For his first holiday album, Yo-Yo Ma brings together renowned musicians from folk, jazz, classical, and world music to celebrate seasonal festivals of the world -- Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid al-Adha, Kwanzaa, Yule, and New Year's Day.

This deluxe edition includes a 60-minute bonus DVD featuring behind-the-scenes recording session footage with Yo-Yo Ma and the guest artists, a photo gallery, and 5 complete music videos:

James Taylor, "Here Comes The Sun"
Diana Krall, "You Couldn’t Be Cuter"
Alison Krauss, "The Wexford Carol"
Chris Botti, "My Favorite Things"
Renée Fleming, "Touch The Hand Of Love"

Imagine a party, a musical party inspired by the holiday season. A party that celebrates the universal hopes, dreams and joy animating seasonal festivals the world over.

That is what brought Yo-Yo Ma together with a remarkable group of friends - some old, some new - to create SONGS OF JOY & PEACE. It is Yo-Yo's hope that everyone who listens to this album will hear a song familiar, comfortable and beloved to them as well as discover and fall in love with music that is brand new.

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS

Sony Classical offers opera lovers another ten complete recordings from the RCA Victor, CBS/Sony and Eurodisc catalogues, with highlights from La Juive and the complete Thaïs with Anna Moffo as well as Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron by Hans Rosbaud for the first time on CD, remastered from the analogue masters. This latest release is one of the widest ranging yet in this series, spanning the history of theatrical music from Monteverdi to Schoenberg.Fromental Halévy’s grand opera La Juive is another early Romantic work that has been revived increasingly in our time. Mahler called it “one of the greatest operas ever created”. Though the taxing leading role was championed by Caruso, Halevy’s masterpiece had to wait until 1974 for its first studio recording – not complete, but containing most of the important scenes. The tenor was Richard Tucker, heard in the last recording before his untimely death, still singing heroically. The stellar cast also includes two of the outstanding sopranos of the period, Martina Arroyo in the title role and Anna Moffo. This is its first release on CD.

May 9, 1971: the celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the third anniversary of the Broadway musical Hair in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York City.

Twice before the producers and the cast of Hair had been involved in a loud and happy birthday party, both times in New York’s spacious Central Park. The events had been “happenings” for the young – particularly those committed to the Age of Aquarius. Just as easily and just as naturally the third anniversary could have been held in the Park, but Michael Butler, the world producer of Hair, felt otherwise. He wanted a service rather than a concert, and he wanted it in a specifically committed building, and yet he somehow wanted it to be large-hearted and generous with the non-committed. The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine seemed to be not only large enough, but also to have the necessary combination of splendor and “give” to insure a service of the character desired. The Bishop of New York and the Cathedral’s clergy, fully conscious that some of their constituents might quit the Christian religion, decided that this sort of thing was one of the reasons for having a Cathedral and went along happily with the whole idea.

Galt MacDermot’s Mass in F, sung by the choirs of St. Martin’s, Manhattan and St. Mary’s, Staten Island, furnished the music necessary for the Solemn Eucharist, and appropriate selections from Hair, sung by the New York cast and the Cathedral Choir, provided the Introit, Sequence, Offertory and the Response to the Blessing and Dismissal.

This recording conveys everything there is to be said about the vitality of the music and the spontaneous joy of all who were there. The calm splendor of the liturgy, constantly aware of the pulse of the music, provided that vibrant tension which is the essence of the drama of which religion is the mother. Its overtones united young and old, rich and poor and men and women, of every race and creed.

This excellent first volume in what promises to be a two-disc collection of Poulenc's complete chamber music offers performances that compare favorably with the best available. All of the musicians are superb, but several deserve special mention. Alexandre Tharaud plays Poulenc's piano parts with great flair, wit, and a true feeling for the music's manic shifts from raucous high spirits to nostalgia and melancholy. Since all of these works feature the piano, the importance of his contribution can't be overestimated. Laurent Lefèvre's reedy, piercing, truly "French" sounding bassoon is a highlight both of the Sextet and the delicious Trio for piano, oboe, and bassoon. It's very difficult to find a bassoon player with sufficient dynamic range to balance the more penetrating tones of the other players, and Lefèvre not only holds his own in the ensemble, but his unfailing musicality and dead accurate intonation triumphantly vindicates the affection that Poulenc shows for his instrument. Finally Olivier Doise's oboe playing offers a sweet, focused tone throughout his range, and this makes the Oboe Sonata a much more moving and less squeaky affair than it so easily becomes in less sympathetic hands. If the string players in Volume II offer the same level of accomplishment, then this series will be the outstanding bargain of Poulenc's centenary year. As it stands, this initial installment, brightly and clearly recorded, is indispensable. Look for further volumes to be released throughout 2000, beginning in early spring. [1/2/2000]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

