Classical Music

Classical Music

Opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the struggling company that launched her career. The opening night performance of the long-lost opera she discovered falls on the same night as the home team's first National Championship game (Go, Grizzlies!). The fate of the company hangs in the balance as Arden discovers that greatness is truly a matter of heart.

2021 release. Melancholy Grace is a poetic collection of keyboard music from the 16th and 17th centuries by composers from Italy, the Netherlands, England and Germany. The French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has conceived the album as a sombre, but eloquent dialogue between two contrasting voices: melancholy conveyed through chromaticism and melancholy conveyed through the musical expression of tears and weeping. Among the eight 'chromatic' composers are Frescobaldi, Luigi Rossi, Luzzaschi and Sweelinck, while the 'weeping' composers are Dowland, Bull, Gibbons, Valente and Scheidemann (who has an anonymous piece attributed to him). Dowland's Lachrimae Verae (True Tears) closes the program, but in some senses forms the conceptual starting point for the Melancholy Grace.

With this album of works by Sch�nberg, Zemlinsky and Webern, (key figures in Vienna's musical life in the early 20th century) the Quatuor Arod honours the woman who became Arnold Schoenberg's wife in 1901. Mathilde was Zemlinsky's sister and the dedicatee of her husband's 'String Quartet No. 2', an innovative work in both it's tonal language and it's integration of a soprano - here Elsa Dreisig. It was completed in the summer of 1908, a tumultuous period in the Sch�nbergs' marriage.'

CD + DVD. "Beyond being a masterpiece, Der Freisch�tz marks a starting point as one of the first - if not the first - great German Romantic operas," says Laurence Equilbey. She conducts highlights from Weber's exhilarating, ground-breaking work in both audio and video format, recorded live in Paris. The vivid period instruments of the Insula Orchestra are joined by the Accentus Choir and a cast led with poetry and radiance by tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac and soprano Johanni van Oostrum. The stylish, suitably magical staging is by Cl�ment Debailleul and Rapha�l Navarro of Compagnie 14:20.

The work of Louis Vierne, organist at Notre-Dame de Paris and master of the symphonic instrument, is reflected here in all it's rich variety: from the poetic 'Pi�ces en style libre' to his final masterpiece, the monumental 'Sixth Symphony', via the virtuosic and world-famous 'Pi�ces de fantaisie'. All are performed here on the little-recorded instrument of the Parisian church of Saint-Fran�ois-Xavier by it's organist Gaston Litaize, who studied with Vierne and went on to become a prolific composer himself. The recordings have been remastered in 24-bit/192kHz sound from the original tapes.

Soprano Elsa Dreisig follows her debut album Miroir(s) with a recital of songs in collaboration with pianist Jonathan Ware. Taking it's title, Morgen, from one of Richard Strauss's best-loved lieder, it interweaves his music (notably the Four Last Songs) with thematically linked works by Sergey Rachmaninov and Henri Duparc. As Elsa Dreisig says, "Morgen is an inner journey through the seasons of the soul."

Two of today's most brilliant tenors, Michael Spyres and Lawrence Brownlee, celebrate the art of the trailblazing star singers of Rossini's time. Amici e Rivali - 'Friends and Rivals' - comprises arias, duets, and trios from seven of the composer's operas, written between 1815 and 1826: the most famous comic opera of them all, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and six serious dramatic works Otello, Armida, La donna del Lago, Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra, Le Si�ge de Corinthe, and, the rarest title here, Ricciardo e Zoraide.

This recording features two major works of the chamber repertoire - one by Anton�n Dvor�k, the other by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The two composers were contemporaries, born just a year apart: Tchaikovsky in 1840 and Dvor�k in 1841. In the 1880s (Tchaikovsky's Op.50 dates from 1881, Dvor�k's Op.65 from 1883), neither man was known for his chamber music - Tchaikovsky's reputation was based on his opera and ballet scores (works such as Eugene Onegin and Swan Lake), while Dvor�k had made his name with works influenced by Slavonic folk music (the Moravian Duets and Slavonic Dances). Each of these two piano trios therefore has it's own unique character, and both works signal new directions in the style of their respective composers.

For me, Strauss is one of the greatest composers," Diana Damrau has said. "The way he handles the soprano voice is a joy. And to be able to sing his music with my voice feels like coming home." The centrepiece of this album of Strauss songs is the sublime Vier letzte Lieder, in which Damrau - born and trained in Bavaria - joins forces with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and it's long-standing Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons. Her partner in a tempting and diverse selection of songs with piano is Helmut Deutsch. "Not only is Strauss's music gorgeous," says Damrau, "there's the way he combines words and notes - and the psychology.

In Alan Curtis's scrupulously detailed performance, Joyce DiDonato's gleaming legato and coloratura are upstaged by the elegance of Karina Gauvin's Ginevra. While diDonato offers recklessly inventive... - BBC Music Magazine.

Recording is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. One withdraws from the world for a brief while - an eternity -, examines a piece of music and is cross-examined by it in turn, then gives evidence before the microphones. It's as if I've played out my life through my recordings, each one representing a significant, if not seminal, stage in my development as an artist. Thirty years of recording. A discography built from stones of many different, and sometimes clashing, colours, but a discography with a broad and solid structure, a kind of self-portrait. If a good half of this set is taken from Alexandre Tharaud's published discography, the rest is made up by hitherto unreleased music. Some did not make it on to the album they were originally intended for, while others were recorded for fun at studio sessions over the years. When you're recording," the pianist explains, "you're always looking for the perfect take, where everything flows perfectly. But the pressure of the microphone doesn't help... So sometimes, recording a piece unplanned allows you to rediscover that spontaneity".

Box set containing 33 CDs and 19 DVDs. Natalie Dessay is a dazzling opera singer. She is also an actress of intensity and magnetism, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her charisma, captured on the stages of the world's great opera houses and in the recording studio, illuminates the complete operas and recitals of arias and scenes in this collection. From Mozart's furious Queen of the Night to Debussy's enigmatic M�lisande... Offenbach's robotic Olympia to Strauss's flirtatious Zerbinetta and Delibes' devoted Lakm�... Handel's mercurial Cleopatra to Donizetti's boisterous Marie and desperate Lucia... Thomas's fragile Oph�lie to Massenet's capricious Manon and Verdi's passionate, tragic Violetta... Natalie Dessay proves irresistible in repertoire that spans four centuries and a wealth of musical and dramatic possibilities.

A transformative force in historically informed performance, Ton Koopman is renowned as a conductor, harpsichordist and organist. In 1979, aged 35, he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in the city where he had studied with the great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. Drawing on an international pool of players, the ensemble soon gained a reputation for flexibility, colour and expressivity as it explored the music of such composers as the Bach family, Handel, Telemann and Buxtehude.