DIGITAL REVIEW – With his 70th birthday approaching in May and the idea of "legacy" in mind, The Who's Pete Townshend decided to have Quadrophenia, his second full-length rock opera, adapted as a classical work with orchestra.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Without a clear understanding of how these four pieces relate to each other, the listener is apt to find this CD difficult to appreciate, except on a purely emotional level. Perhaps that is what
Gidon Kremer intended.
DIGITAL REVIEW – It has been 51 years since the completion of the first-ever recording of Wagner's Ring, produced for Decca by John Culshaw and led by Georg Solti, an achievement that offers a “theater of the mind.”
DIGITAL REVIEW – Marking the centennial of American composer Irving Fine’s birth, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project CD of all his orchestral works includes one of America’s best symphonies and a Brandeis U fight song.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Perhaps the most interesting of all the Pierre Boulez repackagings is a collection that revisits his tumultuous early days as an intellectual bomb thrower and musical style setter at the head of the Domaine Musical.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Many Christians consider Spain's Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela one of the world's holiest sites. British composer Joby Talbot made a pilgrimage to the church while preparing to compose his choral work.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Leonard Bernstein punched Nielsen into the Philharmonic agenda, but it took Alan Gilbert to do all six symphonies for Dacapo. He completes the cycle with the craggy Fifth, and the Sixth, in which he really lets fly.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park inspired the French composer's colorful work, which is replete with birdsongs and spiritual imagery. Christoph Eschenbach leads a striking new recording.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon Symphony continue the ensemble's tradition of focusing on American music with a program of music by Walter Piston, George Antheil, and Aaron Copland.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Prolific beyond understanding, Alan Hovhaness died in 2000 with many works left unrecorded, among them his "Vision of Andromeda," the 48th of 67 symphonies. The 1982 opus makes its disc debut at last.
DIGITAL REVIEW - The word on Harry Partch (1901-1974) is spreading slowly, thanks to latter-day disciples like the ensemble simply called Partch. Its second Partchmusik album actually won a Grammy Award a few weeks ago.
DIGITAL REVIEW - When the late Claudio Abbado's health began to interfere with his ability to function, the Lucerne Festival gathered musicians around Europe into a summer orchestra just for him. Their memorial tribute is on Blu-ray.
Clara Schumann's half-brother Woldemar Bargiel, well-known in his time, is one of two composers whose music has been rescued on recent recordings. The other taught Bernstein, Sessions and Carter as his own music lay silent.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Dudamel’s recording from Caracas, with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, has many of the qualities that made their Los Angeles performance something to savor, but not the same electrifying intensity.
DIGITAL REVIEW - As part of the 150th Richard Strauss birthday celebrations in 2014, descendants selected seven of his operas captured on video from as early as 1965 for an impressive compilation that would enhance any collection.
DIGITAL REVIEW - How could anyone be blasé about holding a substantial chunk of Brahms' life’s work on one little disc? Yet these Leipzig Gewandhaus performances with Riccardo Chailly transcend by far the slim form of the medium.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Former Buenos Aires child prodigies Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim often collaborate as soloist and conductor, but before a concert caught on DG they had played duo pianos together only once.
DIGITAL REVIEW - Once a rarity, complete recordings of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies now number well over a dozen. One of the best has just reached its conclusion with a powerful rendering of the choral Symphony No. 13.
DIGITAL REVIEW - France was the model for Russia's tsaritsas, but not in musical matters. Italian composers beat a path to St. Petersburg in the 18th century. In her CD research pilgrimage, Cecilia Bartoli uncovered real gems.
DIGITAL REVIEW — Against all odds, the upstart Seattle Opera made Wagner’s Ring its signature achievement in 1975, and just as astonishingly kept at it. Now the company is taking its 2013 Ring to the world in a CD box from Avie.