Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This new album is a stroke of luck. For 15 years Nina Stemme has been reinvigorating Wagner’s female roles with the dramatic soul and vocal power previously attained perhaps only by her compatriot Birgit Nilsson. Nina Stemme’s role interpretations are met with great acclaim among both audience and critics, and 2013 she was the first recipient of the Opera Award for Best Female Singer. Nina Stemme was appointed Swedish Court Singer 2006, Austrian Kammersängerin 2012, and she has been selected ”Singer of the Year” twice, 2005 and 2012, in the German magazine Opernwelt. On this release she performs works from Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, Hollander, and Die Walkure.

Andris Nelsons: Genius on Fire
52-minute documentary and bonus material, 3 excerpts (16 minutes)

Andris Nelsons has never 'done' indifference: as a child he practised the trumpet until his lips bled; as a youth he studied singing and learnt taekwondo; he became an orchestral trumpet player and at 24 was appointed the General Music Director of the Latvian National Opera in Riga. Seven years later he was elected Chief Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He thus stands today on the podium of the orchestra that Sir Simon Rattle moulded for almost 20 years. Their repertoire has acquired new, brilliant additions under Nelsons: highlights being, for example, his Tchaikovsky and Strauss [recorded for Orfeo]. He is also a regular guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and has conducted just about every great orchestra in the world. From the 2014/15 season onwards Nelsons will be the Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and will thus be at the head of one of the USA’s “big five” orchestras. Who is this man who has enjoyed such an astonishing career so early? This is the topic of the film “Genius on fire”. “He doesn’t do things by halves, not in rehearsals either. He is always full of intensity” says the trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger of the conductor. “Every single note in the score is turned into music. With him, everything is important”. During orchestral rehearsals, Andris Nelsons speaks or sings, in his trained bass voice, in an English-German onomatopoeic linguistic mishmash. To describe the basic atmosphere of a musical motive he constructs verbal pictures and tells stories, clever, witty stories. He uses his hands vigorously – his whole body in fact – in order to make clear to the orchestra what he wants. As a conductor without the affectations of a 'maestro', Andris Nelsons stands for a new generation whose leadership qualities lie in their ability to sweep people off their feet. For two years, the film director Astrid Bscher and her camera followed this exciting, young artist. She travelled with Andris Nelsons to his home city of Riga, met his parents, his friends, his partner Kristine Opolais and experienced the conductor on his worldwide search for a new home. The result is a 52-minute portrait that tells not just of music, but of how what we experience is reflected in it. It shows how a serious young man deals with the hype surrounding him, and how he grows and develops as a human being.

REVIEW:

MOZART Symphonies: No. 25; No. 40. Piano Concerto No. 14 • Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond; Friedrich Gulda (pn); Concertgebouw O • ORFEO 795 091, mono (69:37) Live: Salzberg 7/2/1958

This concert places the E? Piano Concerto (K 449) between the two G-Minor Symphonies (K 183 and K 550), resulting in an artfully constructed Mozart program. For a monaural recording, the sound quality is good, although a bit damped. Audience noise is not present except between movements and as applause at the end of each work.

Sawallisch’s beat is strong throughout, and orchestral clarity is good enough to allow part-writing transparency. Tempos are generally rapid, so that nothing ever drags. The opening movement tempo of K 550, however, could use a little braking. Exposition repeats are observed in the first and last movements of K 183 and in the first movement of K 550. The last movement of K 550, however, is played without repeats, and this leaves impressions of imbalance and unfinished business. Obviously, the conductor thought otherwise, and I bow to his judgment.

Friedrich Gulda at 28 and Wolfgang Sawallisch at 35 were, in 1958, among the most promising young pianists and conductors of the time. This account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 14 is a living example of that promise. The conductor reached great heights in the coming years, eventually being named conductor laureate of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The pianist was a maverick with a penchant for challenging the musical establishment and daring to display a strong interest in jazz. He eventually faded as a performer who was once sought-after by the more traditional concertgoers. His death in 2000 at age 69 revived interest in his early recordings. In the Piano Concerto, this disc offers a snapshot of promise of two artists in vintage Mozart. Twenty years earlier in a studio recording, 35-year-old Rudolf Serkin and conductor Adolf Busch and the Adolf Busch Chamber Players offered this Concerto in a different, more quickly paced style, but still as vintage Mozart. In both performances, there is no tempo tampering, no dynamics distortion, and no excesses of expression—there is just beautiful Mozart expressed by beautiful phrase shaping. The closest to these standards in a modern recording is Murray Perahia’s with the English Chamber Orchestra. Perahia’s tempos are closer to Serkin’s than to Gulda’s in the first movement, but closer to Gulda’s than to Serkin’s in the last movement. Where Serkin and Perahia perform with chamber orchestras, Gulda performs with a full, but suitably reduced, orchestra that Sawallisch never allows to overpower either the music or the piano sound.

