD includes a collection of previously unpublished recordings made during the legendary Sunday Concerts with the Menchner Rundfunk Orchester from 1966 to 1992. In a representative series of roles ranging from Bach to musicals, the great baritone shows US all his facets: From the sensitivity of the comic actor to the intense, inmost sincerity of the Lieder performer. At a time when the opera was still an integral part of Germany's media landscape, Hermann Prey made it impressively clear that a broad repertoire and depth of interpretation are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

This outstanding album contains 15 famous arias from the operas of Verdi, sung by the most influential Verdi voices of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. All of the recordings featured on this album are radio recordings, and were made between 1962 and 1984. The live recordings offer an interesting alternative to the studio recordings of the same works by the same performers. The selections are arranged chronologically by date of composition, and are a broad representation of the career of one of the finest operatic composers in history.

This release is a survey of music by American composers, and is a mixture of premieres and first recordings of new transcriptions for the clarinet. Featuring works from composers Robert Beaser, Joseph Schwantner, Lukas Foss, Marti Epstein, Derek Bermel, and David Gompper, this album evokes the image of Americana. While these composers typically air on the side of modernism, these particular works draw out the expansiveness, nostalgia, and optimism of traditional American compositions. Michael Norsworthy is an in demand soloist with a unique voice on the clarinet. He has gained praise all over the planet, and has premiered over 150 new works. David Gompper has worked as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer all over the world. He has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa since 1991.

A major achievement - John Elwes is a stylish and eloquent Zoroastre and Gregory Reinhart makes a formidable Abramane with a commanding vocal presence. Rameau's Zoroastre should afford enduring pleasure.

Here once more, but in a new CD format, is Zoroastre, Rameau's penultimate tragedie-lyrique. Readers who bought the earlier CD issue when Deutsche Harmonia Mundi were distributed by EMI (1/88) will not be amused to learn that a new booklet has been prepared for the BMG release; this contains the full text of the opera, legibly printed and now with an English translation. Thanks are due to BMG for repackaging an otherwise excellent product, thus making it accessible to a wider listenership.

Zoroastre was first performed in Paris in 1749 and was, by and large, well received. But the librettist, Cahusac was taken to task by some for relegating the love element in the opera to a secondary place. When it was revived in 1756 Cahusac made shifts of emphasis within the plot and it is this version as it first appeared, rather than that which involved yet further small changes later in the season, which is performed here. The libretto deals with the conflict between Good and Evil or Light and Darkness central to Zoroastrianism. Oromases, King of the Genies, represents the former and has Zoroastre as his high priest, while Abramane, high priest of the Temple of Darkness represents the latter. The chief protagonists in the drama are Zoroastre and Abramane who vie for power, glory and love; their characters are skilfully and often strikingly portrayed by Rameau, whose score is richly endowed with bold dashes of colour.

I very much liked this performance when it was first issued on LP in 1984 and feel much the same about it now. John Elwes is a stylish and eloquent Zoroastre and Gregory Reinhart makes a formidable Abramane with clear diction and a resonant, commanding vocal presence. His "Osons achever de grands crimes" (Act 3 scene 2) with its syncopated accompaniment and characteristically effective bassoon writing, is especially noteworthy. As I have remarked in previous reviews, the three principal female roles are sung well though I should have liked greater aural contrasts between them. Agnes Mellon as the innocent Cephie is a particularly happy piece of casting, though Mieke van der Sluis as the jealous Erinice is rather less so. Her voice is a warmly alluring one but seems ill-suited to the darker shades of this character. Greta de Reyghere brings warmth and clarity to the role of Amelite though she does not entirely succeed in conveying the danger and unpleasantness of her predicament.

La Petite Bande is on its liveliest form and Sigiswald Kuijken's direction reveals an insight into and affection for Rameau's music. In spite of some reservations, this is a major achievement and the work one that should not be omitted from any serious opera or baroque enthusiast's library. The recorded sound is excellent and as I have already indicated, the discs are now accompanied by an informative and helpful booklet. Rameau's Zoroastre should afford enduring pleasure.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]

Tafelmusik are a Canadian period-instrument group who bring plenty of spirit and enthusiasm to their performances. I have chiefly heard them before in baroque repertory, to which their rather direct and even slightly edgy tone may be better suited than it is to the more suave Boccherini. The B flat Symphony they offer here, Op. 21 No. 4 in Boccherini's numbering, is not to my knowledge otherwise available; the chief interest resides in the first movement, a typically exuberant piece, full of repeated notes and dashing off every now and then into brilliant semiquaver passages, though there is some characteristically charming pathetic music in the andantino. The players here make a hairsbreadth pause before each accent in the first movement (and there are rather a lot of them), which seems to me disturbing to the rhythm. They also offer the D minor Symphony, La casa del diavolo, based in part on Gluck's Dance of the Furies from Orphee. They play the first movement at a tremendous speed and with great vigour, the slow movement rather dully and the finale, again, very fast and duly diabolically. Here, however, they run into competition with the disc by Ensemble 415 (Harmonia Mundi), which offers a superior performance; tighter and more controlled, more graceful as well as sweeter-toned in the middle movement and less reliant on breathtaking thrills to make the fast movements effective.

