Dmitry Shostakovich's sardonic Symphony No. 4 in C minor (1935-1936) marks an important stage in his career, for it was the last of his early, avant-garde symphonies; because his experimental tendencies provoked hostile criticism in Pravda (most likely written by Stalin to make Shostakovich fear for his life), the symphony was withheld from ...
How many recordings of Dvorák's Král a Uhlír -- King and Charcoal Burner -- does anyone need? How many could anyone have? The work's only previous digital recording was a serviceable if uninspiring and drastically cut reading with Josef Chaloupka leading the Prague National Theatre Orchestra released in 1989 by Supraphon, and except among the ...
Prokofiev's 1927 ballet Le Pas d'Acier (The Step of Steel), given here in its rarely encountered complete form, is known for its motoric character and colorful scoring. Its sketchy story concerns the industrialization of the fledgling Soviet Union. Michail Jurowski's reading of the score is fairly straightforward and features excellent sound and ...
Originally planned as a choral tribute to Lenin, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 was transformed by the siege of Leningrad into a paean to that city's courage in the face of Nazi aggression. Shostakovich simplified his language and expanded his orchestra to give the symphony an unmistakable heroic quality, and this monumentality recommended it for ...
This is an excellent version of the complete score to Prokofiev's still somewhat neglected early ballet Chout. Michail Jurowski and the WDR Sinfonie Orchester Köln present the score in stunning sound, all sorts of detail emerging with excellent orchestral balances, the whole yielding a generally gracious and somewhat Romantic account of this ...
That Camille Saint-Saëns was one of the most accomplished and successful French composers of the Romantic period is beyond doubt. That the vast majority of his music is still terra incognita to most listeners is understandable: Saint-Saëns was also one of the most prolific composers of the Romantic period, right up there with Liszt when it came to ...
This two-disc CPO set offers two rarely encountered works by Prokofiev and one of his repertory staples. But even the popular Lieutenant Kije Suite here is unusual in one respect: the listener is given both the orchestral version and the rarely heard vocal alternative (which features a baritone soloist) of Romance and "Troika." Kije is given a ...
That's right: Schlemihl, the Yiddish name for the poor schnook for whom nothing ever goes right. That's right: Raskolnikoff, the idealistic murderer from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Apparently, there was something more to Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek than merely having composed the Overture to Donna Diana, the theme for the radio and ...
This 2006 Mode release of music by Stefan Wolpe is a significant survey of compositions from the 1930s, when he was among the most important European musicians to settle and work in Jerusalem. Even though much of his time was occupied with teaching composition and theory at the Palestine Conservatoire and directing choral performances, Wolpe found ...
Claude Vivier had become Canada's most internationally respected composer by the time of his murder in 1983, at the age of 34. A variety of influences led to the development of his darkly mystical musical style, characterized by melodic simplicity linked to harmonic complexity, brilliant orchestration using an expanded percussion battery, and ...
With Kim Novak's smile, Grace Kelly's style, and Ingrid Bergman's sensuality, Renée Fleming's recording of Richard Strauss' Daphne is a Hitchcock heroine made into music. His final hymn to love and death and transformation, Strauss' Daphne is another in a long line of radiantly virginal female leads who come to a bad end, in this case, being ...
It may at first seem odd that a recording of Strauss' Elektra should feature on the front cover the name and the photograph of the conductor and not of the soprano in the title role. And, after listening to the recording, it may seem odder still. This is not to say that conductor Semyon Bychkov isn't a superlative Strauss conductor. He most surely ...
Leos Janácek: Lasské Tance -- Suita opus 3 is a collection of early works by the eminent Czech composer on the German label Orfeo conducted by Gerd Albrecht. Albrecht leads the WDR Sinfonie Orchester Köln in the Lachian Dances and in Janácek's Suita pro orchestr Op. 3, whereas he pilots a small group of singers, the NDR-Chor and the WDR ...
Conductor Semyon Bychkov has recorded with some of the greatest orchestras in the world, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Rundfunk Symphony, London Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic (with which he made an earlier recording of the present Shostakovich Symphony No. 11). Upon hearing this disc, it is safe ...
Even if you have the Kondrashin and the Rozhdestvensky complete cycles, even if you have every recording by Mravinsky and every Maxim Shostakovich recording, you'll still have to admit that this complete cycle of the symphonies of Dmitry Shostakovich with Rudolf Barshai conducting the WDR Sinfonieorchester is, far and away, the single greatest ...
When it comes to scaring the living heck out of listeners, there's nothing quite like Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13. As a work of socialist realism in music, the Thirteenth is unequaled in its description of life in the USSR in all its fear, horror, terror, and, let us not forget, excruciating agony. In the right performance, the Thirteenth is an ...
Because the elaborate packaging and minimal liner notes make this CD appear quite mysterious, the works for accordion and orchestra by Manuel Hidalgo may seem harder to appreciate than they really are. (The five-page foldout of abstract paintings by Jerry Zeniuk and the quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche are connected to Hidalgo's compositions and ...
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