Frank Sinatra - "Platinum (70th Capitol Collection)" / Over 44 songs, Platinum celebrates in a beautiful 4LP box set the 70th anniversary of Frank Sinatra signing to Capitol Records, a moment that established his standing as one of the greatest interpretive singers of all time. It features a cross-section of Sinatra's best Capitol tracks as well as sought-after vault rarities. Also available as a 2CD set and an exclusive, limited 4LP e-commerce edition that includes lithographs of Sinatra images from the Capitol era.
Joe Hisaishi - "Joe Hisaishi Conducts The End Of The World; Reich: The Desert Music". Joe Hisaishi's new album blends cinematic sound worlds with the spellbinding power of a live performance experience. Recorded in 2024 at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Hisaishi's album features the maestro's original piece "The End of the World" and Steve Reich's "Desert Music," performed with the Futures Orchestra Classics and the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo. Now in it's seventh volume, the "JOE HISAISHI FUTURE ORCHESTRA CLASSICS" series highlights Joe Hisaishi's signature versatility, precision and passion. 2 LP set, gatefold jacket.
Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony stands among the largest and most ambitious works in the orchestral repertoire. Completed after the success of his Seventh Symphony and extensively revised before it's eventual premiere in 1892, it unfolds on an epic scale, combining monumental architecture with moments of profound introspection. Recorded by the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Karl-Heinz Steffens, this new album presents the 1890 Nowak edition of the symphony, and continues Steffens' exploration of the Austro-German symphonic tradition with one of Bruckner's most expansive and richly scored works.
Johann Strau's Die Fledermaus (The Bat) has been part of the Bayerische Staatsoper's repertoire since 1895 and has always been performed there by star-studded casts. In December 2023, the curtain rose on a spectacular new production of this piece. Director Barrie Kosky gave the "operetta of all operettas" a new look: a society, an entire city dances towards the abyss in a colourful, lavish set (stage design: Rebecca Ringst, costumes: Klaus Bruns). The setting is Vienna, the city of the golden operetta era, where Die Fledermaus premiered in 1874. A volcano boils beneath the glamour of feather boas and tutus. Not only for Gabriel von Eisenstein, the bat's revenge becomes a nightmare when, during a glittering masked ball at the residence of Prince Orlofsky, a fake marquis and a fake chevalier, an alleged Hungarian countess and plenty of budding artists meet for a raucous party. Glasses are clinking, relationships are shaken, there are lies, there is love, and dancing (choreography: Otto Pichler). The people celebrate while they still can, true to the motto: "Happy is the one who forgets". General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski - in his third new Munich production together with Barrie Kosky - brings new aspects of the score to the fore. Diana Damrau makes her role debut as Rosalinde, Georg Nigl interprets her husband Gabriel von Eisenstein, Katharina Konradi appears as Adele and Martin Winkler as Frank; other roles feature Markus Bruck (Dr. Falke), Sean Panikkar (Alfred), Kevin Conners (Dr. Blind) and Miriam Neumaier (Ida). The actor Franz Josef Strohmeier and the tap dancer Max Pollak, among others, play the six-fold frog.
Wolfgang Sawallisch - The Complete Opera Recordings on Warner Classics
WARNER CLASSICS
CD
$120.49Nov 01, 2024
This 31CD-box brings together all the operatic recordings that the German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1956 to 1993 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics). Aged 11, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) heard a performance of Humperdinck's fairytale opera Hansel und Gretel in his native Munich and, there and then, decided that he wanted to be the man in the orchestra pit who waved his arms and made things happen. It took him a while - war service as a radio operator and a spell as a prisoner of war delayed the inevitable - but by his late 20s he was conducting opera at Augsburg (starting with Hansel und Gretel) and he had barely turned 30 when at Aachen he became the youngest Generalmusikdirektor in Germany. Opera recordings followed and his 1957 version of Richard Strauss's Capriccio is still regarded as the benchmark. Also in this box, along with more Strauss, perhaps the finest achievements of Sawallisch's other operatic hero, Wagner.
A world removed from the grand and awesome visions of the Last Judgement that so often characterize settings of the Mass for the Dead, Brahms conceived a work of 'consolation for those who are suffering'. Having spent more than ten years absorbing this German 'humanist' requiem, this album's performers have meticulously shaped every bar of this compact work, achieving a form of polyphonic transparency that confounds the senses and transcends the universality of it's message.
A world removed from the grand and awesome visions of the Last Judgement that so often characterize settings of the Mass for the Dead, Brahms conceived a work of 'consolation for those who are suffering'. Having spent more than ten years absorbing this German 'humanist' requiem, this album's performers have meticulously shaped every bar of this compact work, achieving a form of polyphonic transparency that confounds the senses and transcends the universality of it's message.