But with Anner Bylsma playing two concertos, this is certainly a disc to be considered seriously. His performance of the G major work is far more appealing than that of the relatively staid Wouter Willer on the EMI disc cited above, its quick movements quicker, its slow movement slower— and played with remarkable control (you cannot hear the changes of bow) and with much poetry. And there is some dazzling playing at the very top of the instrument in the finale. The D major work is perhaps slightly more ordinary, but that vein of pathos is again much in evidence in the andante lentarello (a typical Boccherini marking, whatever it may mean), where the cello duets with a solo oboe. A record, then, that in spite of some flaws the Boccherinian will want to have.

-- Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [2/1990]

The Ensemble Esperanza was formed in 2015 by students of the International Music Academy in Liechtenstein as part of an integral musical education programme. With the exception of the concertmaster, Chouchane Siranossian, the harpsichordist, the ensemble is made up of grantees of the International Music Academy in Liechtenstein who are coming together for their musical projects from all over Europe. With their debut release they are embarking on a new challenge, for which the venerable musical form of the suite provides an appropriate setting.

The critically acclaimed Jack Quartet perform four new works by the Áltavoz Composers, a group of Latin American composers who have emigrated to the U.S. and Europe. Felipe Lara, Jose-Luis Hurtado, Mauricio Pauly and Jorge Villavicencio Grossman are all dynamic compositional voices working in the modernist tradition; their works are heard here in the context of one of the most challenging and revered trajectories of the classical canon, the string quartet repertoire. "explosive virtuosity." (Boston Globe) "viscerally exciting." (New York Times) "thrillingly vital." (New Yorker)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This release includes the entirety of Wanda Luzzato’s recorded legacy. The tracks have been dutifully restored and remastered for a better listening experience. The songs on this release are previously unreleased recordings. MusicWeb writes: “Valuable recorded documents from the Wanda Luzzato Archive. - I would encourage all violin afficionados to explore this compelling collection. I’m most impressed by Rhine Classics presentation. Everything about this production spells quality. [...] Luzzato commands a formidable technique. Her tone is sweet and pure and comes over as silvery in some recordings… Intonation is for the most part pristine. She seems to be greatly influenced by Heifetz in her use of expressive slides and position changes. Emilio Pessina’s expert restorations and remasterings are to be commended.”

Classical Music

MOZART: PIANO CONCERTOS NO 20

Classical Music

Taneyev (1856–1915) composed three quintets, each with a different instrumental line-up. The Piano Quintet of 1911 was the last of them, but before that he had written a G major String Quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos and a String Quintet in C major for two violins, two violas and cello. With such a variety of timbre, the three works make for a fascinating two-disc set, especially when played with such sensitivity and thought as by the ensemble here.

Allied to his secure structures and well-considered counterpoint, Taneyev also had a musical heart, often passionately expressed and with a dynamic, romantic impulse. Those are qualities that come across clearly in these performances: they have a strong backbone, but equally are alert to the lithe interplay between the five instruments to create substantial canvases in sound.

– The Telegraph (UK)

I touched on the wide stylistic gamut and nearly half-century of compositional activity of William Bolcom's four violin sonatas in my review of the cycle's first integral recording (type Q9749 in Search Reviews). Although Bolcom himself annotated and rightfully endorsed the Soroka/Greene duo's excellent performances, violinist Irina Muresanu and pianist Michael Lewin offer formidable, and at times superior competition to the Naxos edition.

Compared to the latter's richly detailed, close-up sonic perspective, producer Joseph Patrych achieves a mellower, less "in your face" ambience that suggests an intimate chamber music venue. Perhaps this factors into the more texturally transparent and finely nuanced impression conveyed by the generally faster tempos that Muresanu and Lewin favor. For example, the hushed imitative writing in the middle of the First sonata's central Nocturne movement alluringly shimmers here, while Muresanu's more consistently even tone and uniform phrasing in the third movement's lyrical episodes address Bolcom's "semplice" request more effortlessly than does Solomia Soroka's heavier touch.

Muresanu's portamentos and accents also prove more idiomatic in the Second sonata's finale (dedicated to the memory of jazz violin great Joe Venuti), if not quite with Maria Bachmann's flair or Sergiu Luca's unbridled joy with the composer digging into the keyboard (when will this Nonesuch recording make it to CD?).

There's something to be said for the Naxos team's starker, weightier drama in the Third sonata's outer movements, yet the Centaur duo's brisker, quieter execution best conveys the third movement's "shivering" directive. Because Muresanu and Lewin take trouble to distinguish the Andante's carefully varied articulations and phrase groupings, you really notice how the violin and piano parts intertwine.

Both Fourth sonata performances are excellent, and are different enough in detail to make a clear-cut preference difficult. Soroka and Greene boast the incisive edge in the first movement, make more of the second movement's volatile tempo changes and dynamic contrasts, and truly observe the third movement's melody/"drumbeat" call-and-response narrative to Bolcom's "inexorable" specification (Lewin falls into an "espressivo" bag once or twice when making decrescendos). At the same time, Muresanu and Lewin achieve amazingly flexible unanimity in the second movement's Grazioso section. A bonus track in the form of Bolcom's 1983 concert variation on his piano rag Graceful Ghost brings this program to a sensitive and memorable close.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com