The Teatro La Fenice opened in 1792 and is one of the most renowned and most beautiful theaters in the world. "Amid mirrors, flowers and confetti, New Year's Eve at La Fenice is a ritual" (MusicPaper). The Teatro Fenice's Concerto di Capodanno - one of the world's most celebrated New Year's concerts - welcomes Daniel Harding back to the podium. After the monumental opening with Beethoven's Fifth, soloists Mariangela Sicilia and Francesco Demuro perform beloved arias by Rossini, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Wolf-Ferrari, Bizet, Gounod and Verdi. Interwoven with the concert are scenes of Aterballetto dancers, choreographed by Marcos Morau, performing in Venice's most iconic locations. The soloists' "perfect vocal blend" in Libiamo ne' lieti calici truly stands out (MusicPaper).
With Swing On This, the all-star quintet Opus 5 presents it's fifth Criss Cross album, and first since 2015, when Criss-Cross released Tickle [Criss 1383), which itself was preceded - in backwards chronology - by Progression [Criss 1369], Pentasonic [Criss 1351], and Introducing Opus 5 [Criss 1339], each recorded a year apart. The "all star" sobriquet is not an exaggeration - the collective discographies of trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist David Kikoski, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Donald Edwards, all international first-callers, total more than 30 Criss Cross leader dates. The Album was recorded September 7, 2021 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano who also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY.
The trumpet has been playing a special role as a signaling instrument throughout the centuries and accompanies mankind through war and peace. Consequentially, one associated the brilliant sound of the trumpet with the power and pomp of clerical and secular authorities. The current program of the Schwanthaler Trumpet Consort contains a representative sample of 17th-18th c. trumpet court literature. Besides trumpets, also timpani, percussion, clarinets, trombones and post horns are involved; replicas of historic instruments are paired with historically informed performance practice.
Pugni: The Pharaoh's Daughter / Sotnikov, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra
BelAir Classiques
DVD · 1 disc
$29.99Jul 21, 2017
Bel Air Classiques presents Petipa's extravaganza ''The Pharaoh's Daughter'', in a stunning production by Pierre Lacotte. Recreating the spectacular sumptuousness of the original, the ballet tells the tale of a young Englishman who dreams he elopes with a Pharaoh's daugher. Despite a desert storm, a lion hunt and an attempted suicide, the couple finally wins the Pharaoh's blessing to their marriage. From its creation in 1862, Petipa's grandiose ballet was a sensational success; its stupendous costumes and striking scenery, its exotica, romanticism and drama appealing to audiences as much as the virtuoso choreography. The Bolshoi Ballet and the two soloists Svetlana Zakharova and Serguei Filin are at their best in spite of the difficulty of Pierre Lacotte's choreography.
With the 10 arias on Tormento d'amore, Ian Bostridge demonstrates the important place that the tenor voice held in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century - often thought of as the era of the castrato. At this time, there were two main centres of opera in Italy: Venice, where such composers as Cavalli, Vivaldi, Cesti, Stradella, Sartorio and Legrenzi were active, and Naples, home to Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci and Fago. In addition to arias - two of them in world premiere recordings - the album offers five instrumental sinfonie and a traditional Neapolitan song, 'Lu cardillo', or 'The Goldfinch', a songbird closely associated with Naples. Bostridge is partnered by conductor Antonio Florio and his ensemble Cappella Neapolitana.
With her debut album Time and Gravity, Georgian pianist Irma Gigani turns to Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas Nos. 2, 4, and 8. For the artist, time and gravity serve as metaphors for the human condition: time as an unstoppable flow between memory, hope, and the present moment; gravity as the invisible force of attraction and energy. In Prokofiev's richly layered musical language, she finds the ideal space to explore these ideas-balancing personal expression with the universal themes of human existence, between freedom and constraint, love and pain, beauty and the abyss. Born in Tbilisi in 1996, Irma Gigani is regarded as one of the most remarkable pianists of her generation. Already as a child, she won numerous international competitions and appeared as a soloist with renowned orchestras throughout Europe and Israel. Her concert engagements have taken her to France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, and beyond. She has performed at prestigious venues including the Musikverein in Vienna, the Salle Cortot in Paris, and-performing Bach's Goldberg Variations-the Konzerthaus Berlin, Vatican City in Rome, and many others.
