Classical Music

ADESTE FIDELES! - CHRISTMAS DO

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Salzburg Chamber Soloists were formed by Lavard Skou-Larsen in 1991 with the goal of performing chamber music with the freedom and expression of soloists. Vivaldi's Four Seasons are instantly recognizable even to those with a low affinity for classical music, and they are performed here by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists with intensity and passion. Piazzola's Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas provide the perfect foil to Vivaldi's seminal work, in the form of four sensual tangos.

Classical Music

Pinchas Zukerman, Jos‚ Luis Garcia (in D minor concerto); English Chamber Orchestra. RCA Red Seal 60718-2-RC [with Concerto in G minor, BWV 1056] (recorded 1990)

Pinchas Zukerman’s accounts are appealing for their emphasis on line and phrasing, and for their restraint. They are intelligently drawn, though a little drawn out (and Russianized, with un-idiomatic slides) in some of the slow tempos; there is also a tendency to hasten a little in the Allegros. But most of the time, in spite of his urge to keep a high expressive profile, Zukerman is able to scale down his sound and gestures to fit the music. The Largo of the D minor concerto is especially lovely. The recording is an excellent one, with the soloists ever so slightly forward. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Classical Music

Classical Music

...Eva Marton, as we know from her other opera recordings, possesses a voice of power and warmth which she can use with a deal of flexibility. Gioconda is obviously a role with which she closely identifies. Throughout, her portrayal of the unhappy, jealous Gioconda is histrionically strong and involving and she rides the climaxes in a way Caballe (Bartoletti/Decca) couldn't quite manage: this is the true spinto sound of which we hear far too little today...

Her Enzo was to have been Domingo but he had to cancel because of a bereavement. I am not altogether disappointed because Lamberti offers us a particular style in tenor singing that is almost lost, specifically Italianate in timbre and recalling di Stefano. His tone is always open and bright, he sings off the words, and he phrases with an innate ardour that's just right for the part. He manages some nice pianissimos, sings "Cielo e mar" with a long breath, and leads the Third Act concertato "Gia ti veggo" with a properly plaintive tone. He has almost as much voice as Ferraro (Votto) and is much more subtle. For better and worse, he isn't Pavarotti (Bartoletti), but I took to his reading. Milnes's Barnaba remains a well thought-through portrait of unmitigated villainy. He was in marginally steadier voice for Bartoletti on Decca, but the performance is still one of his most telling. Livia Budai, like her Hungarian compatriot, Marton, doesn't care to make much of the text, but the voice is as vibrant as any in this role: Cossotto (Votto) has the edge simply through being Italian. Ramey makes much of little as Alvise. Anne Gjevang is a steady La Cieca, and gives her solo the grave beauty it deserves...

-- Gramophone [2/1990]

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 2 MAAZEL,

Rhythm Song

The Toccata Classics survey of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) continues with this fifth album of his orchestral music. Earlier releases have presented the lighter side of his music, with its quasi-Baroque textures and buoyant good humor, but this one shows Farkas working on a larger scale and in generally darker mood. Here he uses the full resources of the symphony orchestra in a number of powerful and dramatic works, including two movements from a symphony that he later withdrew and an orchestration of Liszt’s Funerailles. A lighter bonne bouche-the Dances from the Matra, rather like Kodaly’s Dances from Galanta- rounds things off. Gabor Farkas (no relation to the composer) graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 2005, finishing his doctoral studies there in 2014 at his alma mater under the mentorship of Zoltan Kocsis. In March 2012 he won the Franz Liszt Award ( the highest Hungarian state award for artists).

Nicolaus A. Huber, a German composer, has been inspired in his musical experiments by Josef Anton Riedl, Dieter Schnebel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and most importantly by Luigi Nono. Nono encouraged Huber to find more ways of eradication tonality by studying psychology. In doing so, Huber is able to better understand human responses. This album from Coviello is a clearly ambitious musical experiment recorded by ensemble reflexion K, under the direction of Gerald Eckert. Ensemble reflexion K has previously recorded an album of works by Gerald Eckert.

