TILL EULENSPIEGEL HELDENLEBEN

In 1967 and 1969, en route to becoming the leading soprano of the 1970s, Montserrat Caballé recorded a trio of "rarity" discs for RCA, each concentrating on a single composer--Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi--and focused on relatively little-known scenes and arias from similarly obscure operas. Thanks in part to Caballé's stage performances and recordings, the bel canto revival has rescued many of those works from the shadows, but they have not been better sung than by the great Spanish soprano, possessor of perhaps the most beautiful soprano voice of the 20th century. She's at her best here, singing with the fire that sometimes seemed to elude her, flaunting her ravishing pianissimos, and never breaking a sweat or taking an untoward breath as she tosses off difficult coloratura passages with ease.


The Rossini set dips into five operas and the "Inflammatus" from his Stabat mater. Donizetti is represented by four operas, but entire scenes are offered, putting the arias in proper context. Seven scenes and/or arias from Verdi's early operas are here, blending touches of those two past masters with harbingers of his own evolving style. Singling out highlights would be folly in a tightly filled double-disc set, but you know from the very first notes of "Tanti affetti" from Rossini's La donna del lago, which begins Disc 1, that you're in for a feast of great singing. Orchestras and conductors are idiomatic. The sonics, once deemed excellent, are only a bit dimmed by time. RCA provides full texts and English translations, a welcome departure from the usual big-label reluctance to accommodate consumers. This is a must for any lover of great singing. [1/28/2005]
--Dan Davis, ClassicsToday.com

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

Track listings include: "Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco " "Stravinsky: Suite from "The Firebird" (1919 version) Finale Disc 2: "Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E- flat Major, KV 543 "Copland: El salon Mexico" Disc 3: "Haydn: Missa in tempore belli in c major (Mass in Time of War) Hob. XXII: 9" "Sousa: Semper fidelis" "Barber: Adagio for Strings."

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

Music from Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah"; Symphony No. 2, "Age of Anxiety"; Symphony No. 3, "Kaddish"; Chichester Psalms for Chorus and Orchestra ; songs from on the Town; Peter Pan; Fancy Free and Candide ; the original Broadway recording of West Side Story, and more!

Disc: 1
1. Magnificent Seven, film score: Main Title & Calvera's Visit
2. Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, film score: Main Title
3. Vertigo, film score: Scene d'Amour
4. Jaws, film score: Theme
5. The Adventures of Robin Hood, film score: Robin Hood & His Merry Men
6. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, film score: Flying Theme
7. Godfather, Part 2, film score: End Title, The sound
8. Lawrence of Arabia, film score: Overture (Part 2)
9. Psycho, film score: Finale
10. Doctor Zhivago, film score: Prelude & Lara's Theme
11. Psycho, film score: The Murder
12. Gone With the Wind, film score: Selznick International fanfare (Newman) / Main Title: Dixie / Mammy / Tara / Rhett
13. Laura, film score: Main Theme
14. Psycho, film score: Prelude sound

Disc: 2
1. The Pink Panther, film score: Theme
2. Breakfast at Tiffany's, film score: Moon River
3. Ben-Hur, film score: Parade of the Charioteers
4. High Noon, film score: Theme
5. Citizen Kane, film score: Rosebud / Finale
6. Sunset Boulevard, film score: Main Title / Norma Desmond / The Studio Stroll / The Comeback / Norma As Salome
7. Dr. No, film score: The James Bond Theme
8. King Kong, film score: The Forgotten Island / Natives / Sacrificial Dance / The Gate of Kong / Kong in New York
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, film score: The Dialogue
10. Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo), film score: Titles
11. Casablanca, film score: Main Title / The Immigrants / Morocco / "Sam, I thought I told you never to play..." / As Time Goes
12. Work(s): 20th Century Fox Fanfare (with Cinemascope extension) / Street Scene (as heard before How to Marry
13. King's Row

The recital discs of Christian Gerhaher are all excellent – and the latest addition is a collection of Schubert songs worthy falling in love with. Abendbilder (“Evensongs” or more literally: “Evening Images”) is a collection of the nocturnal explorations in song with his accompanist Gerold Huber who shines with his often delicate, always appropriate and delightful contribution.

There is a rarefied quality about Gerhaher’s Lied-interpretations… an aching beauty, sincerity, and correctness that permeates every song. His tone is finer, more sensitive than most – but never stylized. Natural, but not in a nonchalant way. What you hear on record goes well with the impression he makes in person. Friendly but somewhat impenetrable, courteous but distant, very humble but with the slightly intimidating aura of confident authority. There is purpose to what he does and how he does it – but while these are intellectual readings, they are never rarified or pedantic as not to charm the Lieder-lover without reservation.

