Classical Music

"Feltsman’s nocturnes seem to have been available twice before, first on Urtext Records and then on Camerata. This apparently is their first review in Fanfare. They were recorded as far back as 2000 in the Moscow Conservatory’s Great Hall, with superb sound engineering. Feltsman gives us one of the great sets of the nocturnes. This is music of suggestions and inferences, and Feltsman absolutely nails them. The First Nocturne sounds like a cradle song. For No. 2, Feltsman writes that Chopin provided embellishments to it for his students, so Feltsman has added ornaments following Chopin’s lead. The results are charming. No. 3 seems pensive. A childhood reminiscence with a dark side appears in 4, with a resemblance to Schumann’s Kinderszenen. No. 5 offers a story told among friends. A walk at nighttime occurs in 6. One watches a sunset in 7. No. 8 presents a reverie along with a sip of wine. For 9, we may think of someone writing a diary entry. No. 10 seems about thinking of the beloved. No. 11, on the other hand, is about love lost, with a sense of resignation.

No. 12 could take place by a stream. In 13, we contemplate death—there is a resemblance here to the funeral march of the Second Sonata. No. 14 perhaps takes place on a summer evening. An important question is posed during 15. No. 16 apparently contains the recollection of a dance. An intimate conversation is related during 17. No. 18 may portray a dinner between two lovers. No. 19 is about a lover’s despair. The sentiment in 20 is of the poignancy of young love. No. 21 sounds mazurka-like. I can think of two digital recordings of the nocturnes in Feltsman’s league, by Daniel Barenboim and François Chaplin, but Feltsman’s may prove the most satisfying on a regular basis.

Feltsman’s Barcarolle is fluid and majestic. His Berceuse is a pianistic kaleidoscope, with shifting textures and colors.

It’s perhaps worth remembering that the first recording by Feltsman issued on a U.S. label was Chopin’s preludes. He really is a Chopin player to the manner born. His sense of line is infallible, and no detail is so small as to escape his attention. Plus, he has the rare ability to convey an atmosphere, which is essential to a great Chopin style. That Feltsman has made a considerable career playing Bach may not be coincidental, given Chopin’s love for Bach and the subtlety of the Pole’s harmony. What’s more, Feltsman’s love for Chopin absolutely comes across in these recordings. You really can’t fake the excitement and affection that suffuse these readings. Feltsman here matches the greatest Chopin performances preserved in recorded sound. These [recordings] are likely to remain touchstones for decades to come."

FANFARE: Dave Saemann

Sergio Fiorentino has been one of the best pianists of the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he is not as known as many other colleagues of his, who were supported by important labels. For this reason he lacks a catalogue of official recordings, but this does not mean that he has no documentation of his art. The proof is this extensive release that contains a selection of Fiorentino’s version of some of the masterpieces of Franz Liszt’s repertoire, who was one of his most beloved composers.

Classical Music

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Classical Music

Classical Music

This album is a re-mastered, re-release of Sir Neville Marriner leading the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Legendary recordings of artists like Sandor Vegh, Ton Koopman and the Vienna Boys' Choir are all included as special repertoire highlights from the baroque to the contemporary era.

Classical Music

This 2-disc set is Paavali Jumppanen’s fourth volume in his cycle of Beethoven piano cycles. This album includes works from the composer’s middle period: Sonatas Nos. 16-18 & 24-27. The first installment in Jumppanen’s Beethoven cycle won the “Choc” Award from French music magazine Classica.

Successful string quartet performance is all about communication, in the purest sense of the word: constant giving and exchanging, a communion among the players based on an intimate relationship bound by deep understanding, of the music and of each other. It’s the essence of what is meant by ensemble. When you have that, you can play anything together and make it vital, and most of all, true to the composer’s intent.

As my colleague David Hurwitz said in an earlier review, Brahms’ quartets are “respected more than they are loved”, and can sound “overworked” and “texturally monotonous”. It’s true that you can play unlawfully fast and loose with these quartets and pretty much get away with it, given enough rhythmic finesse and blurring of textures, and these are among the many reasons that listeners, including me, usually aren’t that much in love with these dense, phenomenally busy, complicated pieces. But when you hear them played with the unusual clarity, scintillating detail, and dynamic, exacting, turn-on-a-dime expressive statements uttered by an ensemble of literally one interpretive mind and unassailable technique, you have to rethink the reasons for your avoidance reflex when faced with a Brahms quartet close encounter.

