While most serious listeners already have their favorite set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, newcomers searching for respectable recordings at a reasonable price would do well to start with these performances by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Released on two separate discs in the EMI Classics budget line, these ...
On paper, this looks like a dream version of The Barber of Seville -- Beverly Sills, Nicolai Gedda, Sherrill Milnes, Renato Capecchi, and Ruggero Raimondi, conducted by James Levine. It's never less than fully professional, but only occasionally catches fire and lifts off with the lightness that characterizes truly transcendent performances of ...
This two-disc set entitled An Anthology of English Song is just what it says it is: a very generous collection of 53 selections drawn from 13 separate discs of songs by English composers from Stanford to Britten. Some were first issued in the '90s on the late Collins label. Some were first issued in the 2000s on the vibrant Naxos label. But all ...
Soprano Nicole Cabell, who won the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, is a singer to watch. Her debut solo CD on Decca presents her in a wide variety of arias, from "Summertime" to Juliette's "Ah, Je veux vivre." Her voice is bright, and while she is capable of the required pyrotechnics, she has just a little edge that becomes more ...
This may not need to be the only Janácek set on the shelf, but it is surely a good place to start a Janácek collection. Outside of the operas, all Janácek's core works are here as well as a few oddballs. But for the core works, the performances in this set are as good or better than any other non-Czech performance. Paul Crossley's performances of ...
On paper, this looks like a dream version of The Barber of Seville -- Beverly Sills, Nicolai Gedda, Sherrill Milnes, Renato Capecchi, and Ruggero Raimondi, conducted by James Levine. It's never less than fully professional, but only occasionally catches fire and lifts off with the lightness that characterizes truly transcendent performances of ...
There are basically two kinds of performances of Bach's keyboard concertos -- those played on the harpsichord and those played on the piano. There are likewise basically two kinds of performances of Bach's keyboard concertos played on the piano -- those played as if the piano were a percussion instrument and those played as if the piano were a ...
One can hardly imagine an Adrian Boult Missa Solemnis or a John Barbirolli Missa Solemnis. Indeed, the whole notion of an English Missa Solemnis seems suspect, as if an English conductor would have to turn the Missa Solemnis into either Messiah meets Elijah or, worse yet, Gerontius meets A Mass of Life. Thankfully, Colin Davis' 1977 recording of ...
Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields made this album of George Frederick Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music in 1993, so collectors may distinguish this reissue from the group's 1988 performance on EMI, or their 1971 recording on Argo. Marriner and his world-renowned ensemble have a proven track record, ...
Any horn player or horn fan who doesn't already know the work of hornist Hermann Baumann is urged to hear this two-disc set. Prior to suffering a stroke in 1993, Baumann was arguably the preeminent German hornist of his generation. With his smooth technique, his graceful tone, and his polished interpretations, Baumann played the way a great singer ...
This album by operatic soprano Carole Farley is somewhat mistitled; few of the songs are in the first rank of pop standards, and indeed the album's most noteworthy feature is that it includes four world premieres of songs by Kurt Weill, uncovered by Farley herself. To take the obvious first question first, this collection is worth purchasing for ...
This is a time-tested recording of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, reissued as part of Philips' reasonably priced Trio series. Over 30 years old at the time of this release, and perhaps not among the best available when it was new, Colin Davis' 1971 performance is still a respectable entry in the catalog of Figaro recordings. Davis deserves a lot of ...
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