Classical Music

Classical Music

The Swedish baritone Peter Mattei has made a formidable reputation for himself performing at the most prestigious opera houses in the world: the Metropolitan, Teatro alla Scala and Covent Garden, to mention but a few. He first came to the attention of an international audience when Peter Brook selected him as his Don Giovanni, for an Aix-en-Provence production which was later filmed. Something of a 'director's opera singer', Mattei has also worked with Ingmar Bergman, Michael Haneke and Patrice Chereau, and regularly astounds audiences with his exceptional acting skills, coupled as they are with a voice of rare beauty. In the recording studio he is, however, a more rarely seen guest. On this his first and long-awaited disc of arias, he revels in the rich opportunities offered by the baritone literature, performing a selection of his favourite arias and roles. Lovelorn young men and cynical libertines, friends faithful unto death and innocent victims of oppression - all of these are brought to life as one of today's finest operatic baritones displays his entire range with the eminent support of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Lawrence Renes on the podium

Britten' song cycles form a substantial and important part of his work. The Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo belong to the period when Britten had begun to set foreign languages in an attempt to broaden his musical horizons.

Remarkably, Naxos now has two very good recordings of Britten's still-too-rarely played Violin Concerto. The main reason for its rarity probably has to do with the fact that it ends softly, but it's a magnificent work. Although this performance, previously issued on Collins Classics, is very good, with Lorraine McAslan a very capable exponent of the solo part, I marginally prefer Rebecca Hirsch's previous outing for this label, both for her more shapely handling of the final passacaglia as well as for the highly apt coupling: the Cello Symphony. Here you get two rarities: Canadian Carnival and the colorful Mont Juic Suite, a collaborative effort between Britten and Lennox Berkeley.


As with all the releases in this series, Steuart Bedford conducts superbly, and the sonics are excellent--and Naxos was right to make all of the Collins Britten series available again, even given the inevitable duplication. Ideally, of course, you will need the composer's own Decca recording of the Violin Concerto, with Mark Lubotsky as soloist; but the truth is that there are no poor recordings of this work, and choice will ultimately come down to personal taste and the question of couplings (Britten's own recording has his Piano Concerto with Richter as soloist, pretty tough to beat). The bottom line: you can't go wrong no matter what your choice happens to be.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Benjamin Britten was throughout his life drawn to folk-song, possessing a special gift for wordsetting and vocal writing. This second disc of the complete folk song arrangements focuses on the orchestral versions and the volumes for guitar and harp.

Steeped in an atmosphere of ancient Scottish musical tradition, Benjamin Britten' setting of texts by Robert Burns in a Birthday Hansel was his final song-cycle.

Benjamin Britten was a viola player as well as a pianist and wrote a significant body of chamber music for stringed instruments. The works on this recording - which contains important world premiere recordings - were written between 1925 and 1937, with the exception of the masterpiece for viola, Lachrymae. Each reveals some characteristic aspect of Britten's voice, from the variety and wit of the Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 to the little-known but absorbingly imaginative Reveille and the remarkably assured 1930 Elegy, written when he was just seventeen.

Britten, B.: War Requiem / Penderecki, K.: Threnody To the V

Vocal Recital: Schreier, Peter - BACH, J.S. / HANDEL, G.F. /

Cello Recital: Bohorquez, Claudio - DEBUSSY, C. / PROKOFIEV,

This is a re-issue of one of the bestsellers of ORFEO's catalogue. It contains the Austrian premiere of the Britten opera, in the rarely performed original version in four acts. The baritone Bo Skovhus, whose international career began in Vienna in the early 1990s, gave a perfect Billy Budd - for the last time in his career, as he considered himself too old for the role at 40.

Classical Music

On this second disc of the Emperor Quartet’s survey of Britten’s music for string quartet, Alla Marcia appears as an interlude between the first and last of Britten’s three published string quartets. The first disc in this series of three was released in 2010, and included a performance of the Second String Quartet described as “stupendous” in Classic FM Magazine and “magnificent” in Scherzo, while a Fono Forum reviewer likened it to “an entire cosmos of colours and nuances.”

Classical Music