Includes the libretto in English and Japanese.

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. The vocal texts are printed in Latin and Japanese.***

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works. Le Sacre du Printemps serves as a point of reference to all who seek to establish the birth certificate of what is still called “contemporary” music.

R E V I E W S

There is a controlled intensity about Boulez's 1971 New York performance of Petrushka... In The Rite of Spring...Boulez is less lyrical than the composer but compensates with relentless rhythmic urgency. The massive vividness of sound matches the monolithic quality of the interpretation.

-- Penguin Guide
reviewing Le Sacre du Printemps previously reissued on Sony 64109

This set is offered at a special price - two discs for the price of one.

This disc also contains lyrics for the final eight carols: "O come all ye Faithful", "Angels we have heard on high", "Silent Night", "Joy to the World", "O little town of Bethlehem", "The First Nowell", "Lo, how a rose e'er blooming", and "Hark the herald angels sing". To encourage sing-along participation, these pieces are recorded with instrumental accompaniment only.

MUSIK FESTIVAL DAVOS - YOUNG A

The series of Schubert recordings by the Tal and Groethuysen Duo received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for "Best Special Edition."

DELIUS: SEA DRIFT, HASSAN, ARA

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

SCARLATTI: HARPSICHORD SONATAS

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- ORCHESTRA

MOZART: STRING QUINTETS NOS 3

CHOEURS DE L'OPERA DE VIENNE -

COLORS OF JAZZ - FOR TROPICAL

MUSSORGSKY: PICTURES AT AN EXH

A delightful disc. Tal and Groethuysen play with passion and complete unanimity, and their sure-fingered techniques suggest the "velocity exercises" are well behind them.

Of all the composers whose names are far better known than their music, Czerny must be the most famous. Czerny? Oh yes, he was the chap who wrote those 'velocity exercises', the medicine pianists must take if they are to get better. True, but that wasn't all, his opus numbers leave little change out of 850! So why the neglect? Maybe there are two reasons. First, as a pupil of Beethoven, a teacher of Liszt and a contemporary of Schubert, he was born at the wrong time, surrounded by compositional giants. Second, it was his large output of didactic works and his eminence as a teacher that shaped his image, and his emphasis on technical brilliance was not always helpful to the balance of his music. I can see that, but it's hard to believe he wrote virtually nothing that is worth hearing! No, it's not that, it's probably that his academic image has been so strong that his music has simply been overlooked—if you try this record you'll see what I mean.

Despite his success Czerny was a tortured depressive and it reflects in his music; abrupt and extreme changes of mood, with correspondingly sudden changes of pace, volume and touch, and high-tension cascades of notes lie in wait for the tandem-pianists in the works on this recording. Echoes of Beethoven and Schubert rub shoulders with pre-echoes of Liszt. Czemy was not a great composer but he was a fluent one and, though you may be excused for thinking that he might have been wise to prune some of his lengthy utterances and to abate the firework displays, he often touches the heart-strings.

Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen are new names to me (and to the catalogue) and the insert booklet offers only two photographs as enlightenment; what does seem clear is that this first recording is unlikely to be their last. They play with passion and complete unanimity, and their sure-fingered techniques suggest the 'velocity exercises' as being among those things that are well behind them. The piano itself is not of the kind Czerny would have used, but it has an appropriately clear sound—crystalline cantabile and fortes that are strong but not thunderous. The recording copes well with the wide dynamic range of the music. A delightful disc, to be sure.

-- John Duarte, Gramophone

Track Listing
1. How Do You Keep the Music Playing?
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. Just the Way You Are
4. Through the Fire
5. What's New?
6. That's What Friends Are For
7. You've Got a Friend
8. With Every Breath I Take
9. Just the Two of Us
10. You Are So Beautiful
11. Saving All My Love for You

Personnel: John Basile, Wayne Krantz (guitar); Dick Oatts (flute, saxophone); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Fred Hersch (piano, synthesizer); David Finck (electric bass); Dave Ratajczak (drums); Jim Saporito (percussion).

Liner Note Author: Mort Goode.

Recording information: Skyline Studios, New York, NY.

Arrangers: Fred Hersch; Brad Dechter; Byron Olson.

OBRAS MAESTRAS DEL CANTO ANDAL

SCARLATTI, VIVALDI: STABAT MAT

Liner notes are in German.

Intense and enthusiastic musicality inform every performance in this engaging program of mostly unfamiliar music.

This is a wholly delightful record. The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society sometimes invites distinguished singers to join the instrumentalists in an evening at Alice Tully Hall, and this disc is the result of one such concert with two of America's brightest singing talents. Intense and enthusiastic musicality inform everything they do here, and they show their catholicity of taste in a wide-ranging programme of mostly unfamiliar music. Indeed even the one really well-known piece, "Non so pia", is presented in the unusual guise of an arrangement by Mozart himself for piano and violin accompaniment. It serves as a welcome memento of Miss von Stade's youthful, palpitating Cherubino, seen and heard at both Glyndebourne and Salzburg in recent years. Throughout, her tone and approach remind me of the young Christa Ludwig, except that one would have been unlikely to hear the Austrian mezzo in the French item, Chausson's sensual Chanson perpetuelle, which von Stade sings with dark, smouldering tone so right for its fin de slick eroticism. Judith Blegen is no less engaging in her solo items. She darkens her usually bright soprano for "Ja, wir schwären", an aria with clarinet obbligato from Die Verschworenen, written in 1823, with a typically Schubertian sense of longing. The Saint-Saens item comes from one of his early operas. The vocal line is in an attractively sinuous vein with a violin solo, another example of the French composer's art prompting thoughts that he may be in for a much-needed revaluation.

The Schumann and Brahms duets in varying moods demonstrate the almost perfect blend of the two voices and also the thought that must have gone into their preparation so unanimous is the phrasing. Both ladies sing German, as they do French and Italian, with great fluency. The accompaniments, under the direction of the ubiquitous Charles Wadsworth, are all worthy of the singing, Gervase de Peyer's clarinet and Gerard Schwarz's trumpet being worthy of special mention. Joel de Maria is an anagram of Jaime Laredo, who is undoubtedly the violinist concerned here! The proof-reading and ordering of the texts is poor; otherwise I have nothing but praise for the accomplishments displayed in a more than adequate recording.

-- Gramophone [2/1976]

MOZART: OBOE CONCERTOS MIYAMO

Soloists were principals of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy.

3CDS