All of the positive attention and high praise that 26-year-old pianist Igor Levit has garnered in Europe is thoroughly justified by his Sony Classical debut release encompassing Beethoven’s last five sonatas. Levit’s affinity for the composer’s essentially linear style and intense expressivity borders on clairvoyance, if you’ll forgive the cliché. You notice this immediately in Op. 101’s first and third movements, where thoughtful voice leading and flexible lyricism mesh into a single entity. Impressive pianistic poise and thoughtful dynamic scaling give clarity and meaning to the Scherzo’s obsessive march rhythms and difficult register leaps as well as to the Fugue’s knotty textures.

Levit takes the “Hammerklavier” first-movement Allegro at a tempo close to the composer’s admittedly optimistic metronome marking, yet the music ebbs and flows with characterful assurance. The Scherzo also takes bracing wing; it features biting cross-rhythmic accents and a ferocious ascending F major scale from bottom to top. You might describe Levit’s masterful Adagio sostenuto as a fusion of Rudolf Serkin’s classical reserve and Claudio Arrau’s depth of tone and vocally oriented inflection. In the finale’s introductory Largo, Levit piles into the jazzy broken-chord accelerando with shattering abandon, and brings plenty of drama, dynamic contrast, and varied articulations to the fugue.

Following Op. 109’s eloquently shaped Vivace, Levit’s well sprung and sharply detailed second movement is one of the few on disc to make Beethoven’s detached and legato phrasings audible to the point where the music sounds faster than it actually is performed. Levit’s heartfelt, beautifully sung out, and assiduously unified third-movement variations easily measure up to the catalog’s finest versions. Op. 110 also stands out for Levit’s brilliant synthesis of personal poetry and scrupulous detail, while Op. 111 matches Mauruzio Pollini’s extraordinary exactitude (the first movement’s driving 16th-note sequences impeccably in place, the Arietta’s dotted rhythms’ spot-on accuracy and inner “swing”) with an extra hint of cantabile warmth. In short, this is Beethoven playing of the highest distinction, not to be missed.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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This is a notable debut recording. Thanks to Igor Levit’s remarkably even touch and precise rhythmic control, the scores’ details, minutely realized, are fashioned into lucid, structurally sound interpretations. This isn’t a pianist trying to outdo others with speed, volume, or extreme interpretations, but a musician whose tasteful instincts produce Beethoven performances with purity of expression and a certain reserve.


Most striking is the gentle songfulness that Levit brings to lyrical movements, such as the brief Allegretto —an endless melody in four-part texture, singled out by more than a few people, Glenn Gould included, as their favorite movement in all of Beethoven’s sonatas—that opens the 28th Sonata, op. 101. In it, Levit succeeds at creating natural phrase divisions without breaking long lines, something that sounds easy when it’s done this well. (Anyone who has tried to play it knows how extremely difficult this is, and how disjointed the movement can sound.) The Sonata’s technically punishing second movement’s dotted rhythms and rests are perfectly executed at an unrushed tempo, and in the final movement, Levit’s comic timing and articulation rivals the very best versions of the Sonata, such as Richard Goode’s.


A generation ago, one often made allowances in performances of the “Hammerklavier,” except perhaps for Pollini, for broader than ideal tempos in the first movement to accommodate technical difficulties, or moments of stressful scrambling to get through the fugue. Judging by some recent recordings of the work—by the excellent Van Cliburn Competition medalist Sean Chen, Mari Kodama (see Jerry Dubins’s review in Fanfare 37:3), and now Igor Levit—there are clear signs that pianists’ technique in the 21st century has caught up with the Sonata’s demands. Levit’s Apollonian reading is more fluent and less heaven-storming than most. This is a young man’s “Hammerklavier,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to infuse the first and third movements with more drama, through the taking of time, later in his life. He plays the first movement at 132 to the quarter in a tempo that sounds just right—Beethoven’s metronome marking, once considered impossible to realize, is 138— achieving a kind of ecstatic swing whose confident steadiness and occasional lightness doesn’t diminish the music’s profundity. The slow movement, taken exactly at Beethoven’s metronome marking of 92, is gentler than many performances, less grandly soul-searching, but serious and intimate.