When the New Zealand Quartet made this recording its members had been working and playing together for 20 years, a rarity in the music world, and a situation that pays huge dividends in performance. There are few relationships anywhere in which the members spend more time together, pouring heart and soul into an intensely charged, creative collaboration, its success built both on individual artistic drive and vision, and contingent on compromising, blending, and capitalizing on the strengths of those impulses and passions. Any group that can manage this, whether a married couple or a string quartet, is something of a miracle, and, especially if you’ve seen this group in concert, you know how special it is.

And there is no holding back in these performances: the NZSQ literally attacks and wrestles Brahms’ scores to the ground–a positive, friendly intervention, for the good of all concerned. These performances should not disappoint any listener, whether you hate Brahms or love his music, because they take you out of the realm of preconception and just deliver aggressive, uninhibited, and yes, passionate expressions of these scores, respectful of the composer while always working to realize the fullness of the music that Brahms struggled so long and hard to create.

My only regret here is that with a recording you don’t truly experience what this group is doing. Unless you actually see them in concert, you don’t appreciate the incredible group dynamic that’s happening during a performance, you don’t totally get the ensemble interaction that produces this result. They stand when they perform–cellist Rolf Gjelsten sits on a special raised platform–and there’s a physicality to the communication among the players that’s only comparable to a dance, a ballet. And if you can make a ballet out of Brahms’ string quartets, well, you’ve got something that’s worth listening to.

– ClassicsToday (David Vernier)

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

Dvorák’s quartets number among the gems of their genre. A new recording by one and the same ensemble is long overdue, and the fact that the Vogler Quartet has taken on this gigantic task is very good luck indeed. The Vogler Quartet is a phenomenon. Its membership has remained unchanged since 1985, and over the years the individual and team talent of its musicians has secured them a place among the world’s top chamber ensembles.

Verdi: Un ballo in maschera

Tchaikovsky: Mazeppa (Sung in Italian) [Recorded Live 1954]

Verdi: Rigoletto (Recorded Live 1951)

Wagner: Lohengrin (Sung in Italian)

To celebrate Verdi's 200th birth anniversary Dynamic is featuring a fascinating collection of performances recorded during the best period of Maria Callas' artistic career. Some moments of the greatest poignancy can be listened in Forza del Destino and Ballo in Maschera where the American born Greek soprano's interpretative art is expressed with it's full beauty.

Wagner: Götterdämmerung, Act III (Live)

Wagner: The Flying Dutchman, WWV 63

This is a world premier recording of the French version of Donizetti's Le Duc d'Albe.

Although it plays second fiddle on the international stage to the universally popular operetta Die Fledermaus, the glorious musical score of Die Zigeunerbaron by Johann Strauss II (“The Waltz King”) is no less brilliant than his most famous work. Videoland, purveyor of the finest in filmed middle-European operetta, here offers up a performance of The Gypsy Baron staged during the 2011 Seefestspiele Moerbisch Austria Festival. Starring Daniel and Harald Serafin, Evelin Novak, Lucien Krasznec and Wolfgang Bankl, with legendary mezzo Brigitte Fassbaender in charge of production.

Ruggero Raimondi takes the lead role in this performance of Verdi's comic opera recorded at the Opera Royal de Wallonie in Liege, Belgium in 2009. Paolo Arrivabeni conducts. Falstaff, the lyric comedy was Giuseppe Verdi�s last opera. It is an operatic favorite, long admired by critics and opera goers alike because of its brilliant orchestration, scintillating libretto and refined melodies. This production recorded at the Op�ra Royal de Wallonie in Li�ge, Belgium was staged by Stefano Poda and features the well known Italian Bass Ruggero Raimondi as the title-role. Directed by Stefano Poda. Starring Sabina Pu rtolas, Luca Salsi, Cinzia de Mola. Language: Italian Subtitles: English, French, Italian, German

SCHMANN; LISZT; SCHUBERT; WAGNER/LISZT; RACHMANINOV: Lazar Berman, piano; Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, January 14, 1988.NTSC All Region; LPCM 2.0; Dolby Digital 5.1; 16:9; Approx. 100 mins. LAZAR BERMAN - THE 1988 TOKYO RECITAL - ROBERT SCHUMANN: Piano Sonta No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11; FRANZ LISZT: Selections from"Annees de Pelerinage": deuxieme annees, Italie; FRANZ SCHUBERT/F. LISZT: Ave Maria; RICHARD WAGNER/LISZT: Isolde Liebestod; SERGEI RACHMANINOV: Moment musical in E minor, Op. 16 No. 4.

