On September 26, 1957, West Side Story opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theater a turning point in the history of American Musical theater, but also the launch of one of the most dazzling, hit laden scores ever written for Broadway. Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics immediately captured the public's imagination. In the last half century, the greatest singers and instrumentalists in the pop and classical music have been reinventing these unforgettable tunes. This new collection brings together the very best of them, from Johnny Mathis's classic cover of "Maria" to the Dave Brubeck Quartet's martini cool version of "somewhere."

The new album by two-time ECHO-Award winner Gábor Boldoczki presents virtuosic, contemporary trumpet concertos by composers from Armenia (Arutiunian, Khachaturian, Penderecki [Polish by birth but with Armenian roots]) and Turkey (Fazil Say). The album includes 2 World Premiere Recordings: Say's Trumpet Concerto, Op 31 - written for and dedicated to Boldoczki in 2010 and Penderecki's Concertino per tromba e orchestra - written for and dedicated to Boldoczki in 2015, being his first independent piece for this instrument. At Boldoczki's invitation, the Hungarian composer Péter Erdélyi has arranged Khachaturian's piano miniature "A little song" for trumpet and orchestra.

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REVIEW:

Gábor Boldoczki is a figure respected world-wide in the field of trumpeting, and his reputation is confirmed by the fact that two of the works here, those by Say and Penderecki, were actually written for him. He plays throughout not only with technical mastery, but also with an unaffected musicianship, which makes the performances all the more pleasing. His only blemish is occasional sharpness of pitch in the high register; but this never lasts too long, nor is too painful, and is generously offset by his many other qualities.

All in all a rewarding and enjoyable CD. Fine playing, and music which is challenging but far from inaccessible.

– MusicWeb International

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, and SONY Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought-after recordings by the world’s preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

This is an excellent sample of the Salzburg/RCA Zauberflote. With the extended dialogue of the original excluded one can fully appreciate the attraction of Levine's poised, sane direction of the piece and the excellent work of his predominantly satisfying cast.

– Gramophone

As the predecessors of Sony Classical, CBS Masterworks had not a catalogue of "authenticity-minded" recordings (the pioneering efforts of Raymond Leppard and Jean-Claude Malgoire notwithstanding), Sony made a distinctive new start and engaged indubitably one of the most experienced producers in the field of early music, Wolf Erichson. If the successes secured by such musicians as Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen in the 1960s were the most visible signs to a wider audience of thorough-going change in the interpretation of music from medieval to baroque times, there was no doubt in assigning a part of the general success to the work of the production teams behind the recordings. Wolf Erichson was involved in producing recordings for many artists through his work for Das Alte Werk series. Success followed him since the early 1970s, when he founded the SEON production company. Later, Sony Classical’s SEON line brought the pioneers of period intruments and vocal performances such as Frans Brüggen, Amer Bylsma, the Kuijkens, Gustav Leonhardt, and Konrad Ruhland on the international market at a budget price. Recordings made on SEON enjoyed both popular and critical acclaim. Later, producer Wolf Erichson, supervised Sony's VIVARTE label, which was a label devoted solely to producing historical music using modern recording technologies. Music critic Tom Manoff said these digital recordings of the VIVARTE series are among the best he has ever heard. The upcoming VIVARTE collector’s boxed sets feature attractive repertoire selection out of the legendary catalogue of ancient music. The CDs appear in their original coupling and cover at a special price. Some VIVARTE sets also include selected recordings from the SEON catalogue to round up the collections of selected titles.

Sony Classical announces a further batch of complete recordings from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor catalogues. The newest installment of this popular series features some unusual repertoire as well as documents of the New York Metropolitan Opera in its postwar heyday. Mozart’s Figaro is here too, sung by “a delightfully fresh-sounding” Michele Pertusi (BBC Music Magazine) in Zubin Mehta’s 1992 recording of Le nozze di Figaro with the Maggio Musicale of Florence. The BBC reviewer lauded “Mehta’s energising sense of pace and colour [and] consistently good orchestral playing,” and Gramophone was also highly enthusiastic, writing that it “sounds like the performers were enjoying themselves. Save the Countess and Susanna, they’re all Italians (oddly rare on disc). This lends bubbling virtuosity to the Italian librettist’s exchanges for Lucio Gallo’s Count and Michele Pertusi’s Figaro…And both Karita Mattila [the Countess] and Marie McLaughlin [Susanna] are so at home with their mistress/servant roles.”

