Vinyl LP pressing. Live Wire/Blues Power is a live album from Albert King recorded in 1968 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Featuring originals and King's rendition of classics, the album demonstrates Albert King's blues prowess. According to Rolling Stone, this album is "Just the unadulterated pure and simple blues."

The period from around 1950 to 1965, when B.B. King released numerous recordings on RPM Records and Kent, can be considered not only the earliest but also one of the most glorious chapters in the career of this blues giant. This album, originally released in 1964, is Kent's ultimate "greatest hits" compilation - the most powerful collection of B.B.'s early masterpieces.

Classical Music

JARMILA NOVOTNÁ OPERA RECITAL • Jarmila Novotná (s); Ezio Pinza (bs); 3 Raoul Jobin (t); 5 Jan Peerce (t); 7 James Melton (t); 9 Martial Singher (bar); 11 Arturo Toscanini 1 , Paul Breisach 2 , Bruno Walter 3 , Frieder Weissmann 4 , Thomas Beecham 5 , Morton Gould 6 , Ettore Panizza 7 , Maurice Abravanel 8 , Frank Black 9 , Alfred Wallenstein 10 , Donald Voorhees 11 , Wilfred Pelletier 12 , cond; Gibner King (pn); 13 Vienna PO; 1 Metropolitan Op O; 14 Victor O; 4 Bell Telephone O 11 • SUPRAPHON 4158, mono (79:02) Live, film, and studio performances 1930–1956


ROSSINI Il barbiere di Siviglia: Una voce poco fà (in Czech). MOZART 1 Die Zauberflöte: Ach, ich fühls. 2,14 Le nozze di Figaro: Non so più; Voi che sapete. 3,14 Don Giovanni: Ah, che mi dice mai; Fuggi il traditor. OFFENBACH Les contes d’Hoffmann: Les oiseaux dans la charmille (in German); 4 Belle nuit,ô nuit d’amour; 4 Elle a fui; 5,14 Voyez l’étrange fantasie … C’est un chanson d’amour. VERDI La traviata: 6 Tra voi; 7,14 Ah, fors’ è lui … Sempre libera; 8 Addio del passato; 9 Parigi, o cara. PUCCINI La bohème: 10 Si mi chiamano Mimi; 11 Mimi! Speravo di trovarvi qui. 12,14 Tosca: Vissi d’arte. SMETANA 10 The Bartered Bride: Ten lásky sen. 4 The Kiss: Hajej, m?j andílku. 13 Rusalka: O lovely moon


Despite a long, distinguished career of 30 years, 16 of them at the Metropolitan Opera, Jarmila Novotná is known largely to record collectors and students of archive performances. Her one and only intersection with popular culture was an appearance in the M-G-M film The Great Caruso (1951), whose big star was tenor Mario Lanza. In Germany, where she appeared for several years and made some fairly popular films ( Fire in the Opera, The Beggar Student, The Bartered Bride, Song of the Lark ), she is perhaps better known, and in her native (now former) Czechoslovakia she is considered to be on a par with Emmy Destinn and Maria Jeritza. In her early years, when she was a high soubrette, the voice was ear-ravishing lovely, even sparkling in sound, but by 1937 her tone was becoming a bit heavier and her upper range less easy; thus, by the time she made her Met debut (January 5, 1940, in La bohème opposite Jussi Björling), the voice had become darker. But she was an excellent stage actress, an outstanding musician (she had already sung such offbeat works as Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, at Otto Klemperer’s Kroll Opera, as well as Krenek’s The Life of Orestes, and Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand ) and a fine stage actress. She was a favorite soprano of such conductors as Zemlinsky, Erich Kleiber, Walter, Szell, and Toscanini.


One thing you can’t miss from the opening track—Rossini’s “Una voce poco fà” sung in Czech—was that she sang with her high range too “open,” much the same way Bidú Sayão did in her “coloratura” years, and with similar results; both had to come down to the lyric range because they blew it out. You can hear the difference immediately after the Rossini aria, in her the “Ach, ich fühls” from Die Zauberflöte in Toscanini’s ill-fated Salzburg performance (ill-fated due to the overloud singing of his Tamino, Helge Rosawenge, and the botched, out-of-key performance of the Queen of the Night, Julie Osvath). Yet you can also hear her phrasing becoming tighter and more musical, less scatter-gun in her approach to producing notes. To modern ears, more used to mezzo Cherubinos, Novotná sounds rather light and very girlish (even Christine Schäfer, one of our few soprano Cherubinos nowadays, sings the music with a darker tone than this), but once again she is very fine, particularly in “Voi, che sapete.” Despite a slightly slower tempo than we are used to today, this performance could pass muster in our modern opera houses. But one does sense a loss from her earlier voice with its bright, open tone: The sound, now slightly covered, is no longer as distinctive. In Donna Elvira’s “Ah, che mi dice mai,” the voice no longer has any “bite” up top, despite splendid singing (and Bruno Walter’s tempo is much too fast for this music), but both soprano and conductor sound better in “Fuggi il traditor.”


