Wild, passionate, and over in less than an hour, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is one of the greatest operas ever composed and it has received some of the greatest performances of any opera ever recorded. And while some of them have been sung with more refinement or more fervor, few can match this performance with Susan Graham as Dido and Ian ...
No one would say that Ian Bostridge is the greatest tenor out there today. No one could imagine him as Rodolfo or Siegfried. But Bostridge may well be the greatest tenor out there today in the right repertoire. His voice is light but strong, his tone is strong but supple, his technique is supple but powerful, and his interpretations are powerful ...
This two-disc set is a sampler of operatic singers from the corporately related Virgin Classics and EMI labels, and like most such samplers it delivers a good deal less than it promises. The marketing is scattershot, for one thing: the two-disc set purports to offer both the "new generation" of singers and "greatest arias" -- whether of these ...
Ian Bostridge's collection of Handel arias and recitatives plunges boldly into the familiar repertoire -- pieces done so frequently that they're likely to be greeted with a yawn. It's a measure of Bostridge's confidence that he devotes much of the CD to these warhorses, and of his skill, that they come across as fresh and newly imagined. Bostridge ...
The question is not "Is Bernard Haitink's cycle of the symphonies of Vaughan Williams the best digital set of the symphonies?" The answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Haitink's technique is beyond reproach and his interpretations are not only overwhelmingly passionate, they are deeply poetic and profoundly musical. The London Philharmonic, ...
Remember the Furtwängler Tristan, the Böhm Tristan, the Kleiber Tristan, or any of the other great Tristans of the past 50 years? If you do, the first thing you remember about them is who did the conducting. Does anyone remember the Suthaus Tristan or the Windgassen Tristan or the Kollo Tristan? No: as important as the singers are, they are not ...
Tenor Ian Bostridge brings together three of Britten's most important song cycles: Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Les Illuminations, and Nocturne. His performances are notable for their dramatic range, particularly the power and passion and vocal abandon he brings to these works. He fully inhabits the music, which leads to some daring ...
The idea of Ian Bostridge's Winterreise has promise. He has made a number of enjoyable Schubert recordings (particularly his first set on EMI, with Julius Drake), and there are surprisingly few recordings of the cycle by tenors -- the voice for which it could best be said to have been written. Throw in Leif Ove Andsnes, one of today's hottest ...
Lieder recordings by "dream teams" of famous singers and piano virtuosos are often indulgent, distorted, and interpretively generic -- more the result of marketing than genuine artistic vision. But there are always exceptions to prove the rule, sometimes tremendous exceptions, as is the case with this Die schöne Müllerin by Ian Bostridge and ...
One inevitably wonders why pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and tenor Ian Bostridge have joined together for this disc of one sonata and four songs by Schubert. Is there a subtle tie between the sonata and the songs? Are the songs' melodies the basis of the one or more movements of the sonata? Are the song's emotional contents somehow connected to those ...
"It is hard to believe, but Hugo Wolf is still an underrated composer." That's how Ian Bostridge, the Oxford educated English tenor, opens his notes to this recital of Wolf lieder. He is, of course, right. It is hard to believe, and it is also sad but all too true. While the lieder of Wolf's forbearers Schubert and Schumann and contemporaries ...
This is the third disc by Andsnes and Bostridge that combines one of Schubert's piano sonatas with a few of his songs. Here it is, Schubert's great, final sonata, two songs, and an infrequently heard melodrama. Whether or not Schubert recognized the sonata as his last, a presentiment of death is often attributed to its mien, particularly in the ...
Understandably, there have been few recordings of Benjamin Britten's Canticles. Although the works are both brilliantly written and profoundly affecting, how many performers would dare contend with the performances of the Canticles by Peter Pears, the tenor for whom they were written, with the composer himself at the piano? Not many, as it turns ...
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