In the last three sonatas, I find Levit even better than Paul Lewis, whose well-considered performances sound merely like good piano playing compared to the poised, unearthly effect—I’m thinking here of the final movements of Nos. 30 and 32, in particular—that Levit achieves with his finer technical control. The highlights here are, once again, the lyrical movements, though op. 109’s Presstissimo second movement goes like quicksilver, and op. 110’s Allegro molto is a suitably brusque interruption of the work’s otherwise exalted proceedings. In the final pages of op. 110—the triumphant return of a fugue that has been interrupted and turned around by a grief-stricken lament—I find Levit’s tempo too fast, its fluency too easily achieved. I prefer Mitsuko Uchida’s more measured realization of these tricky tempo relationships.


In the Maestoso introduction to the 32nd Sonata, op. 111, Levit’s strict dotted rhythms reveal the music’s kinship to a French overture and provide continuity, unlike Andrew Rangell’s, whose freer concept of the rhythm bogs the music down. Unlike Barenboim in his 1980s DG recording, Levit doesn’t make the slow Arietta a static dirge. His pacing allows the second movement’s sublime variations to unfold with great logic and inevitability. His interpretation of op. 111 is close to Richter’s (a 1975 performance) in its straightforward pacing, but Levit’s voicing doesn’t have Richter’s laser-like exaggeration of top lines. His right hand comes out as needed in all of these performances, but with an appealingly unforced sonority.


The Richter comparison came to mind as I watched Igor Levit on YouTube, not because the two pianists’ playing is particularly similar, but because of their shared Russian-German background, and Levit’s eclectic, rather austere repertoire choices. Both pianists’ quiet concentration conveys the sense that whatever they’re playing is of life-and-death importance, though the grim, aggressive aura that Richter sometimes projected isn’t part of Levit’s image. Levit’s videos of music by Hindemith, Reger, Beethoven (the Third Concerto), and the Bach-Brahms Chaconne arranged for left hand, show that the intensity and refinement of his Beethoven sonatas is no fluke.


Thanks are due to Sony for taking on a serious young pianist in repertoire of his choice, and providing him with sensitive engineering that showcases his full range of dynamics. There’s every indication that this recording introduces one of the 21st century’s important pianists.

FANFARE: Paul Orgel

The incomparable lied baritone, Christian Gerhaher, revisits Gustav Mahler in his latest release Mahler: Orchestral Songs. Accompanied by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, under the elegant baton of Kent Nagano, Gerhaher has recorded three Mahler song cycles in their authentic orchestral versions for the first time. On this album Gerhaher manages to blend with the compelling sound of the orchestra, but at the same time makes his baritone hover above the instruments, so that every word and nuance comes across without ever sounding forced. Simple in style and full of empathy, this is the art of song at its finest.

The purpose of the album "Little Cathedrals" is to create that ambience for the listeners to transport them and take them to a higher and nobler dimension within themselves. Born in Chicago, Jonathan Sargent began his musical studies at the age of five with celebrated guitarist Irene Lorence. After graduating from Columbia University in New York City, he was granted a full scholarship on the classical guitar in Washington D.C. with Sophocles Papas (Andres Segovia’s emissary in the U.S.) Switzerland. Jonathan completed his formal guitar education with performances at the master classes of: Alirio Diaz, Angel Romero and Musica de Compostela

Rudolf Buchbinder offers the definitive interpretation of all of Beethoven’s piano concertos on Beethoven: The Piano Concertos. Recorded live in the legendary concert hall of Vienna’s Musikverein in May 2011, Buchbinder conducted the Vienna Philharmonic from the piano, just as Beethoven himself did at his first performances. “For me this is like chamber music on a larger scale,” says Buchbinder, who is much too fond of playing the piano to switch to the conductor’s baton. The recordings reflect Buchbinder’s wealth of experience with these works as much as they do his spontaneity and unbroken fascination with Beethoven, whom Buchbinder believes to be “by far the most Romantic of all composers.”

Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly established as one of the most important pianists on the international scene. He has over 100 recordings to his credit, including the complete Beethoven concertos, the complete Mozart piano concertos, all of Haydn’s works for piano and both Brahms concertos. Buchbinder is a regular guest of such renowned orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestra National de France, London Philharmonic, National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Lang Lang & Shao Sophie - Howard Shore: Two Concertio - Howard Shore: Two Concerti is an album of specially commissioned concertos in celebration of Chopin's music, by one of today's most renowned film composers. - One of today's most prolific and accomplished composers - Howard Shore's compositions are performed in concert halls around the world by the most prestigious orchestras and his numerous film scores are heard in cinemas across the globe. - Most well-known for his score for the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Hobbit" series, these scores have garnered him three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, as well as numerous critic's and festival Awards.