(2 albums on 1 CD) on "Green Guitar Blues," Bucky plays 7-string guitar & classical guitar, joined on 1 track by his 14-year-old daughter Mary on classical guitar. He's backed by bassist George Duvivier & drummer Don Lamond. On "Cafe Pierro Trio," Bucky plays his trademark guitar in a trio setting, joined by pianist Russ Kassoff & bassist Jerry Bruno.
The Unknown Enescu, Vol. 2 / S. Lupu, Ciucur, Hobson, Sinfonia da Camera
Toccata
CD · 1 disc
$20.99Nov 04, 2022
Although Enescu gave opus numbers to only 33 of his works, he left an enormous number of pieces in varying stages of composition, from sketches and draft outlines to isolated movements and some scores that are almost complete. Working with a handful of composers and musicologists – fellow Romanians with specialist knowledge of Enescu’s style – the violinist Sherban Lupu has produced performing editions of a number of previously unknown works, heard here in the context of other Enescu rarities. One of these ‘rescued’ pieces, hiding behind the modest title of Caprice roumain, is nothing less than a major violin concerto.
Deluxe Package Includes Interviews with Tenor Star James Carter and Drummer Kenny Washington and Essays by Historian Ted Panken and Pianist Michael Weiss The supercharged tenor saxophone duo of Johnny Griffin and Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis will be heard in full flight on Reel to Real Recordings' previously unreleased live set Ow!, which bows as an exclusive, limited edition Record Store Day LP release Nov. 29. The title - which features stellar, previously unreleased performances captured at the Seattle club the Penthouse in May-June 1962 - will initially be available on 180-gram vinyl mastered by Bernie Grundman, and subsequently be issued on CD Dec. 6. Reel to Real - a partnership between Vancouver-based jazz impresario and saxophonist Cory Weeds and Resonance Records co-president and noted 'Jazz Detective' Zev Feldman - was launched on Record Store Day 2018 with a pair of releases that included Swingin' in Seattle, live sessions by Cannonball Adderley's quintet recorded at the Penthouse in 1966-67. Resonance has previously plumbed the Penthouse's deep archives for it's albums by Wes Montgomery (Smokin' in Seattle) and the Three Sounds featuring Gene Harris (Groovin' Hard). In his notes included in the 28-page booklet that accompanies the package, Weeds recalls, 'Upon hearing the Johnny Griffin-Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis tapes, I got that excited feeling in my stomach again, called Zev, and said, 'We have to put this music out, whatever it takes.' Feldman adds, 'These recordings are a gift that keeps on giving so much elation and positive vibes, which were captured with this music. It will now live on forever thanks to producer/radio legend Jim Wilke; engineer Fred Stimson, who recorded these broadcasts that were transferred from the original analog tapes; and Charlie Puzzo, Jr., son of the Penthouse's proprietor.
Czech-born composer Jaromír Weinberger, best known for his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper, was forced to flee to America in order to escape Nazi terror. Frühlingsstürme, staged in 1933 but soon closed down by the Nazi government, was the last operetta of the Weimar Republic. It is filled with cultural complexity, combining serious operatic style with light comedy, and presents a thrilling story involving a doomed love affair set against war between Japan and Russia. This lavish production is staged by the award-winning Australian director Barrie Kosky.