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REVIEW:

Zubin Mehta leads this modern-instrument performance that features characterful individual performances and an unusual variant of the Count’s aria for the vivid Lucio Gallo.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

Opera News Critic's Choice

Composed by multi-award-winning artist Michel Legrand and written by American poets Alan & Marilyn Bergman, this album is made up of a cycle of songs. It tells the story of a woman’s life from birth to death, passing by all of its highlights: childhood, adolescence, first love, and motherhood. Composed and written in the 70’s, the project was never completed. Thanks to Natalie's input, Michel Legrand rewrote the score and Alan & Marilyn Bergman rewrote the lyrics especially for her in order to give a second life to this project. This masterpiece was recorded last September in London at the Air Studio with the London Studio Orchestra, conducted by Michel Legrand.

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REVIEW:

Dessay is a worthy interpreter. The range of Between Yesterday and Tomorrow is well suited to her new voice, and she is able to delineate each of these songs—and each of these stages, from infancy to dotage—with the acting skills that have long marked her stage career. She is even called on at times to imitate the voice of a young child, and she does so without coyness. Legrand’s score is sweeping, reminiscent of the best of his film music, and it includes some irresistible jazz waltzes as well as low-key, conversational, closely miked passages.

– Opera News

From Sting, Billy Joel and Tom Waits to W.H. Auden, James Joyce and Jimmy Van Heusen, JUST BEFORE SUNRISE is a collection of romantic and intimate songs of today. Musically capturing the "in-between time" before sunrise, Nathan Gunn sings music for life's special moments and offers a musical reflection on the soul and spirit of one of today's finest singers.

Complete Track Listing

1. I Love A Parade
2. Midway March
3. Washington Post March
4. Seventy-Six Trombones
5. El Capitan
6. South Rampart March
7. Sempre Fidelis
8. Liberty Bell March
9. Colonel Bogey March
10. Strike Up The Band
11. Thunderer, The
12. Hands Across The Sea
13. King Cotton
14. Pops On The March
15. Under The Double Eagle
16. Stars And Stripes Forever

Jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott, also known as Little Jimmy Scott, was famous for his unusual timbre and his interpretation of ballads and love songs. He was successful during the golden age of jazz, then fell into obscurity during the 1960s. He launched a well-received comeback during the 1990s. Jimmy suffered from a rare condition called Kallmann’s Symdrome, which stunted his growth and prevented him from reaching puberty, which left him with a high, undeveloped countertenor voice. I Go Back Home is a feature documentary which tells the story of Jimmy Scott and the producer Ralf Kemper who launched his comeback. This outstanding soundtrack includes timeless favorites performed by Jimmy Scott as well as newly composed numbers.

A very successful refurbishment. A real tonic, I defy you to refrain from tapping your feet. Three cheers for Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! opened on 16 January 1964 at the St James Theatre in New York City and played for 2,844 performances. Dolly Levi the matchmaker who meddles - "I have always been a woman who arranges things …When a boy with a timid tongue meets a girl with a diffident air … ('I put my hand in there') was played with great relish by the gravel-voiced Carol Channing. She was of an age to play Dolly whereas Barbra Streisand as the on-screen Dolly of the 1969 film was, as the majority of critics agreed rather too young, even though she certainly belted out those songs as well as the other more mature stage Dollies – Mary Martin, Pearl Bailey and Ethel Merman.
 
Carol Channing brings her own joyous, irrepressible style to that great ensemble number, 'Put on your Sunday clothes', and 'Before the parade passes by', 'Motherhood', 'Dancing', 'So long Dearie' and 'Hello, Dolly'. David Burns sounding remarkably like the lugubrious Walter Matthau (Horace Vandergelder in the film) sings the gloriously politically incorrect 'It takes a woman' (…to joyously clean out the drains and sink … for washing, gluing and shoeing the mare.). Eileen Brennan brings charm to the more romantic songs: 'Ribbons down my back' and with Charles Nelson Reilly as Cornelius Hackl (Michael Crawford in the film), 'It only takes a moment' and 'Elegance'.
 