-- Jens F. Laurson, WETA

Quiet On The Set: James Galway At The Movies

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets: No. 3; No. 14; No. 15. Piano Quintet • Juilliard Str Qrt; Yefim Bronfman (pn) • SONY 79018 (2 CDs: 127:38)


Among the releases celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Juilliard String Quartet (of course, none of the original members remain) is this most welcome set of Shostakovich quartets. Welcome because, despite the Juilliard’s longstanding commitment to 20th-century music in general and their having given the American premiere of the 15th Quartet in 1975 (with two of the current members, cellist Joel Krosnick and violist Samuel Rhodes, participating) in particular, this is apparently their first recording of any Shostakovich quartets. (The performance of the Piano Quintet, however, was recorded in 1999 and originally issued along with Bronfman’s account of Shostakovich’s two piano concertos—see Fanfare 23:4.) Most welcome because the quartet brings its usual penetrating insight and commitment to this music.


Truth be told, their account of the Third Quartet didn’t grab me on first hearing. With the rich, resonant, tonally nuanced sound of the Borodin Quartet foremost in my memory, the Juilliards initially seemed lean and distant, and the way they speed through the score came across as unfocused nervous energy (following a moderately paced Allegretto, slower than most, they take three of the four remaining movements significantly faster than the Borodins). But after several rehearings, I came to appreciate the different interpretive details they bring out—such as the jangly Cubist feel they give the first movement’s quasi-fugue and the excitement they obtain by whipping up the tempo in its concluding pages, or the gypsyish quality that their quick phrasing suggests after reference point 55 in the third movement. They may not dig as deep as the Borodins; instead, theirs is a more measured, varied perspective—for example, though lacking the Borodins’ remarkable tension at dramatic points, such as the expressive passage at 108 in the finale, they redeem themselves by deftly emphasizing the dance tune that appears almost immediately thereafter, as if to soften the blow. My ears also gradually adjusted to the recorded sound, so that I came to realize what at first seemed distant was actually more of a natural concert hall ambience and balance than the beefed up (and effective, but enhanced) engineering afforded the Borodins (EMI).


If the Third Quartet benefited from a bit of familiarity to reveal its irony and edginess, the Juilliard’s 14th and 15th Quartets were immediately engaging and convincing—all the more impressive as these are Shostakovich’s two most enigmatic quartets. The 14th is dedicated to Sergei Shirinsky, cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, and here Joel Krosnick makes the most of his featured role. I once wrote in a review that I wouldn’t argue with Royal S. Brown’s assessment of this quartet as “the least appealing, least original, and least successful of the 15” ( Fanfare 12:1), but the Juilliard interpretation has put this music into a new light for me. They fearlessly attack the score’s dissonances, making it sound more tonally ambiguous—and thus simultaneously more original and mysterious—than has any other ensemble in my experience. In their hands, the opening pages sound like a drunken Beethovenian aborted fugue—high spirited but slightly off-kilter—and even the fragmented finale is played with an intensity that makes it sound more coherent than ever before.


In the 15th Quartet as well, notorious for its six introspective Adagio movements, the Juilliards don’t shy away from the music’s bleakness and occasional harshness. They embrace its stark, transparent textures—the waltz in the second movement (ironically titled “Serenade”) isolates individual lines like exposed nerves, and Rhodes’s viola solo opening the “Nocturne” is not pretty, but painfully necessary. Though separated by 35 years, the mood of the opening pages of the final quartet is remarkably similar to that of the second movement fugue in the Piano Quintet, growing from simple motifs into a contrapuntal web of deep emotion until chant-like themes emerge as temporary balm, offered without exaggeration or pathos. Speaking of the Piano Quintet, Bronfman is an ideal partner—a powerful presence in the Richter mold, who can project tenderness or urgency as called for, and whose attitude is perfectly in sync with the Juilliard’s direct, yet dramatic approach.


In sum, these are distinguished, distinctive performances that interpretively fall in between the robust, sometimes exaggerated Russianness of the Borodin or Sorrel style, and the brisk, almost analytical precision of the Fitzwilliam and Emerson accounts. Is it too early to start thinking about this year’s Want List?


FANFARE: Art Lange

Music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.

Principal cast includes: Christine Andreas (Eliza Doolittle), Ian Richardson (Prof. Henry Higgins), George Rose (Alfred P. Doolittle), Jerry Lanning (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Robert Coote (Col. Pickering), Brenda Forbes (Mrs. Higgins), and Sylvia O'Brien (Mrs. Pearce).

From the 20th Anniversary Production.

Remastered.

"Ian Richardson and Christine Andreas [take] fresh and enchanting approaches as the leads, with Robert Coote winning new raves as Pickering. . . . Jerry Lanning . . . sings the definitive 'On the Street Where You Live.'" -- John Kenrick, Musicals101.com

Sermons and Devotions

Includes concerto(s) by various composers. Ensemble: London Festival Orchestra. Conductor: Ross Pople.
Includes work(s) by various composers, Gregor Joseph Werner. Ensembles: London Festival Orchestra, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Musica Sacra, Canadian Brass. Conductors: Ross Pople, Martin Neary, Richard Westenburg. Soloists: Ayako Shinozaki, Richard Stoltzman, Eddie Gomez (double bass), Dave Samuels, Jeremy Wall, Emily Mitchell, Café (percussion), Bill Douglas, Michala Petri.

This disc was formerly available as Conifer CDCF 206.