The three excerpts from Les contes d’Hoffmann point out the differences well: the very early (1930) “Doll song” in German sung with light, pointed tone (and good trills), the “Barcarolle” and “Elle a fui” (now in French, from 1945) sounding more covered and bit muddy in tone, as is the 1944 duet with Jobin (a rather plain, ugly-sounding vocalist who was the Met’s preferred French tenor of the 1940s). By this point in her career, Novotná was also breaking her phrases a bit more frequently for breath than she had just a few years earlier.


The four Traviata excerpts, ranging in date from 1940 (“Addio del passato”) to 1950 (“Parigi, o cara”) are interesting in showing how Novotná built a character up throughout an opera. She was not the equal of an Olivero or Mattila, but in some moments she was interesting in a general way. In “Ah, fors’ e lui” she sings the descending opening line with the rests between the notes, the way Verdi wrote them, but after the tenor’s lines in “Sempre libera” she makes a mistake, correcting herself quickly. There is, however, no feeling in her “Addio del passato,” which is also conducted much too quickly by Abravanel. The voice is so dark by the time of her 1950 “Parigi, o cara” that it is almost unrecognizable as the same singer, and there is no feeling of loss or desperation in her voice. She might as well have been singing about her missing dog. (To be fair, however, her partner in this duet, James Melton, sings with no expression whatever.) There is a bit of expression in her “Si, mi chiamano Mimì” from 1943, but again, it’s just a sort of “generic Puccini sound,” nothing particularly personal in her tone or expression. The Mimì-Marcello duet with Singher (a rather gray-sounding and uninteresting baritone who was the Met’s French baritone counterpart to Jobin) shows, once again, Novotná’s generic, all-purpose acting style.


Although Novotná does not give out any more emotionally in the Czech operatic excerpts, the voice does sound more comfortable than in Italian or French. Hers is one of the better performances I’ve heard of the Bartered Bride aria, and the best I’ve heard of the aria from The Kiss. But I still have to rate Elfride Trötschel, Zinka Milanov, and Renée Fleming better in “O lovely moon” from Rusalka. (Novotná’s performance is also cut, missing one section.)


All in all this is an interesting cross-section of performances by a now-neglected soprano, though I’d much rather have had one of her excerpts from the German Bartered Bride film in place of the Tosca aria.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

It really is a problem, choosing between these two recordings. (Giordano: Andrea Chénier / Pavarotti, Caballé, Chailly) It might seem sensible to start with the tenor in the title-role, and here my strong inclination would be to plump for RCA and Domingo: he is in splendid voice, with a touch of nobility to his manner that makes for a convincing portrayal of a poet. Pavarotti (for Chailly on Decca) begins with a rather leather-lunged Improvviso, but he later finds poetry in the role as well, especially when responding to his soprano, Caballe who is rather stretched by the more exhausting reaches of her role and sounds audibly grateful for the occasional opportunities he gives her to float rather than belt a high-lying phrase. And besides, Pavarotti is an Italian tenor, and his Italianate sense of line adds 1 per cent or so of elegance to some phrases that even Domingo cannot match. Caballe does many things beautifully, and her fine-spun pianissimos and subtle shadings only occasionally sound mannered, but the role is undeniably half-a-size too big for her. So it is for Scotto, you might say, and a hint of strain is audible once or twice, in her timbre rather than her phrasing. It is her phrasing, indeed, that tips the balance back to RCA: Scotto is as subtle a vocalist as Caballe, but she gives meaning and eloquence to every phrase without ever breaking the long line, which one cannot always say of the Spanish soprano. Matters are about even as far as the baritones are concerned: Milnes acts admirably, but refrains from over-acting, and the voice is rich and characterful. Nucci for Chailly is a bit less compelling dramatically, but the voice strikes me as more integrated, more even, than Milnes's, and thus, again, is more Italianate in its line. Decca field a sumptuous supporting cast (Astrid Varnay, worn of voice but full of character as the Countess, Christa Ludwig, no less, in the ten lines of Madelon's part, Tom Krause as a fine Roucher, Giorgio Tadeo an implacable Mathieu), but RCA's striking Bersi, vividly characterized Irtcredibile, and their Roucher, too, are not outmatched (only their Madelon, both fruity and acid—a grapefruit of a voice—is disappointing). A lot of people will enjoy the huge energy and bustle of Levine's direction. It is vividly characterful, but to my taste a shade exhausting and over-assertive. The flow of the music seems more natural in Chailly's hands, and orchestral detail is clearer. The Decca recording, too, is warmer than the RCA, which has a slight edge to it. Even so, for Scotto's sake and to a slightly lesser extent for Domingo's, I think I would choose RCA, but that would mean rejecting Chailly, Pavarotti and the Decca recording … As I say, it is really a problem.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [9/1989]

In this 1983 performance, Maazel conducts Beethoven's liberation opera full of energy and precision, partnered by a highly dramatic Leonore, a Florestan in heroic voice and the Vienna Philharmonic in brilliant form.

