Classical Music
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Romanza
- Andrea Bocello has the voice of an angel. Powerful, haunting, romantic... Although the music is clearly Italian, there are touches of Brazilian and French influences in a couple of pieces that enhances the freshness of this glorious CD. All the songs are wonderful, moving and beautiful. Whether you like opera music or not this will satisfy everyone.
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Brahms, Shostakovich / Bashmet, Moscow Soloists
Yuri Bashmet transforms Brahms's Clarinet Quintet and Shostakovich's 13th String Quartet into vehicles for solo
viola and chamber orchestra on this disc. Especially on the Shostakovich piece, he delivers a riveting performance filled with agony and immediacy. Intense |
Classic Wynton
- Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis proves he's an amazing virtuoso with a fine sense of classical style on "Classic Wynton." Basically a "greatest hits" of Marsalis's expanding classical repertoire, this disc has a few great surprises: Marsalis is joined by Kathleen Battle in an exciting version of Handel's "Let the bright seraphim," and a never-before-released Hovhaness composition for trumpet and organ is included.
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Brahms: Piano Concerto no 1 / Bernstein, Gould
- Glenn Gould's legendary 1962 performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto #1 in D-minor, Op. 15, will always be seen as controversial. Because conductor Leonard Bernstein made a point of addressing the audience to excuse himself from the pianist's radically slow tempi. This recording captures Bernstein's infamous speech to the audience, the beautiful concert, and a brief radio interview with Gould |
Bernstein - Reaching for the Note
- In conjunction with a PBS-TV documentary, this double CD showcases the three sides of Bernstein's career: his own
compositions ("West Side Story," "On the Town," and others), his conducting stints (included is a ravishing Adagietto movement of Mahler's Fifth symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic), and even one track of Bernstein tickling the ivories on a Gershwin tune. A good introduction to this
musical genius.
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Mahler: Symphony #5 /Barenboim, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- Recorded in Koln in 1997, this disc showcases the Chicago Symphony at its most virtuosic and Barenboim at his most engaged. All of the composition's disparate elements come together magically. Great stuff.
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Martinu: Sinfoniettas, Toccata e Due Canzoni / Vasary
- Martinu's Toccata e Due Canzoni is an amazing work--disturbingly dark in some places, opulently melodic and open-hearted in others. The first movement is one of the most purely fascinating "perpetual motion" pieces that you're ever likely to hear. The other two works are typical of Martinu's sunny, lyrical, neoclassical temperament ... |
Tchaikovsky: Sleeping Beauty / Mogrelia, Symphony Orch
- Sleeping Beauty is uniformly regarded as the greatest full-length, classical ballet in the history of the universe. Tchaikovsky lavished all the love / attention of which he was capable, produced an amazing score in which the demands of the dance are perfectly integrated within a symphony musical structure
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A Window in Time- Rachmaninoff performs his solo piano works
- Played back on a Bösendorfer Reproducing Piano, this collection sounds astounding, full of Rachmaninoff's lickety-quick motion and his punching intensity when striking the keys. There are 18 Rachmaninoff selections--some of them collaborations--and one gem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," taken to new places in this 1919 reading |
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