It is a pity that this latest reissue does not include the bonus tracks including an interview with Carol Channing Mary Martin singing 'I put my hand in' and 'So long dearie' while Pearl Bailey is heard in 'Hello Dolly' and 'Before the parade passes by'. Ethel Merman sings two numbers: the rousing 'World, take me back' and 'Love, look in my window' when it was originally thought that she would star in the show. All these were included in RCA Victor 82876 51431 2 reviewed on our now defunct sister site ‘Film Music on the Web’.
 
A very successful refurbishment. A real tonic, I defy you to refrain from tapping your feet.
 
Three cheers for Dolly!
 
-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International [5/2012]
 
  Tracks:
1) Prologue
2) I Put My Hand In
3) It Takes A Woman
4) Put on Your Sunday Clothes
5) Ribbons Down My Back
6) Motherhood
7) Dancing
8) Before the Parade Passes By
9) Elegance
10) Hello Dolly!
11) It Only Takes a Moment
12) So Long Dearie
13) Finale

Jean-Claude Malgoire conducts his Parisian ensemble, La Grande Ecurie et La Chambre du Roy, in a complete 1979 recording of Handel’s delightful comic opera Serse, best known for its universally familiar opening aria “Ombra mai fu”. The distinguished cast includes Carolyn Watkinson, Paul Esswood and Barbara Hendricks.

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REVIEW:

This is one of the milestone recordings in the history of Handel opera. At the time few of the canon had been recorded, and still fewer in historically-informed practice, as here. Nearly forty years later the recorded sound remains clear and crisp.

Malgoire’s cast is distinguished and creditable, led by Carolyn Watkinson’s assured Serse. Generally she is radiant, but sometimes she is steely, though that means her whizzing cadenzas are well controlled. There is a slightly brittle wobble in Paul Esswood’s singing as Serse’s brother Arsamene, and there are times when he projects more confidently, though there is haunting forlornness in Act One’s ‘Non so se sia la speme’ and his coloratura is accomplished too. Ortrun Wenkel’s Amastre is sometimes foursquare, but elsewhere there is greater colour in her realisation. More distinguished are Barbara Hendricks’s pure-toned Romilda (sounding almost like a treble in some instances) and Anne-Marie Rodde’s coquettish Atalanta. The Ariodate of Ulrik Cold is languid, but Ulrich Studer as the comic servant Elviro is characterful.

– ClassicalSource.com

Elsewhere in this issue, in choosing the records of the year, I have singled Out the new version of Handel's opera Admeto for its broadly successful attempt at a true Handelian style. Well, those words were no sooner in the post to the Editor than I heard this new set, which considerably surpasses it in almost all regards: indeed this seems to me comfortably the best Handel opera recording I have heard. It is an easier opera to perform than the heroic ones of the 1720s (at least, to perform on records; perhaps it is not so easy on the stage— though I remember with pleasure its only English revival, at Abingdon in 1961). Partenope was written in 1730, for the first season of what was called the 'new Academy', run by Handel himself and his manager, after the collapse and the discrediting of the Royal Academy, of which Handel had been salaried musical director and which had organized opera in London since 1720. Handel now had a new team of singers, and the operas he wrote for them show distinctly the influence of the works he encountered during his talent-spotting trip to Italy. Partenope does so in particular. It is to a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia, markedly influenced by the vein of ironic humour popular in Venetian opera. The plot concerns the founding queen of Naples, Parthenope, and her various suitors, one of whom (Arsaces) deserted his betrothed (Rosmira) to woo her, and is pursued by Rosmira who in male clothes is herself masquerading as an admirer of Parthenope. The musical idiom beautifully catches the vivacity, the ironic wit, the gentle ardour and the charm that distinguish the plot. The musical textures are for the most part light and airy; there is more of rapid music than in most of Handel's operas; the phrase structure is simpler; and the vocal colour is different from usual—dictated, to be sure, by the particular cast Handel had at his disposal, yet characteristically he turned to positive ends the fact that he had only one soprano (Parthenope), one tenor, one baritone and all the rest altos of one kind or another. The orchestral texture, more often than usual, consists of just a violin line and continuo: the occasional more fully-scored aria, like Emilius's in Act I with its rich semi-contrapuntal string writing, or Rosmira's brilliant hunting aria with oboes and horns to end the act, accordingly makes a striking effect—and none more so than Arsaces's G minor lament, with muted violins, moaning flutes, theorbo and pizzicato basses, near the end of the opera. There are several ensemble numbers, including a trio and a quartet, but as the characters rarely sing simultaneously this does not make a geat deal of difference.