Classical Music

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935, Estonia) has succeeded in bringing sacred music back to a broader audience, and away from the confines of the church service, more than almost any other contemporary composer. The meditative character of his works, and his return to the simplest and most basic musical forms, convey moments of intense spirituality. Even before his emigration from the Soviet Union to Austria and then to Germany, Pärt had already invented what he termed the tintinnabuli style of composition (from the Latin word for a bell). He produced an early and important example of this style in 1977 with the "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten", scored for string orchestra and bell, and it is also a key feature of the three great choral works that form the greater part of this new BR-KLASSIK CD "Arvo Pärt: Live", namely the "Seven Magnificat Antiphons" for mixed choir a capella, the large-scale oratorio "Cecilia, vergine romana" for mixed choir and orchestra, and the vocal work „Litany – Prayers of St John Chrysostom for Each Hour of the Day and Night” for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra. Also included on this CD is the "Collage on B-A-C-H" for strings, oboe, harpsichord and piano. Composed in 1964, before Pärt's aesthetic reorientation, it is one of his most famous works.

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REVIEW:

Despite the 11-year span of these live recordings and four different churches used as locations, the album’s aural impression is uniform, the sound very good, and the singing crisp and up to the high standards of this phenomenal professional chorus.

– ClassicsToday

Named a 'Choice' recording by BBC Music Magazine upon release, this popular recording of seventeenth century vocal music features mezzo-soprano Catherine King and lutenist Jacob Heringman with tenor Charles Daniels. Originally released in 1999, 'Airs de cour' has been re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series which offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalogue. The listener is transported to the French court in a program of courtly airs and solo lute pieces, the latter a suitable complement to the airs and the lost ideals of the courtly society they reflect. Both the self-indulgent texts of these songs and their suave and rhythmically evasive melodies, reflect a society rich in excess, intrigue and dissembling, all the more fascinating for being so distant, no less impressive for being so introverted. Well schooled in period performance, all the performers pay due attention to the authenticity of pronunciation and ornamentation for which scant records remain. 'O dieux je ne s�ais pas' is a rare example where an ornamented variant of the melody is included in the manuscript revealing a further level of riches in these songs. Catherine King is acknowledged as one of the most versatile mezzo-sopranos of her generation with an impressive breadth of repertoire. Jacob Heringman has established himself as one of the world's most respected and most innovative solo lute players. Catherine King and Jacob Heringman have made numerous appearances together in festivals throughout Europe, as well as broadcasting frequently for the BBC and for WDR in Cologne. Charles Daniels is an English tenor, particularly noted for his performances of baroque music. He is a frequent soloist with The King's Consort, and has made over 25 recordings with the ensemble.

Many things come to mind when considering the great flowering of the arts during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, among them the plays and poetry of Shakespeare and the magnificent sacred choral music masterpieces of composers such as Byrd and Tallis. But there also was abundant activity on the secular music front, most notably the incomparable lute songs of John Dowland and the lovely works for viol consort and for solo voice and viols by Byrd, Mundy, Farrant, Parsons, and many others. This recording, featuring the clear, expressive voice of Catherine King and the well-tuned, perfectly matched instruments of the Rose Consort of Viols, is devoted to the latter two categories--including theatrical pieces, dances, and some of the most melancholy--and beautiful--songs in the repertoire. King's rich mezzo is an ideal complement to the warm, reedy viols, and the instrumental playing must receive special mention for its sensitivity and tasteful style. This recording will provide an appealing introduction to one of the most significant and accessible genres of early music; and it will satisfy confirmed fans as well. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

This world premiere recording of Schmidt's Notre Dame is dominated not by Paris or Quasimodo, but by Esmeralda, played by Gwyneth Jones. She is the center of the stories which make up the plot and the Esmeralda motif is the principal theme of the opera.