Albert Harris (1916-2005) was an English musician who worked in Hollywood for most of his life as an orchestrator, arranger and composer for several of the big film Studios and for such pop icons as Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack and Cher. He was born in London and studied piano from age 6, becoming also a self-taught guitarist. His knowledge of the guitar enabled him in later years to compose pieces specifically for it (his Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel was recorded by Andres Segovia). In the mid-1930s he began to make a name for himself as a session musician in London where he featured on many recordings, most notably as session guitarist with the Lew Stone band, his delicate but swinging improvisations enhancing many of Stone's records during 1934/35. Harris came to New York in 1938 and started playing piano in big bands across the US then began studying at the NYU College of Music, where he earned a doctorate in 1944. He finished the PhD remotely, having moved to Los Angeles in 1942, where he studied composition with Mary Carr Moore and Eugen Zador and conducting with Richard Lert. He served as professor of orchestration at UCLA and was Assistant Musical Director for broadcaster NBC from 1946 to 1949. Written in three movements, the Sonatina is one of the most emblematic pieces in Harris's catalogue. Popular elements from his adopted land, linked to graceful writing attentive to melodic construction, make this guitar composition one of his best. The Suite was composed in 1972 and features seven dance movements with modern and elaborate harmonies similar to those of jazz, especially in the Waltz. Homage to Unamuno was written in 1972 in tribute to it's dedicatee, a symbol of Spanish liberal thought and a high representative of Spanish literature. The short Intermezzo was included in a collection of compositions that appeared in the Classic Guitar Society's periodical magazine, Guitar News, in 1952, and despite it's brevity the elegance of Harris's language remains. Perhaps the composer's best-known guitar composition, together with the Sonatina, the Variations & Fugue on a Theme of Handel are dedicated to the great guitarist Andres Segovia, who was the first to record it. The work is highly influenced by the Spanish guitarist's style. In it Handel's theme is treated with highly original variations that rapidly transform the material and it's meaning. The three short Fantastic Dances, commissioned by the Guitar Foundation of America, were written in 1988, and although written in the same tuning they each present clearly different material and characters. The element that binds them is their brilliance and dynamism. They were composed as a compulsory piece for an international competition held that year. Other information: - Recording completed in December 2023 in Rome, Italy - Booklet in English contains liner notes by the guitarist on the composer and the works, and a profile of the artist - Michele di Filippo plays a guitar by Antonino Scandurra - Albert Harris (1916-2005) was an English musician who worked most of his life in Hollywood as an orchestrator, arranger and composer for several of the big Film Studios and for such pop icons as Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack and Cher. - Harris was born in London and studied piano from age 6 and was also a self-taught guitarist; his knowledge of this instrument enabled him in later years to compose pieces specifically for guitar, his Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel were recorded by Andres Segovia. In America he won the National Composer's Award for his "Concerto de California" scored for guitar and String Quartet. Among those nominating Harris was Aaron Copland with whom Harris shares a harmonic language that, in the words of Ned Rorem, "sounds like the great outdoors". - This new recording presents the complete works for guitar solo, consisting of a Suite, a Sonatina, Variations & Fugue on a theme of Handel and 3 Fantastic Dances. - Played with commitment and feeling for the idiom by Michele Di Filippo.
Un ballo in maschera is a poignant love story between two complex, mature characters torn between their desires, loyalties and the inevitable consequences of their choices. In this production, stage director Vincent Boussart delves deeply into the theme of masks, revealing a rich interplay of drama and comedy, human duplicity, lies and truth. "The two male protagonists, Piotr Beczala as Riccardo and Carlos Alvarez as Renato, were the outstanding performances for the evening." (Bachtrack) "A deeply moving play of masquerade and humanity" (El Pais)
Juan Ramon Jimenez is the author of the famous poetic prose in 138 short episodes, Platero y yo, which he wrote in 1914. Spokesman of the simplicity of life and poet with a strong sensitivity, he tells a story, imbued with a classic sense of form and at the same time "moral," of his return to the land of his childhood and of his encounter with the donkey, Platero. The images that the poet shows us through the eyes of the young donkey are those of a typical Spanish landscape made of scenes of uncontaminated and pure life. From the fairy-tale adventure of these pages full of pure poetry, love and nostalgia one doesn't doesn't leave untouched. The reader that follows the narrative ends up finding himself with a child's gaze full of wonder and overcome by the affection of this magical journey. Castelnuovo-Tedesco, therefore, recognized the value of this work and chose to set some of the scenes to music, not for guitar and sung voice (principally) but for guitar and narrator. It is evident after reading the literary pieces that the criteria for his selection was the aesthetic contents and the evident "translatability" of the contents into a purely musical language. Guitarist Stephen Figoni and the voices of Laura Aguzzoni and Olimpia Pizzol guide us into the simple, enchanted world evoked by the two great artists' contributions.
