Disc and Stream

CHICAGO – When Louis "Studs" Terkel left WFMT in 1997 after 45 years on the air, he took more than 5,600 of his reel-to-reel tape chats with the A-list of culture at large. That treasury of incredible stories is getting new digital life.

By Matthew Gurewitsch

DIGITAL REVIEW – In Vienna State Opera's 1971 premiere of Gottfried von Einem's Der Besuch der alten Dame, top Wagnerians played townfolk facing the return of a lady (Christa Ludwig), now very rich and bent on cold revenge.

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL REVIEW - Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra in a live performance recorded three years ago. For the sake of completeness in Deutsche Grammophon's bid to record all of Lenny’s music, it’ll do.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW – Two gifted young musicians, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, 19, and conductor Mirga Grazinyté-Tyna, 32, display wonderful rapport in Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. Cello encores round out the disc.

By Mark Kanny

DIGITAL REVIEW – The Clarion Quartet was formed to perform ‘Entartete Musik’ that was suppressed by the Nazis. Breaking the Silence, the group’s new album, resulted from a concert it gave at Terezín concentration camp.

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL – Belatedly confronting Nielsen's quirky Third and Fourth Symphonies on CD, fellow Dane Thomas Dausgaard further displays his close musical relationship with his future orchestra, the Seattle Symphony.

By Joe Banno

DIGITAL REVIEW – When 70-year-old Laurie Anderson’s speaking voice is first heard on her new, Hurricane Sandy-inspired collaborative album with the Kronos Quartet, it’s like encountering an old friend and a fresh, familiar sound.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL – Two Terry Riley concertos played by the Nashville Symphony have plenty of original sounds made from everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ingredients. But the effects don't always add up to a coherent whole.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW - Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Bergen Philharmonic in three works by Ralph Vaughan Williams: a symphony that isn't a symphony, a double-piano concerto, and songs set to texts by his second wife.

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL – Departing from custom, Berlin Philharmonic musicians have devoted their lavish in-house recording resources to music by a living composer – an irreverent American one at that: John Adams. They do a terrific job.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL – Video of live concerts can be costly to produce but a more compelling experience, and more effective marketing, than audio-only. Here are seven of the best orchestra websites that offer streaming video of concerts.

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL – The Louisville Orchestra was down for the count not too long ago, bankrupt. Now music director Teddy Abrams is dusting off the orchestra's historic calling card – with new recordings of American symphonic music.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW – Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan has emerged from all the challenges she set for herself not only unscathed, but triumphant. Case in point: Her new DVD mixing Berg, Berio, and . . . Gershwin?

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL REVIEW – Last spring’s Reykjavik Festival in Los Angeles was just one example of burgeoning links between the city’s new music scene and its geographically polar (pun intended) opposite, Iceland. Here comes another.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW - Brothers Demarre and Anthony McGill with pianist partner Michael McHale have launched a new Cedille recording that offers, among its profiles, a narrated trio inspired by eye-witness poetry of Langston Hughes.

By Michael Gray

DIGITAL – Some 57,000 78-rpm records are already available on Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive website. But with The Great 78 Project, Kahle targeted collectors willing to share, with a goal of digitizing 250,000 more discs.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW – Everyone knows the story of Lady Godiva riding naked through the center of a town. But what composer would want to write music about that? Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949) did — and did an impressive job of it.

By Paul E. Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW – The Minnesota Orchestra and music director Osmo Vänskä bring fine playing to the Fifth Symphony, and the BIS production is an audiophile’s delight. What’s lacking is Mahler’s sense of drama.

By Richard S. Ginell

DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Andrew Cooperstock’s valuable collection is the first that indeed seems to be genuinely complete. His performances are, for the most part, gentler and softer in focus than most renditions.

By Paul Robinson

DIGITAL REVIEW – Under conductor James Ross, the accomplished young musicians of the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic seem quite at home in Thompson's Second Symphony as well as Barber's First for Naxos.