A quarter-century of postwar Bayreuth recordings, made live at the Festspielhaus by Decca, DG and Philips: this is an absorbing history in sound of Wagner interpretation featuring several albums of timeless authority. This survey of Wagner's mature operas, excluding the Ring, takes the listener from Parsifal in 1951 under Hans Knappertsbusch, through to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg under Silvio Varviso in 1974. Both the 1951 Parsifal and Lohengrin from two years later, under Joseph Keilberth, were captured in 'ffrr' mono by the legendary Decca team of engineers under the supervision of John Culshaw. Decca continued to work at Bayreuth until 1955, capturing Der Fliegende Hollander, also under Keilberth, in a superb example of Decca's early stereo sound. The casts were often youthful, but coached by the Festival co-director Wieland Wagner into an intense engagement with text and music. Performances here by Wolfgang Windgassen, Hermann Uhde, Ludwig Weber, Birgit Nilsson and others reach a special level of long-breathed intensity almost impossible to sustain under studio conditions. None of the conductors involved had worked at Bayreuth before the war. Keilberth, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Karl Bohm all engaged with Wieland in finding a new, flowing but dramatically inflected style in Wagner. Something of this New Bayreuth style also infuses Knappertsbusch's 1962 Parsifal with a unique combination of mystery and rapture. The set includes a previously unpublished radio interview with Irene Dalis and George London, the Kundry and Amfortas in that performance. Like Knappertsbusch's Parsifal, the Tristan und Isolde under Bohm in 1966 was rapidly recognized as a classic of the gramophone and has hardly been out of print since then, but it is reissued here with the rehearsal sequence included on the final LP of the original set. This 'Original Covers' box also includes a booklet essay by Peter Quantrill which explores the history of post-war Bayreuth and the circumstances of each recording.
Baritone Christian Gerhaher and soprano Mojca Erdmann perform Hugo Wolf's dramatic and poetic song cycle, "Italian Songbook." Highly appealing to listeners yet challenging for singers and hence rarely heard, Wolf's 46 songs stand as exquisite gems that also embrace a larger story arc, creating a highly memorable dramatic experience. Gerold Huber is the skilled piano accompanist and all three musicians are highly acclaimed.
The videos in this boxed set of live HD recordings of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were filmed during the 2009-2011 Mahler celebration at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. The set's eleven discs include performances led by renowned conductors such as Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink, Pierre Boulez and Ivan Fischer. In addition to all ten of Mahler's ground-breaking Symphonies, the collection also includes Totenfeier and Das Lied von der Erde and features world class soloists including soprano Miah Persson, mezzo Bernarda Fink and tenor Robert Dean Smith. All of this amazing music is vividly brought to life in surround sound and lifelike high resolution video.
The four orchestral compositions by Hans Werner Henze which are assembled on this CD combine works from the time of his third opera "King Stag" of the middle of the 50s with e.g. "La selva incantata", in which Henze refers directly to that opera - an almost unique procedure in his list of works. A comprehensive interview (Peter Ruzicka with Hans Werner Henze) in the booklet describes that the score of "King Stag" marked something like a very important "attempt to free himself from the twelve-tone system", the dogmatic chains of the Darmstadt School.
ZEMLINSKY: DIE SEEJUNGFRAU SCHREKER: DER GEBURTSTA
ONYX CLASSICS
CD
$20.49May 28, 2021
Following on from their critically acclaimed albums of Stravinsky, Elgar and Tchaikovsky, the award winning team of Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra turn to Zemlinsky and Schreker. Premiered in 1905, Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau (after Hans Christian Andersen) was almost ignored by the reviewers. Considered too conservative for the progressives, and too progressive for the conservatives, Zemlinsky struggled to overcome the negative reviews of this masterpiece and withdrew it in the immediate aftermath of the premiere. Vasily Petrenko for this recording uses the original version of the score which restores the "bei der Meerhexe" episode to the 2nd movement. One of the most progressive of the Viennese composers of this period, Schreker's dance pantomime Der Guburtstag der Infantine (story by Oscar Wilde) was given it's premiere in 1908 and was his first big success.
Eberl - Dussek: Concertos For Two Pianos / Duo Tal & Groethuysen, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Reinhard Goebel
Sony Masterworks
CD
$11.98Oct 16, 2020
All of the recordings of Reinhard Goebel's project "Beethoven's World" have received great attention and excellent reviews worldwide. For the first album with violin concertos by Franz Clement, the Welt am Sonntag wrote: "If the discovery of Beethoven contemporaries, which Goebel has just signed up for the Beethoven Year, continues in this way, it will be a fine year". For the second album with double cello concertos by Reicha and Romberg, Deutschlandfunk wrote: "This recording (...) sets new standards." Great reviews for the third album with works by Salieri, Hummel and Vorisek followed: "An outstanding contribution to the Beethoven Year: With his alternative Beethoven Project, Reinhard Goebel once again impressively proves that there was even more to hear in Vienna at the time than Mozart piano concertos and Beethoven symphonies."
The fourth album of this celebrated series continues the musical foray into the Vienna of the early 19th century with extraordinary rarities from Beethoven's contemporaries. Recorded with the excellent piano duo Tal & Groethuysen and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the album features the Concerto for Two Pianos by Anton Eberl (1765-1807) and the Concerto for Two Pianos by Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812). The album also presents the world premiere recording of Joseph von Eybler's (1765-1846) “La Follia di Spagna” with all Instruments after the Violin Sonata, op. 5 no. 12 “La Follia” by Arcangelo Corelli. Goebel also includes a rarity by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) to the program: Gratulations-Menuett for Orchestra in E-flat Major, WoO 3. The recording proves once again that there was far more to hear for Vienna music lovers than piano concertos by Mozart or symphonies by Beethoven.
