This extensive release features all of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera recordings live from the Bolshoi Theater. Made between 1936 and 1963, these recordings showcase not only one of the finest venues in the world, but one of the world’s finest composers. Tchaikovsky wrote his first opera, The Voyevoda, in 1867. After a disastrous premiere, the self-critical composer burnt the entire manuscript of the work. Luckily, most of the score has been reconstructed from the individual parts. It is included in the first portion of this release for modern listeners to make up their own minds about the music. Luckily, his feelings about his first opera didn’t stop him from pursuing more within the genre. As a composer of opera, Tchaikovsky could seek inspiration in centuries of operatic tradition in Western Europe, but the history of the opera in Russia had only just begun a few years before he was born. While Tchaikovsky welcomed the ideas of Western Europe, he faced rivalry from “The Mighty Handful” of nationalist Russian composers. Despite a rocky first few operas, Tchaikovsky went on to find later success as he walked a middle-road between operatic tradition and Russian nationalism. While his operas never found the success that his ballets did, this release proves that they are the works of a brilliant mind.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Peter Schreier took his time before tackling this "difficult piece", rarely performed by tenors. His legendary live recording of February 15, 1985 with pianist Sviatoslav Richter is a striking debut and a unique document. In the ensuing years he chose to interpret Schubert's Winter Journey with Andr�s Schiff as a sympathetic accompanist. In his 70th birthday year, Schreier returned once again to the studio in March 2005 to record the version of Winter Journey arranged for voice and string quartet by the Kassel composer Jens Josef. At the height of his powers, he then retired from the stage.

Born in Venice in 1946, he studied music, medicine and archaeology. He qualified as a medical doctor but then trained as a conductor under Hans Swarowsky in Vienna. He was appointed a lecturer in contemporary and electronic music in Venice in 1972. His international musical career began with a variety of compositional activities (chamber and orchestral music, premiere of the opera Lou Salome in Munich in 1981). His conducting career took off in the mid-1970s with opera productions and performances at the major opera houses of the world including Vienna, London, New York, Milan, Florence, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Dresden. Sinopoli performed and recorded with the great orchestras of Europe and America and made guest appearances in Vienna with the Philharmonic and the State Opera, in Milan at La Scala and in Japan. From 1983 to 1987 he was principal conductor of the orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. From 1984 he was principal conductor, and from 1987 to 1994 music director, of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. He was a Bayreuth Festival conductor from 1985 to 2000. Giuseppe Sinopoli began working with the Dresden Staatskapelle in 1987, and was its principal conductor from 1992 to 2001. He was appointed designated GMD of the Saxonian State Opera from 2003. He made numerous award-winning recordings and toured Europe, North America and the Far East with the Staatskapelle. Giuseppe Sinopoli died in Berlin in 2001.

A part of the legacy of one of the most popular of all lyric tenors. The music presented in this extensive release features Fritz Wunderlich in recordings that come from 1955 to 1962. It was the sacred music of the preclassical masters that shaped Fritz Wunderlich's vocal and artistic development early in his career. During the final decade of his unfairly short life, he gained the highest respect as a Mozart singer, displayed lyrical brilliance in works by J.S. Bach, Schubert, and Gustav Mahler, and brought melodic tenderness to Bel Canto and light opera roles. Fritz Wunderlich has become a favorite of opera lovers the world over, even decades after his untimely death. He is heard on this release alongside a litany of other fine ensembles and vocalists, including Peter Pears, Otto Wiener, Hans-Joachim Rotzsch, the Munchener Bach-Choir & Munchener Bach-Orchester, and many more.

Classical Music

Wieland Wagner's "Siegfried" live in Bayreuth (1955) Modl is present from the very first note, and, just for a moment, Wagner's idea of the union of man and woman into the perfect human being seems to have become reality. Brunnhilde's visions of fear are then of oppressive intensity, followed by moments of peaceful illusion and elemental power, before she unconditionally relinquishes her divinity. In her autobiography So war mein Weg, Modl confesses that the Siegfried-Brunnhilde interplay was the most difficult role she experienced in the entire Ring: "The part is short, but it is always a third above my register. I had to be particularly careful", something she had to do most of the time. What Wieland Wagner appreciated about her was that "her singing, personality, and acting formed an inseparable unit", most probably the reason he said of her Brunnhilde: "There are none like you!"

Bruckner requests a favourable reception for his Fourth Symphony, commending the work in these terms: "It is the most accessible and popular of my works and was a huge success when performed in Vienna. As a consequence of a recent letter from Munich, our Emperor has begun to take an interest in me."

Joseph Suder was an excellent pianist. In his works the piano remained an expressive instrument and did not become (as has been the case in the works of many other twentieth century composers) a sort of a percussion instrument. In these piano pieces, works representing a cross section of his compositional output from 1911 to 1951, Suder is concerned with extending the expressive range oft he piano. Elements of very different character can be found here: dance and lyrical-serious song or humor and onomatopoeia. Although Suder proceeds from the precedents of the tradition like the dance types of the baroque, the Romantic scherzo, or the Song without Words, he transforms the tradition into something new by compressing form and expression in these short pieces and thus penetrating to what is essential.

