SCHUBERT: Alfonso und Estrella

LEONCAVALLO: Chamber Songs (Complete)

Puccini, G.: Opera Arias

Bellissimo (Italian Opera)

ART OF BIANCHI, LUIGI ALBERTO

PIAZZOLLA: Maria de Buenos Aires

• Salvatore Accardo is considered to be one of today’s most celebrated violinists. • His career has spanned a half century. • Accardo is dedicated to teaching violin to young musicians; some now established professionals at an international level. • This is the third in a series of DVDs of master classes held by Salvatore Accardo in Cremona (the world capital of Violin Making). • A fourth and last newmaster class recording is scheduled for release soon.

• This and future releases of the new DYNAMIC budget-price series will feature the most important works of Locatelli, Vivialdi, Paganini, and others in a major survey of their most significant virtuosic works for violin. • Italian violinist Luca Fanfoni's discography includes several previous Dynamic releases • NY debut 2002 – Carnegie Hall • Luca Fanfoni is violin professor at the Parma Conservatory

Under the banner of a renewed interest in comic opera - at least as far as the opening titles were concerned - the 2013 edition of Martina Franca's Festival staged the first modern performance of a late work by Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), the "commedia pastorale" in three acts, L'ambizione Delusa, on a libretto by Domenico Canic�. This delightful rural comedy plot has as a counterpart truly wonderful music, rich in beautiful and original melodies which, rather than being harmonized, are set by Leo to contrapuntal accompaniments, showing Leo's great compositional mastery.

Paganini, N.: 15 Quartets for Strings and Guitar (The), Vol.

The Italian pianist Marco Vincenzi, director of the “Centro Studi Musicali Ferruccio Busoni” in Italy, gives an impressive interpretation of these Schubert works transcribed by Busoni and never recorded before. In a single release we are treated to all of Busoni’s Schubert transcriptions. It is delightful music in itself, and masterfully arranged for piano by Ferruccio Busoni. These are some of the first transcriptions made by Busoni, and are receiving here their first recordings on an original Steingraeber piano.

Bach: Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin

This brilliant release of pieces for oboe features virtuoso performer Enrico Calcagni.

VIOLIN MUSIC IN BRAZIL - Villa-Lobos, Krieger, Oswaldo, Mira

In 1874 Tchaikovsky composed an opera, Vakula the Smith, that like many of his operatic works, failed with the public. Years later in 1885, Tchaikovsky resurrected the work, refashioned it, and renamed it Cherevichki, which translates as The Little Shoes. The plot still centers around Vakula, who is in love with the beautiful Oksana, who has him so wrapped around her little finger that she drives him to thoughts of suicide with her indifferent posturing. Oksana informs Vakula he can again win her love only by securing the slippers worn by the Czarina herself, a task Vakula accomplishes with the aid of the captured and subdued devil. Vakula returns triumphant, and Oksana, true to form, declines the slippers, stating that Vakula's love is treasure enough for her. (Gee, thanks a lot, babe!) Yes, of course there are more characters and subplots involved, but you get the gist of the story.

For this tale Tchaikovsky provided his characteristic melodic, passionate, dramatic music, including quite a few tuneful arias. Actually, a lot of it sounds like Swan Lake, and while there may not be passages of haunting despair of the type found in Eugene Onegin (with its Pathétique pre-echoes), there are plenty of emotionally intense moments, especially from Vakula, sung with tremendous feeling by Valerij Popov. Ekaterina Morosova combines the sweet and the tart with a beautiful voice to bring the facile Oksana to life, while her father, Cub, gets a warmly gruff portrayal by Vladimir Ognovenko.

As in Onegin, Act 3 features a seemingly obligatory extended solo for bass, the character in this case being His Serene Highness, sung in a dull but appropriately ceremonial manner by Grigory Osipov. Gennady Rozhdestvensky again proves his long-held Tchaikovsky credentials, reveling in the score's balletic passages and dramatic climaxes, all the while getting the Orchestra of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari to sound like Russian orchestras of old. The live recording balances the voices (including the excellent chorus) and orchestra very well, bringing the drama right into the theater. The included applause reveals a strangely tepid audience response after each act, except at the very end.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com