DOWLAND: Consort Music and Songs

The best Jamaican musicians brought a substantial, masterful contribution to jazz. Their belated recognition reveals truly original, spirited and sophisticated styles. At long last, the rare, little known albeit greatest recordings of the founders of Jamaican jazz are gathered here, fully annotated in a 32-page booklet by Bruno Blum. They include strong personalities such as Wilton Gaynair, Cecil Lloyd, Billy Cooke; Ernest Ranglin’s quirky guitar playing and groundbreaking afro-jazz by Count Ossie’s drum orchestra, as well as the legendary Joe Harriott, Roland Alphonso, Tommy McCook, Don Drummond and Rico Rodriguez. These musicians, who were about to create ska and reggae, breathe stunning life into swing, mento, blues, hard bop and soul jazz. PATRICK FReMEAUX

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, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible 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.

Blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Earl King, a native of New Orleans, was one of the coterie of influential artists who helped create the distinctive style of R&B which characterised the music of the Crescent City, and which, along with the work of other New Orleans artists like Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint provided one of the musical bedrocks for the soul and R&B boom of the '60s. This 41-track 2-CD comprises the A and B sides of just about all of his releases as a solo artist during this first decade of his career, from his debut for the Savoy label in 1953, and including his subsequent releases during this era on the Specialty, Ace, Vin, Rex and Imperial imprints through to 1962, after which there was a hiatus in his recording activities until later in the 60s. It includes his R&B hits "Those Lonely, Lonely Nights" and "Always a First Time", and his classic and much-covered songs "Come On" and "Trick Bag" - "Come On" was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix on his "Electric Ladyland" album, and other songs of his were covered by the likes of Lee Dorsey, Robert Palmer, The Neville Brothers and Dr. John. This anthology represents a thorough overview of his output during this time, and is a highly entertaining showcase for his distinctive brand of up-front New Orleans R&B

Classical Music

Continuing with Harbinger Records’ acclaimed series of albums devoted to jazz pianist, composer, Broadway songwriter, and black music pioneer Eubie Blake, we proudly present the original demo to the proposed Broadway musical ‘Shuffle Along of 1950.’ Harbinger’s recording of Sissle and Blake singing the score to the original production of ‘Shuffle Along’ won the Grammy Award for its brilliant liner notes by Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom, authors of an upcoming biography of Eubie Blake to be published by Oxford University Press. They are repeating their assignment for this recording. Also included is a bonus track featuring remastering of the only surviving acetate of a historical “Salute to Ruth King.” Ruth King was a famous Cleveland DJ who celebrated black musicians. And such notables as Sissle and Blake and the legendary WC Handy, composer of St. Louis Blues, play for Ms. King. Several songs from the original ‘Shuffle Along’ are included as are new songs written especially for this production. Later, other musicians augmented the score, and these songs are also included in this rare recording.

Vinyl LP pressing. The mono version of this 1962 collection featured five hits including "Stand by Me", "Ecstasy", "First Taste of Love", "Here Comes the Night", and the title track, "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)" and showcases the talents of the unforgettable king. Younger fans might recognize "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)" as sampled in de la Soul's "A Little Bit of Soap" or KRS-One's "Bring It Back."

Includes work(s) by Franz Krommer. Soloists: Nancy Ambrose-King, Solomia Soroka, Natalia Khoma, Eva Stern, Joseph Kam.

This unusual but beautiful song cycle was created by drawing a collection of arias by J.S. Bach and framing them within the movements of his B minor orchestral suite. Two arias are taken from the Matthew Passion, two are from Eastertide cantatas, and the majestic Agnus Dei is taken from his most outstanding choral work, the B minor mass. It is believed that Bach’s incredible writing for alto voice was inspired by his wife, Anna, who was herself an accomplished alto singer. Catherine King performs these works alongside the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra. Catherine has been described as “bell-voiced… with firm clear tone, elegant phrasing and agile, precise coloratura’. (Gramophone)

Classical Music

Internationally renowned composer and guitarist Kaki King co-produced her tenth album, Modern Yesterdays, with sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson and recording engineer Arjan Miranda. It's her first full-length studio project since the 2015 release of The Neck Is A Bridge to the Body ("bursting with masterclass talent," as reviewed in PopMatters), and her first to be recorded almost entirely on acoustic guitar. Rich in post-classical, jazz and blues-flavored motifs, as well as electronic and electro-acoustic influences, Modern Yesterdays mines a poignant, meditative arc that not only fits the mood of these turbulent times, but also once again establishes King as a tirelessly inventive composer whose imagination extends well beyond the sonic limits of her chosen instrument.

Composer Jonny King-piano (Joshua Redman, Bobby Watson, Ralph Moore) Mark Turner-ts, Vincent Herring-as & ss, Ira Coleman-bass, Billy Drummond-drums.

Double vinyl LP pressing.