This is a memorable Salzberg Festival program from which one comes away with a deeper understanding of Mozart. This is a very good disc to have.

FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

Among the opera performances that deserve to be labeled “historic” is the opening night of the new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio unveiled at the Vienna State Opera on 5 November 1955. The accolade is deserved not least because this was the first time that the curtain had gone up in the rebuilt house since wartime bombing raids had reduced it to rubble at the end of the Second World War.

Of course, this says nothing about the musical quality of the occasion, but the present live recording, released to coincide with the start of the new regime under Dominique Meyer and Franz Welser-Möst, allows today’s listeners to judge this quality for themselves. Then, as now, the chorus and orchestra of the Vienna State Opera enjoy the highest reputation and have no equal anywhere else in the world, and under their then director, Karl Böhm, they amply demonstrated their credentials on this gala first night in 1955.

For Böhm, this was the start of a conducting marathon, for the house reopened with no fewer than seven new productions within a matter of only a few days. His Fidelio is notable for its taut and even breathtakingly impulsive tempos, clearly intensifying the impression of a suicide mission on the part of the “angelic Leonore” that Martha Mödl characterized so magnificently throughout this period. Unfortunately listeners can form only a limited impression of her acting, which was every bit as intense as her singing. This was the first time that she had rescued Anton Dermota as her husband, Florestan, his refined singing giving the lie to the widespread belief that the part requires a youthful heldentenor to do it justice. The rest of the cast is likewise made up of legendary names: with her distinctive lyric soprano voice, Irmgard Seefried is almost under-parted as Marzelline, while her father, Rocco, is played by the great bass Ludwig Weber, who only a few days later took on the heroic baritone role of Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten. The villainous Don Pizarro is sung by Paul Schöffler, who that same week shone as Hans Sachs alongside Seefried’s Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. All these singers represent the sort of ensemble spirit that characterizes every great artist and ensures that performances like this one at the Vienna State Opera are always great occasions. - Orfeo

Although Knappertsbusch conducted “Lohengrin” many times, until now no recording by him has been issued, so the welcome discovery of this live performance from Munich fills a gap in the discography... We first hear Knappertsbusch pushing the Prelude on, refusing to linger but instead urging the singing strings to create what is almost a sense of tension and expectation, culminating in the great chordal climax by the brass. The Act II Prelude, too, is wonderfully played, the orchestra producing a dark, brooding sound proleptic of Ortrud’s calling upon the “Entweihte Götter!” --MusicWeb

Classical Music

The whims of opera fans are legendary, and if justice were to be served, soprano Krassimira Stoyanova would be as famous as Anna Netrebko (perhaps) and Angela Gheorghiu (definitely). Hers is a grand sound, with metal behind it, formidable pitch-accuracy, and fine insights into the characters she’s portraying. She eschews exaggeration–possibly to her detriment: she easily could milk many of the arias here (Adriana’s opening monolog, Manon Lescaut’s final-act spiel) for that extra, Olivero/Scotto emotion, but she sticks very closely to written note values and dynamics. Her use of portamento is echt Italian, and her voice is made for this big-boned music when need be, and she can sing sweetly as well: her Liu is lovely, as is the start of “Un bel di”.

There’s great warmth in her singing of Adriana’s two arias; her “La mamma morta” is filled with tragedy, and she sings the heck out of Fidelia’s hand-wringing aria from Puccini’s Edgar. The lengthy scene from Mascagni’s Lodoletta is a welcome rarity, and she’s thoroughly involving. Wally’s aria may lack Callas’ unspeakable sadness, but it reaches great heights; ditto for her “Vissi d’arte”.

I get the feeling that if her conductor had been more of a dramatist than the accompanist Pavel Baleff is here, this fine CD would have worked its way into “magnificent”. I’d like to add that a bit more hysteria/overt emotionalism would not hurt–I saw her Aida live at the Met last season and admired it greatly, but even then I wished she had been a touch more earthy. As it is, this CD gives great pleasure and is well recorded. Stoyanova’s is a voice to hear.

– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

The Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) studied both piano and composition with his great countryman Mozart, and was also a friend of Beethoven, of which aspects of these relationships we can hear all throughout his septets. We can hear, too, why Robert Schumann's generation praised him so highly. As heard in these recordings, here is a Classical master on the cusp of the Romantic era, original in instrumentation and technique and subtle in his harmonies.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music