In occasion of it's 200th season opening, Teatro Real presents a spectacular new production of Gounod's Faust, directed by Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus). Set in a futuristic laboratory, Goethe's timeless themes of knowledge, desire, and redemption are reimagined through the lens of artificial intelligence and human emotion. Star singers including Piotr Beczala, Marina Rebeka, and Luca Pisaroni lead the cast in this gripping drama. Under the baton of Dan Ettinger, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Real deliver a thrilling performance that, as Bachtrack wrote, "takes it's cue from Goethe but doesn't shy away from theatrical imagination." // "Beczala's voice was brilliant, dark and even powerful with ringing high notes as he proved with his ringing high C in Salut demeure chaste et pure." (Operawire)
Joey DeFrancesco offers a hard-driving disc with a mixture of his own Hammond and the tried and true flavors of his regular bandmates Steve Cotter and Ramon Banda. This swinging threesome references everybody from saxophonist Sonny Rollins ("Way out West") and former boss Miles Davis ("I Don't Wanna Be Kissed") to Thelonious Monk ("Monk's Dream"), putting it's own stamp on this format in straightforward fashion. The band clearly delights in exploring the material, playing off one another and, in the case of DeFrancesco and Cotter, letting their envious chops off the leash.
How do you give new impetus to your artistic life after completing a project as intense as recording Johannes Brahms' complete piano works? Geoffroy Couteau's answer was to climb an Everest. For to perform Bach's Goldberg Variations is to undergo an exceptional musical and human experience. It is also to grasp the expressive power of polyphony and it's extraordinary force of attraction.
Pergolesi: La Serva Padrona / Dallara, Zanello, Govi, Regia
Tactus
CD · 1 disc
$21.99Jan 01, 2007
For a work of this importance, there have been remarkably few recordings of Pergolesi’s delicious little intermezzo La Serva Padrona (The Housekeeper-Boss). Composed in 1733 to be performed between the acts of the composer’s opera seria Il Prigionier superbo, the piece ignited the splendidly hysterical Querelle des bouffons in Paris in 1752, pitting supporters of Italian opera (led by Rousseau) against fans of French opera (typified by Rameau). Perhaps more significantly, Pergolesi’s comedy seemed to indicate the direction in which the operatic winds were blowing–away from heavy duty tragedy and towards the buffo comedies of the nascent classical era.
The work is simplicity itself. Its two acts last barely forty-five minutes and contain five arias, two duets, a finale, and lots of secco recitative. No single number lasts much longer than four minutes, and several of the recitatives are bigger than the arias. The plot is rudimentary: Serpina the maid is so pushy that her bachelor employer, Uberto, decides to get married simply to get her under the control of the household’s new mistress. Serpina, seeing her chance, decides that she will marry Uberto herself, and after she arranges her own trumped up wedding to a stranger Uberto realizes that he loves her and all ends as planned.
Pergolesi’s music seems to have been designed to show off in the most schematic way all that was most appealing in the Italian school. The scoring is paired down to strings and continuo; the accompaniments are simple, the characters (only two of them) come from the middle and working classes, the action moves swiftly, and best of all, the tunes are pure vocal gold. Consider, for example, the sweetly lyrical aria, “A Serpina penserete”. Music historians, scholars, and theoreticians have never been able to wrap their brains around a style dependent on quality of melody as its primary constituent–it really is unanalyzable–and the result has always been a tendency to disparage Italian music as compared to the German or French schools, especially when those doing the analyzing happen to be German or French. Audiences, of course, have no such difficulties, hence the Querelle des bouffons and other, similar controversies throughout history.