On July 24th, Gerd Schaller conducted the Philharmonia Festiva in a performance of the Bruckner Symphony No. 9 in a "four movement version with Finale supplemented from original sources and completed by Gerd Schaller." The performance took place in the Ebrach Abbey in Ebrach, Germany as part of the Ebracher Musiksommer. As with Schaller's other Bruckner performances at Ebrach, the concert was recorded by Bavarian Radio Studio Franken and will be released on CD this December on the Profil label.

Gerd Schaller’s completion and performance gained long applause, the conductor repeatedly called back to take a further bow, and to my ears succeeded wonderfully in its aim of presenting a completed Ninth as a great musical event and a shattering, revelatory spiritual journey. Ken Ward on the original concert.

Anton Bruckner's Second Symphony is certainly one of the most interesting symphonies in the cycle, even for musical amateurs, due to a number of special features. Inside Bruckner 2024: The complete symphonies in all essential versions.

Katerina Izmaylova - Symphony for full Orchestra after the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk“ by Shostakovich, arranged by Benjamin Basner.

"The Katerina Izmaylova symphony is much more than an opera arrangement. It intensifies opera music to instrumental music, to a symphony exposing the perversion of power in a very direct and therefore highly penetrating way." Franzpeter Messmer

The preserved “miraculous harp:” 475 years of orchestra history – and a whole century is there to be listened to. This CD box is an invitation to a musical journey through time with one of the world’s best orchestras! Not only that, it is one of the world’s oldest, founded in 1548 and active without a break ever since. The former Hofkapelle, the court orchestra of Saxony, now proudly bears the name Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden. “Kapellkonzerte“ since the beginning of sound recordings under conductors like: Fritz Busch, Richard Strauss, Karl Böhm, Joseph Keilberth, Kurt Sanderling, Otmar Suitner, Herbert Blomstedt, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Bernard Haitink, Fabio Luisi, Christian Thielemann and many more

Hasse’s Olimpiade was the last opera seria to be premiered in Dresden before the start of the fateful Seven Years’ War – and it was performed to great acclaim, as usual and deservedly so. At the same time it is the last festival opera in the last Court carnival in the splendid Polish-Saxon tradition. It can claim to be one of the most successful of the many notable works of its two creators. Abbé Pietro Metastasio (the pen-name of Pietro Trapassi) lived from 1698 to 1782; born a year before Hasse, he died a year earlier than the composer. His growing reputation as a composer, his marital bond with Faustina and his new religious allegiance drew him to the attention of the (Catholic) court of Saxony and Poland in Dresden, where a successor was sought for the court Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen, who had died at the age of 46 in 1729 after a long illness.

Hasse and his wife were invited to Dresden in 1731. The performance of his opera Cleofide with Faustina in the title role led to his engagement, which could not be taken up by the married couple till 1734. The subsequent three decades of Hasse’s time in Dresden have come to stand for the heyday of Italian operatic and church music and for the standard-setting development of a court music establishment (the Hofkapelle) into an orchestra in the modern sense of the word. Hasse gave his concertmaster Pisendel, a first-rate virtuoso, a pretty free hand to perfect the art of instrumental accompaniment. An ensemble of internationally renowned singers excelled in the presence of this orchestra, which was inspired in ist turn by their vocal skill. Pöppelmann’s great opera house in the Zwinger offered festive splendour on stage and in the auditorium.

REVIEW:

What is it that ensconces some composers in the public memory and allows others, just as remarkable, to remain stuck in some music-history books (at best)?

We are starting to find out that Hasse was an immensely skillful composer. I liked his Attilio Regolo (March/April 2018) and have long known and loved the William Christie recording of Cleofide (Nov/Dec 2011). The present release was recorded in 1992, five years before the Attilio Regolo, and I’m pleased to note that this time all of the singers have voices that fully encompass the range of the part and that they rarely add long super-high notes or scant the low ones. There are also more substantial interventions from the chorus, either on its own or interacting with a vocal soloist. The orchestration is immensely varied and imaginative, with all kinds of fresh and unpredictable string figurations, sudden chordal stabs (in a movement for chorus), and the refreshing appearance of, say, a pair of recorders. As for the arias and duets, they range across a wide range of emotions, including violent anger and deep sadness. The duets rearrange the characters in various groupings, so we hear (in this performance) a soprano and a mezzo, two countertenors (soprano and alto), one countertenor and one woman, and so on.

The libretto, by Metastasio, was set dozens of times, starting in 1733 (by Caldara, for Vienna). The plot is rather tangled, but the situations that are set up are deeply human ones, involving much deceit (and the hiding of information) on the part of people who don’t really mean ill, plus an attempted suicide (by Megacle) and a plan (by Licida) to kill the king.

The action takes place at the ancient Greek Olympic games and involves a loving couple, Megacle and Aristea, who keep getting pulled away from each other, in large part because Megacle has made the mistake of entering the Olympics under the name of Licida, who was his boyhood friend and is Aristea’s brother. The best of the soloists are Dorothea Roeschmann and Catherine Robbin (whose voices are nicely contrasting), male soprano Randall Wong (best known perhaps for his singing with Chanticleer), countertenor Steven Rickards, and the masterly tenor Christoph Prégardien (known for his Bach and Mozart and his many lieder recordings).

The booklet contains the libretto in Italian and German, plus very fine essays and informative illustrations in German and sometimes stiff English. The print is often small and pale, and the shaded background on some pages makes reading even harder. For the libretto in a 1767 English translation, a tiny note refers the user to a Google Books site—it works!

-- American Record Guide (Ralph Locke)