Music - Opera / Vocal
|
Previn: A Streetcar Named Desire / Previn (3 CDs)
- This Deutsche Grammophon recording stems from San Francisco Opera's 1998 premiere production of André Previn's opera based on the harrowing Tennessee Williams play. He evokes Williams's New Orleans setting through loping, jazz-tinged motives &
wistful, asymmetrical commentaries from solo winds .... |
La Pellegrina -
Music for the Wedding of Ferdinando De Medici and Christine de Lorraine, Princess of France, Florence 1589.
The music on this album was the apotheosis of the stravaganza - the magnificent musical-dramatic entertainments they staged with a huge chorus and orchestra and newfangled stage machinery. |
Handel: Opera Arias / Daniels
- David Daniels seems to be the current leader of the opera world's March of the Falsettos--and with good reason: he's one of the first countertenors with enough beef in his voice to sound convincing in the heroic castrato roles of Handel's operas |
Carter: To Music, Tarantella, etc
- Composer: Elliott Carter, Conductor: John Oliver, Performer: Martin Amlin, Frank Corliss, Orchestra: John Oliver Chorale, Koch International Classics - #7415 / November 17, 1998 |
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, etc /
- Schoenberg's song cycle set to the bizarrely disturbing poetry of Albert Giraud is one of the pivotal works of 20th-century music. But if that sounds like the kind of piece that is "good for you" but inaccessible, try this latest interpretation by Pierre Boulez and soprano Christine
Schaefer. The limpid, inspirited account they've recorded presents not just an intellectual challenge but a work of awe-inspiring beauty.
|
Lakme - Complete Opera
- Though the duet between the Hindu priestess Lakme and her servant, Marika, is familiar from its use in everything from
ads to the cult-film classic "The Hunger," the score to this colorful late-19th-century opera contains many more jewels. Michel Plasson's generously textured and empathetic reading, featuring the ravishing soprano Nathalie Dessay, revisits the work with winning results.
|
Schumann: Szenen aus Goethes Faust
- Goethe's masterpiece "Faust" has inspired a remarkable variety of musical responses, ranging from simplified
potboiler treatments, such as Gounod's "Faust," to Mahler's Klimt-like, dazzling orchestral imagination in the second part of his Eighth Symphony. One of the lesser-known settings comes from the pen of Robert Schumann. This period-instrument interpretation of his ambitious undertaking (which includes scenes from "Faust: Part II") makes an important contribution to the Romantic catalog.
|
Powder Her Face-Complete Opera
- No opera about a sex-crazed English duchess could be all bad, right? "Powder Her Face" lives up to its rave UK reviews, and then
some. Ades has an amazing knack of writing accessible music that is also totally modern. At times strongly reminiscent of Britten, at other
times a pastiche of composers like Bartok or Stravinsky, his orchestration is powerful and innovative
|
Marcelo Alvarez
- Bel canto / Rizzi, Welsh National Opera
- Just how many heralded new tenors have caught the public eye
in the past year? It's sometimes hard to keep track, but one that definitely should not be missed is the Argentine Marcelo Alvarez. A late bloomer as a musician, Alvarez makes up for lost time on this debut recording of Italian arias |
|
|