This performance, fortunately, is quite a good one. As Uberto baritone Michele Govi sings with firm tone and he acts well with the voice; only a weakness in his lower register prevents him from being ideal. Federica Zanello’s soprano sounds a bit heavy, dare I say “matronly?” for the waspish Serpina, but she uses what she has intelligently and she is never unpleasant to listen to. The Ensemble Regia Accademia, a pick-up group drawn from various northern Italian orchestras, plays well under the direction of Marco Dallara, and the engineering sounds warm and well-balanced. As I said at the start, it’s very odd that there are so few choices available for this work, but this one will do nicely.
Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln / Mitropoulos, Dermota, Gueden, Wunderlich, Berry
Sony Masterworks
CD · 2 discs
$24.99Jun 02, 2011
By far the finest reading of this little-heard masterpiece, which combines Bruckner-like counterpoint with a vivid sense of drama. Anton Dermota gives a deeply impressive performance.
I have been seeking out broadcasts and recordings of this oratorio ever since, 20 or so years ago, I first began to suspect that it was a masterpiece. Many of those performances were so dreadful that I began to wonder whether I'd been quite wrong about the work but this, by a long way the finest reading of Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln ("The Book with seven seals") that I have ever heard, triumphantly vindicates it.
Franz Schmidt's oratorio combines learned, Bruckner-like contrapuntal artifice (which in a bad performance can sound crabbed and boring) with a vivid sense of drama that at times recalls the naive peasant baroque of some Austrian and South German carved altarpieces (and can in a bad performance sound merely naive), at others the horrific realism of Matthias Grünewald. As a composer himself and a man of deep religious conviction Mitropoulos responded to both these aspects, and such haunting passages as the duet for two survivors of the pestilence and death spread by the horsemen of the Apocalypse, or the tremendous earthquake chorus that follows the breaking of the seventh seal have a powerful sense of drama which is emphasized by Mitropoulos's precise care for contrapuntal and instrumental detail. Yes, in this live performance there are a few untidinesses (the rushing violin passages in the gipsy "Hallelujah", not altogether unexpectedly - they are hideously difficult) but the impact and the devout urgency of the reading are not in the least diminished by them.
In the hugely taxing central role of St John, Dermota is deeply impressive. Although the part is often given to a dramatic tenor it responds to a lyric voice that is capable at times of ringing fullness. Dermota matches Mitropoulos's urgency, and clearly means every word of the role. At one point, where a descending vocal line illustrates the text's reference to the four beasts and the elders falling down before the Lamb, it is obvious that the bottom note of the phrase is not within his range. Instead, quietly and reverently, he speaks it, and the expressive effect of this is characteristic of his whole performance. The other soloists, Gueden and Berry especially, are distinguished, and both chorus and orchestra audibly respond to Mitropoulos's conviction.
The mono recording is a little constricted at times, with patches of acid string tone, but it improves and gains impact as it proceeds. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln still has the reputation of a piece that the Austrians regard as a classic but which doesn't travel. This recording refutes that view with inspiriting eloquence.
Bruckner: Symphonies 3-9 & More / Celibidache, Munich Philharmonic
WARNER CLASSICS
SACD · 12 discs
$149.09Oct 18, 2024
Sergiu Celibidache considered 'Bruckner's existence as God's greatest gift'. He was also renowned for his dedication to exceptional and life-altering experiences for his audiences through a perfect balancing of sonic and spatial considerations. Thanks to the use of Overtone Reconstruction technology, which has widened the sampling frequency range and thus significantly increased the harmonic richness, fluidity and naturalness of the sound, these recordings are released for the first time on Hybrid SACDs, a collection that does full justice to Celibidache's characteristic breadth and spirituality in Bruckner's works. These performances are unique in their breadth, attention to detail and almost hypnotic control of the musical line. Gramophone Magazine, 2019
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