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works.

"[Sinfonia] is a wild, four-movement work and shows the new direction music is taking. Gone are the strict constructions and parameters of serialism. Instead there is a concentration on pure sound... With the Swingle Singers grouped around microphones, breaking the language (French and English, mostly) into bits of sound components, and with the orchestra often blasting away with fortissimo chords that contained all 12 notes of the scale, there was not a dull moment anywhere... It is one of the musics of the future." -- Harold C. Schonberg, The New York Times

"...the Swingle Singers perform this music as if their lives depended on it. Sinfonia becomes a piece of musical theater on that recording..." -- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net

"Levine is equally successful with Cavalleria rusticana, of which he gives one of the most compelling accounts available on disc. Scotto and Domingo bring Santuzza and Turiddu excitingly to life."
-- Charles Osborne, BBC Music Magazine

"the Scotto/Domingo set now stands as a first recommnendastion for Mascagni's red-blooded opera, with Domingo giving a heroic accoungt of the rolee of Turiddu, full of deciance...James Levine directs with a splended sensse of pacing..."
-- Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition]

This release combines a pair of Beethoven performances by conductor Leonard Bernstein, in his prime, with the New York Philharmonic; the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, was recorded in 1961, and the Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, in 1958. Both have been digitally remastered, and the earlier recording actually comes out a bit better; by 1961 Columbia's engineers had figured out how to use the backdrop of LP sound to accent orchestral strings, an effect difficult to reproduce on CD. Charismatic, gifted, and genre-crossing, Bernstein was on top of the American musical world during this period, and these recordings remained strong sellers for some years. Hearing them half a century on reminds listeners (or apprises them anew) of several things. The first is that the New York Philharmonic, though certainly more than competent, did not have a trademark strength like its chief competitors in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston. You hope for brilliance that is not there. But you're also reminded that Bernstein was a subtler conductor than he is sometimes given credit for being. His histrionic style on the podium belied a well-considered, detailed approach to these works, for which he was confronted by decades (or more) of established tradition. The Symphony No. 5 is broad rather than exceptionally violent, with a lovely free space for the oboe cadenza in the first movement; Bernstein has it expand beyond its structural significance into a moment of sudden and profound personal reflection in the midst of societal tumult. In the Symphony No. 7 Bernstein is deliberate and persistent in the first movement's slow introduction and never really turns up the voltage until the finale, which thus acquires its proper bacchanalian mood. As with other albums in this Sony reissue series, the CD version includes both photographic reproductions of the original artwork and booklet reprints of the jacket text, with added French and German translations.

-- James Manheim, AllMusic.com

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, and SONY Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought-after recordings by the world’s preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

MELARTIN: SYMPHONIES NO 1 & 3

“I know of no Rameau work more colourful, more melodious, more replete with inventive vitality,” wrote Gramophone in reviewing this 1973 premiere recording of the French Baroque master’s 1735 “heroic ballet” Les Indes galantes. “There is immense enthusiasm and spirit in this performance … [and] some excellent singing … Among the array of sopranos I was specially impressed by the full, bright ring of Rachel Yakar … Anne-Marie Rodde: a good stylist and a clean, accurate voice, coping well with Rameau’s florid detail … The tenor Bruce Brewer is a real find for the lyrical French roles: his voice is very smooth and graceful … In all, a set which no Rameau admirer should miss.” Conducted by Rameau specialist Jean-Claude Malgoire, it is now being issued for the first time on CD.