This illustrious fifteen disc set packs together some of the most famous and best loved operettas to have ever graced a stage. These tracks were all recorded at the Morbisch Lake Festival between 1996 and 2015. Present day opera stars sing the leading roles, including Martina Serafin, Silvana Dussman, and Dagmar Schellenberger. Since 1957 the Morbisch Lake Festival has been drawing listeners to its operettas and musicals. Held at the Neusiedler See National Park, the music is draped against the natural background of Lake Neusiedl. Herbert Alsen began the festival, where 1200 audience members watched the premiere of “The Gypsy Baron.” The festival has grown over the last half century and now boasts 220,000 visitors.

This album was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental
Soloist Performance (without Orchestra).

Nikolaj Znaider's star shines brightly in the constellation of up-and-coming violinists of the next generation. Since winning the Queen Elizabeth Competition 1997, Znaider's career has steadily mounted with international performances and critically-acclaimed recordings of violin concertos of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Glazunov and others. His new release on RCA, entitled Bravo!, sets a smaller stage with a collection of showpieces for solo violin, accompanied on most tracks by Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler.

Znaider's playing throughout is limber and precise, his immaculate technique inherited from Juilliard violin maven Dorothy De Lay, the teacher of Itzakh Perlman and Cho-Liang Ling, among others. Znaider fairly burns through the imposing demands of Eugène Ysaÿe's "Ballade" Sonata, but it's the refreshing lyrical parsimony in the slow stuff that demands notice. The two transcriptions of Chopin Nocturnes echo the kind of dry romanticism of the earliest violinists of the recorded era. In the famous Rachmaninoff Vocalise the effect of that reserve is magical; Znaider spins an endless thread of emotive melody that refuses to wear its heart on its sleeve. As with any good encore, you're grateful for the bonbon but left wanting another. What a boon to be able to simply repeat the track; an action we found ourselves repeating again and again with Znaider's Bravo!.

David Simmons, WQXR

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Rodrigo concerto (double woodwind, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and strings) needs real virtuoso playing—it is one of those works which are harder than they sound—but is most skilfully written. The cheerful first movement, starting up with typical Iberian belatedness from apparently idle introductory strumming, may make the most immediate effect, but undoubtedly the finest part of the work is the introspective Adagio, which shows that in the right hands even such seemingly cliché-bound elements as melancholy cor anglais solos and quasi-flamenco fiorilure can still be moving. Williams's reading differs somewhat from Bream's (which I still think superb): he takes the first movement a thought slower and just misses Bream's élan, but gives the finale actually more bite: he plays the slow movement sensitively, less dramatically and more dreamily than Bream (and incidentally changes the notes of the final arpeggio). It is a throughly musical performance, a worthy rival to that by his distinguished fellow-countryman.

-- Gramophone [7/1966]
reviewing Concierto de Aranjuez on LP

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This is not a record for purists, but never before on disc have I heard a performance of the vividly atmospheric Falla ballet anything like so involving as this. Stokowski may indulge in some souping up of the texture in the haunting "Pantomime", but I confess that that is how I have always wanted to hear it, and the brisk songs and dances (not just the "Ritual Fire Dance") have a dramatic bite that conveys the freshness of excitement that must have attended the first appearance of a ballet which so patently extended from Russia to Spain the new and exotic medium developed by Diaghilev. Diaghilev himself certainly appreciated its potential quickly enough with the ensuing Three Cornered Hat.

Shirley Verrett makes a superb soloist, characteristically rich-toned most of the time but from time to time flinging at us impressive imitations of raucous flamenco chest-tone. The recording, larger than life, dates from the early sixties, but it is still impressive, rich and atmospheric.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone
reviewing El Amor Brujo on LP

Classical Music

Classical Music

HAYDN: SYMPHONIES NOS 93, 95 &