Many early music performers strive to re-create the style and expressions of a certain period, working within a consensus of opinions on what constitutes authentic performance practice. But some go quite a bit further and reproduce a work with all the known details of instrumentation and the specific features of a historic performance. Not only ...
Like those of his predecessor Franz Josef Haydn, the British folk song settings of Ludwig van Beethoven are an underappreciated corner of his output. Commissioned by Scotsman George Thomson for publication as parlor music, they present a simple, rustic face that hides a deceptively clever and often technically demanding musical texture. Indeed, ...
Diva is an entertaining and attractively packaged compilation of Angela Gheorghiu's EMI recordings made between 1996 and 2002. All of the selections have appeared on previous releases, but some of them only in the context of complete operas. As a one-disc snapshot of Gheorghiu's career so far, Diva does pretty well, and it would make a good first ...
Virgin's recording of Die Schöpfung is most notable for the fine playing and singing of Les Arts Florissants, under William Christie's experienced leadership. The period-instrument performance is generally reserved and well mannered, which may not be the characteristics most necessary for this extraordinary, forward-looking, and sometimes ...
Granville Bantock (1868-1946) was never one for doing things on a small scale, and his complete setting of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyám attests to the scope of his vision. The oratorio, which lasts over three hours and requires a huge orchestra and chorus, is unlikely to find a place on many concert programs, ...
One would have thought that at some point Graham Johnson would simply have run out of great Schubert songs in compiling his Schubert edition. And one would have been wrong: even here at volume 35 in a program with the unwieldy title of Schubert, 1822 -- 1825, Johnson has seemingly saved some of the best for nearly the end. But what else could a ...
Mozart wrote Mitridate, rè di Ponto, his first commissioned opera, for production in Milan when he was 14. Historically the opera was ignored, considered part of Mozart's juvenilia, but by the late twentieth century interest in the work revived; its number of productions has increased dramatically and it has come to be regarded as the first of the ...
The nuanced and lively playing Emmanuelle Haïm draws from Le Concert d'Astrée is the strongest element in this recording of Bach's Magnificat and Handel's Dixit Dominus. Its colorful, briskly articulated performance is a delight throughout, but the singing of the soloists and chorus lacks the same consistency. The chorus' sound is somewhat murky ...
Così fan tutte is an ideal candidate for Chandos' Opera in English series; it's so talky and the libretto is so verbally witty and subtle that hearing it in English gives it an immediacy that's not possible when it's sung in a language in which one isn't fluent. The English version by Marmaduke Browne, adapted by John Cox, is very fine, natural, ...
Any volume of Graham Johnson's Schubert edition that has one of the numerous settings of Matthisson's Der Geistertanz is a good volume. And that this volume starts with the men of the London Schubert Chorale belting out the slightly inebriated 1816 setting from the D. 494 is a great start to what proves to be a great volume in the series. How ...
Thomas Adès' 2004 version of The Tempest has been acclaimed as one of the outstanding operas of the new century, so it's a pleasure to have it available in such a fine recording, taken from the 2007 Covent Garden revival, featuring many of the principals from the premiere. Librettist Meredith Oakes has not only effectively distilled the play so ...
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