Like most of his early works, Dvorák's Op. 1 String Quintet does not deserve its current obscurity. Certainly it lacks the melodic distinction of the much later piece that's also included on this finely played, excellently recorded disc. Still, the music captures and holds the attention, lacks for nothing in energy in its outer movements, and shows a fine sense of formal balance. The so-called "American" Quintet Op. 97 reveals the quintessence of the mature Dvorák: a generous fund of folk-inspired melody, a marvelously danceable scherzo, crystal clear construction in all four movements, and a fascinatingly colorful exploration of string textures. The augmented Vlach Quartet makes the most of both works, offering playing in which good balances and accurate intonation never get in the way of the music's often gutsy, vigorous character. They're particularly effective in the finale of Op. 97, whose "Humoresque No. 5"-style melody can sound too slender for a large movement if not given enough rhythmic profile. These players also exploit the husky sound of the two violas to evocative effect in the slow movements of both works. In short, this recording makes a fine addition to the group's distinguished ongoing cycle of Dvorák chamber music for strings. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Sony Music Entertainment is pleased to announce another ten releases in its increasingly comprehensive series of Classical Masters. These new box sets contain classic interpretations by some of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. No pianist has been more closely associated with the music of Granados than Spain’s beloved Alicia de Larrocha. Praising her in this repertoire, wrote ClassicsToday.com “is tantamount to giving fresh air a good review”. The new release collects her last traversals of this music in the studio, made for RCA in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The most substantial of these haunting works is Granados’ masterpiece Goyescas. In Alicia de Larrocha’s valedictory recording from 1989, “her seasoned mastery of Granados’ complex textures and innate affinity for his colorful idiom assert themselves in every measure. You won’t find a more recommendable Goyescas” (ClassicsToday.com).

This recording of the 1993 Schwetzingen Festival has already achieved cult status. The then, 78 year old Sviatoslav Richter plays for the first and last time in public Gershwin's jazzy Concerto in F-sharp. Gershwin's works had always been suspect under the Soviet regime. All the more surprising was Richter's decision to perform this work in his maturity. Needless to say, Richter never made a formal, studio recording of this work. It is not only a unique recording, but also a document of Richter's expansive interest in all musical repertoires than came under his purview. The Fifth Piano Concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns was eclipsed by the same composer's more popular "Second" Concerto throughout Richter's performing career. With the exception of one album, he never again recorded this work and there is no record that he ever again performed it internationally. With this concert, there can be no dispute that we are dealing with a real rarity.

NIELSEN, C.: String Quartets, Vol. 2

Godowsky, L.: Piano Music, Vol. 4

Review of a prior CD issue of this recording:

Both Scotto and Domingo, and Scotto especially, sing with real conviction and affection, and to have Tito Gobbi, no less, so obviously relishing the preposterous text of his spoken role is a considerable bonus. In all the score's more interesting passages Maazel too makes it clear that this score has as much of accomplishment to it as promise.

– Gramophone

“Kavakos’ tone has the character of striking high-grade silver sinew, ever beautiful, graceful and unbreakable” - LA Times

Ever-restless, ever-questioning and consistently captivating, Leonidas Kavakos ‘the violinist’s violinist’ (The Strad) is recognized as one of the greatest musicians alive.

Kavakos is a laureate of the great violin competitions and a visitor to the great orchestras of the world – as both violinist and conductor. In 2017 he joined the likes of Shostakovich, Rostropovich and Rubinstein as a laureate of the Sonning Music Prize.

An exclusive Sony Classical artist since 2018, Kavakos now stands ready to release his most significant recording yet – his first account of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. The set also includes the famous Chaconne in D minor from the Partita No. 2, for many, Bach’s single greatest span of music. Like many of his coevals, Bach was capable of creating great structures in sound, making use of the full panoply of choir, orchestra and soloists. He was unique, however, in his ability to conjure similar architectural marvels out of a single instrument. Bach titled his set Sei Solo – both a description of the work itself (‘six solos’) and a reminder of the challenge to the player: ‘you are alone.’

Leonidas Kavakos tackles that challenges and “keeps a firm grip on the rhythm, but one never gets the feeling that he is merely metronomic. Indeed, in the Double of the Courante, he wrestles the flood of notes into long, well-formed phrases, establishing a structure of impressive breadth and integrity (…) every line seems sharply etched, and Kavakos takes unusual care to balance the voices” – Gramophone Magazine.

“Harmony’s rhythm and rhythm’s harmony are decisive assistants towards achieving the divine aspect of existence”, says Leonidas Kavakos and continues “Wir danken dir, Gott (We thank you, God) is the title of Bach’s Cantata No. 29, the opening Sinfonia of which is a transcription for organ and orchestra of the Preludio from Partita No. 3. It could equally well serve as the title for all six sonatas and partitas, an opus consisting of two triads which, through the peerless swirling of the great Thomas cantor’s compositions, enlighten the individual responsibility of existence (“SeiSolo”), a vital component of collective Spacetime!”

Kavakos’s account of Bach’s scores, which have been interpreted by every major violinist throughout history, will be a major moment in his career. The recording was made in December 2020 in Berlin, with Kavakos playing his 1734 ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius.

2022 release from the acclaimed pianist. The album was recorded at the world-famous Real World Studios near Bath, and features a 70-piece orchestra that he worked with remotely in a custom-built studio in Vienna.