Early-Music Recordings Capture Antiquity And Its Modern Reflections
DIGITAL REVIEW – One album shifts the spotlight from William Lawes' familiar instrumental works to his lesser known vocal music. Another, pairing a vocal sextet with a trumpet, traces an arc from the Middle Ages to recently commissioned pieces.
Songs Without Words: Reimagining Poulenc For Violin And Piano
DIGITAL REVIEW – Can the lyrical art of Poulenc’s songs be captured instrumentally, sans the poetry of Anouilh, Apollinaire, and others? A new album by violinist Hongyi Mo and pianist John Etsell spins a string of answers in the exquisite affirmative.
With A Swell Of Voices, Recording Embellishes Florence Price Legacy
DIGITAL REVIEW – Having recorded all of her symphonies, conductor John Jeter, a Price devotee, now embraces a rarely heard aspect of the composer's musical skill: her choral works. Three pieces are world-premiere recordings.
Departing On Track 16: Board Here For The Best View Of Odd Liszt Trek
DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes' new recording, in part with the Norwegian Soloists' Choir, is a curious mix. To find immediate reward, I suggest jumping in late for his sublime account of Liszt's Six Pensées poétiques, or Consolations.
In Hungarian Recording Of Mythic French Opera, Style Reigns With King
DIGITAL REVIEW – This account of Lalo's Le roi d'Ys, another enterprise of the historically meticulous foundation Bru Zane, boasts a fine cast featuring a Dutch soprano and an American mezzo-soprano long adept in French repertoire.
Beyond ‘Carmen’: CDs, Book Widen Perspective On Bizet’s Creative Life
DIGITAL REVIEW – The Center for French Romantic Music has released the sixth in its Portraits series, this one a bundle of four discs and book offering five hours of fascinating works by the short-lived composer that are little known to music lovers.
Artfully Manic Delivery Of Comic Opera Proves Salieri Was No Joke
DIGITAL REVIEW – A recording of Cublai, gran kan de’ Tartari is the sixth Salieri CD release by Christophe Rousset and his ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, who seem bent on undoing damage done to the composer by the film Amadeus.
Percussion Recording Becomes Memorial For Featured Tabla Master
DIGITAL REVIEW – Third Coast Percussion's 20th anniversary album was transfigured when the celebrated tabla player Zakir Hussain died two months after his recording sessions for his own work Murmurs with the Chicago-based group.
Pulled From Shadows: ‘Simon Boccanegra’ As Verdi’s Original Vision
DIGITAL REVIEW – It's usually the 1881 revival version that one encounters, and the impression not surprisingly betrays something spliced from two eras of Verdi's life. Now Mark Elder leads an integrated recording of the work written in 1857.
Not For End Of Time: With Nod To Messiaen, A Quartet For Our Time
DIGITAL REVIEW – The Anzû Quartet, combining violin, cello, clarinet, and piano as Messiaen did in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps and dedicated to new music using that specific mix, makes its recording debut with two high-intensity works.
Early-Music Group Casts Engaging New Light On 17th-Century Charmers
DIGITAL REVIEW – Codex Rost, a recording of stylishly arranged sonatas and other movements played by violinist Catherine Aglibut and her ensemble, Open Chamber Berlin, makes it easy to grasp the original appeal of these obscure works.
Of Bees And Piazzolla: Dances Familiar, Bizarre Animate A Violin Album
DIGITAL REVIEW – “I have found myself at the intersection of music and dance for over 15 years,” says violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim, who is concertmaster of Pacific Northwest Ballet and the featured artist on a far-reaching CD titled Kinetic.
Recording Sheds Light On Piano Concertos By Women History Forgot
DIGITAL REVIEW – Conductor Odile de la Martinez and pianist Samantha Ege collaborate on a pairing of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in Two Uninterrupted Speeds by Julia Perry and Concerto for Piano and Strings by Doreen Carwithen.
Musing On Busoni: Pianist Gets At Roots Of An Undervalued Master
DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Jiayan Sun’s new album Ferruccio Busoni and His Muses looks backward at the personalities who influenced him and forward at the progressive ideas that animated this singular, eclectic, and visionary composer.
In Timely Revelations, Recordings Celebrate The March Of Women
DIGITAL REVIEW – March is Women’s History Month, and two new recordings salute female composers who should be much better known than they are: instrumental works by Fernande Decruck and songs by Agathe Backer Grøndahl.
Another Scarlatti Takes Limelight In Oratorio Of Daniel In The Lion’s Den
DIGITAL REVIEW – The imaginative work by Francesco Scarlatti, in its premiere recording by the Armonico Consort under Christopher Monks, displays the influences of Handel as well as the composer's famous older brother Alessandro.
On New Tracks, Silkroad Traces Multiethnic Cost Of America’s Railways
DIGITAL REVIEW – In the13 musical narratives of American Railroad, Silkroad frames the labor and sacrifices, the hidden stories, of the Irish, African American, Chinese, Native American, and Japanese who built the transcontinental railroad.
In An Exotic Travelogue, Wafting Down Silk Road With Oslo Wind Players
DIGITAL REVIEW – On a superb CD, the Oslo Kammerakademi performs two colorful works it commissioned, plus two by Saint-Saëns and André Caplet, all evoking Eastern lands from China to Persia (today: Iran), Afghanistan, and Mongolia.
Soprano On Schoenberg And Moonstruck Pierrot: Wein’s Classical Gas 2.0
PERSPECTIVE – In her second podcast, Gail Wein chats with soprano Lucy Shelton, who brings her vast experience with modern music to bear in demonstrating the radical sung-speech vocalism Schoenberg used in his atonal Pierrot lunaire.
The Boy Mozart’s Riot Of Royalty, Vocal Bling: ‘Mitridate’ Video Glitters
DIGITAL REVIEW – This December 2022 taping of the 14-year-old composer's first important opera, a vocal high-wire act, features Les Musiciens du Louvre led by Marc Minkowski at the Staatsoper Berlin. Its lofty musical values deserve notice.