In Adnseto I questioned the wisdom of using so small an orchestra. Here the orchestra is much the same size, but it is about right since the music is so much less heroic in temper. It would perhaps be cynical to suggest that Handel, now he had to pay the bills himself, wrote music that worked well with fewer players; but with Partenope it could be not far from the truth. The group here p1a(s superbly: there is a dash and a sparkle to the string playing that makes the rapid passage work a real joy to listen to; the bass is firm and shapely; the wind playing is on the whole very well tuned; and the continuo playing provides sensible and unobtrusive support. Above all, the direction has the kind of rhythmic breadth and sense of purpose that I had despaired of meeting in an 'authentic' performance. Too often Handel's stature is diminished, the grandeur of his designs whittled down, by short-breathed and finicky phrasing. Here, in authentic timbres, Handel emerges as the giant he always did under the Woods and the Sargents, but without any over-inflation. This is greatly to the credit of the musicianship of Sigiswald Kuijken and his players. His orchestra has strings numbering 5.5.2.3.2, with four oboes and two bassoons, and pairs of flutes and horns and a trumpet as needed.

As for the singing, there are two names new to me of which I shall hope to hear very much more. One is the Parthenope, Krisztina Laki, a fluent and agile soprano with a happy glitter to her voice. She copes comfortably with the difficult divisions, and brings a suitably light expressive touch to the slower arias; altogether an accomplished and promising performance and an intelligent interpretation. Even more striking, perhaps, is the Rosmira of Helga Muller Molinari—plumb in her intonation (more so than anyone else in the cast), and capable of infusing her passage work with genuine vigour and passion. The angry C minor aria in the Second Act is magnificent, a real musical explosion of wrath; but the love music too is finely done. The timbre itself is not extraordinary, but the voice is perfectly focused and controlled. With the Arsaces (and this is the biggest part, composed for the famous castrato Bernacchi) I am less happy; as in Admeto, René Jacobs swoops and swoons too much, in a mannered way, and is not dependable over pitch. John York Skinner gives a capable account of the role of Armindus, Parthenope's ultimately successful lover, best in the direct style of his Act III aria than in the more expressive earlier ones. Martyn Hill as Emilius is firm and clear in the tenor arias, and accurate and expressive too; and Stephen Varcoe does his single aria in a pleasantly clean and light manner, without any booming or ranting.

Handelians may object, with some justification, that there is insufficient ornamentation in this set. That is true. Here and there a cadence crying for a trill is . . . well, left crying; and even the da caps sections of the arias are mostly sung without elaboration, which we know is contrary to Handel's expectation. Still, it is far better to do nothing than to do something wrongly or tastelessly, and that is particularly true in recordings, where one does not want to hear the same piece of bad decoration every time. Jacobs decorates a little, and some of the others do, too, very modestly. I wish a little more effort had been made over achieving a performing style a little more accurate and historical in this respect. On the other hand, I have nothing but praise for the execution of the recitatives, which (given in a form more complete than in the Handel-Gesellschaft score) move along quickly and conversationally, with the cadences correctly elided, while losing nothing of their dramatic force or their meaning from these excellent, and obviously well coached, singers. Altogether this set can be warmly recommended to lovers of Handel operas—and indeed to others too, who might find themselves drawn to become lovers of these masterpieces.

-- S.S., Gramophone [12/1979] Reviewing original LP

Classical Music