Tancredi and L�Italiana in Algeri, Rossini�s tenth and eleventh operas, both premiered in Venice, launched the composer on an unstoppable career. They saw him become the most prestigious opera composer of his time. The formidable impresario Domenico Barbaja summoned Rossini to Naples and offered him the position of musical director of the city�s two Royal Theatres, the San Carlo and Fondo. Barbaja�s proposals appealed to Rossini for several reasons. Not only was his annual fee generous and guaranteed, but also the San Carlo had a professional orchestra, unlike the theatres of Venice and Rome. The composer also saw this as a considerable advantage as he aspired to push the boundaries of his opera composition in more adventurous directions. Under the terms of the contract, Rossini was to provide two operas each year for Naples whilst being permitted to compose occasional works for other cities. The composer tended to test the limits of this contract and in the first two years composed no fewer than five operas for other venues, including four for Rome.

Although the whole performance is top-notch, the main reason for owning this Cenerentola is the warm, delightfully human, and stunningly sung Cinderella of Joyce DiDonato. There is no paucity of fine, recorded Cenerentolas (Bartoli, Larmore, Baltsa), but DiDonato, an under-recorded American mezzo, catches precisely the right tone of vulnerability and goodness in the character while never stinting on the coloratura fireworks we expect from the role. She's always in character--modest and kind; it's a beautiful, understated portrayal.


The rest of the cast is excellent as well. José Manuel Zapata's slim tenor may not have the ping of a Vargas or the brilliance of Florez, but he's got all the "little notes" needed for the Prince and is unafraid of heights. Paolo Bordogna's Dandini is well sung, but the voice has a fast vibrato that may not agree with everyone, and Bruno Pratico's Don Magnifico articulates every single note and refrains from mugging--a good combination. The sisters are nicely characterized by Patrizia Cigna and Martina Borst, and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni delivers Alidoro's music, including the aria Rossini added for him in 1820, with a good tonal center and dignity.


Conductor Alberto Zedda includes a brief chorus penned by another composer at the start of Act 2, and he leads with suavity if just a bit less flair and energy than this opera seems to want. The orchestra and chorus are good enough. The first CD ends at an awkward spot, but had the offending few minutes been added to the second CD it would have reached a dangerously long 80 minutes and three seconds. (It would have been easier if the extra chorus had been cut!) Bicker, bicker--this is an excellent performance, at a great bargain price.
--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

In recent years the young Swiss conductor Simon Gaudenz has made a name for himself, particularly as an interpreter of the Classical-era repertoire. A fresh, new approach against the background of historically informed performance practice characterizes his recordings and concerts. During this same time he was associated with the Odense Symphony based on the island of Funen (the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and Carl Nielsen!), serving as its principal guest conductor. This orchestra, one of Denmark's premier musical bodies next to the Danish Radio Symphony in Copenhagen, immediately felt that extraordinary things could be realized with this baton-wielding revolutionary. It was agreed that he and the orchestra take on Schumann, the results being this 2CD set of the complete symphonies.

The quality of her playing is as fine as ever and she performs with all her usual authority and skill.

Traditional folk music elevated to high art: that theme binds the unique coupling of Billboard chart-topping violinist Rachel Barton Pine’s latest release of the Violin Concertos by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak and Soviet-Armenian Aram Khachaturian. The multi-faceted young American Teddy Abrams conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, making for a truly international collaboration. “There are few more interesting violinists on the worldwide scene than Rachel Barton Pine; she is continuously giving us interesting and well-researched and thought-out concept albums that stimulate the imagination, reinvigorate the ears, and put wrinkles in the brain with their intellectual depth.” (Audiophile Audition)

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REVIEW:

Barton Pine's fusion of rock-solid yet scintillating technique is allied to brilliant musicianship as well as intelligent and stimulating programming. The quality of her playing is as fine as ever and she performs with all her usual authority and skill.

– MusicWeb International

Even before meeting they were dedicating hours of practice to Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes. An international solo piano competition was coming up, and the two young pianists were scheduled to vie against each other with this work. Twenty-five years and dozens of successful competitions later, the same two pianists sat down opposite each other at two grand pianos to perform not as rivals but as a renowned duo. “We have decided to dedicate this CD recording to Franz Liszt’s original works for two pianos and to his versions of his own solo piano compositions for two pianos” (Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo).