DIGITAL REVIEW – In a pairing of recent concertos by Osvaldo Golijov and Christian Lindberg, Swedish clarinetist Emil Jonason showcases not only his technical virtuosity, but also an exceptional flair for generating excitement.
DIGITAL REVIEW – The production of Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love) from Madrid's Teatro Real breezily whisks the work into present-day Palermo, where director Kasper Holten presses some pop-culture buttons.
DIGITAL REVIEW – The great violinist, quartet leader, and festival founder Adolf Busch (1891-1952) composed music of all kinds, some of it championed by son-in-law Rudolf Serkin. Jakob Fichert performs all the piano works.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Two works from Rachmaninoff's youth – played by pianist Daniil Trifonov, violinist Gidon Kremer, and cellist Giedré Dirvanauskaité – display a bravura pull to the piano and an uncertainty with strings.
DIGITAL REVIEW – The American soprano once again stretches the ears of her fans. She joins the Royal Stockholm
Philharmonic on a trek from Samuel Barber’s familiar Knoxville to music of distant northern climes.
DIGITAL REVIEW – In the Luciano Berio version, as Turandot and Calaf leave together, minus the triumphal outburst, the audience is left to wonder whether such flawed human beings could ever find contentment.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Robert Mann had it all. Endurance. Discipline. Love of music. He led the Juilliard String Quartet for 51 years and some 6,000 performances. At 96, the violinist looks back on a life that seems almost impossible.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Cuatro Corridos, now on CD, is a disturbing 2013 monodrama starring Susan Narucki about sexual trafficking on the California/Mexico border with music by four composers, two Mexican and two American.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Conspirare artistic director Craig Hella Johnson’s
Considering Matthew Shepard is a masterpiece, the essence of which will still speak to us,
especially at times of loss and suffering, for years to come.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Angela Hewitt has recorded Bach's Goldberg Variations using her own Fazioli piano, and Mahan Esfahani has employed a Huw Saunders harpsichord based on a Thuringian model of c. 1710, tuned with sharp keys in mind.
DIGITAL REVIEW – A video release of Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, with direction and design by Robert Wilson, looks as tradition-shattering and exhilarating as the opera must have been some 40 years ago when it was new.
DIGITAL REVIEW – A sensational live recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 with Staatskapelle Dresden, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in 2008, makes for a fascinating comparison with his Orchestre Métropolitain CD of the work.
DIGITAL REVIEW – The star of the Arabian Nights is the raison d'être for a massive 2015 violin concerto that composer John Adams calls Scheherazade.2. Leila Josefowicz possesses and devours it on a new recording.
Rewarding performances in Philadelphia conducted by Natalie Stutzmann and in New York under Kent Tritle offered a high contrast in styles, while conductor Andrew Davis' new CD proved a throwback to the grandiose Messiahs of old.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Two prize winners in leading piano
competitions show brilliant technique and poetry in Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes. A third surmounts Sergei Rachmaninoff’s cinematic Études-tableaux.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Recently released CDs reveal a plethora of gifted young classical
guitarists, some of them barely into their twenties, and a harvest of important new works (and new techniques) for the instrument.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Karajan's second Beethoven cycle, recorded in 1961 and 1962, sold nearly a million LP box sets. Now the DG label is offering the nine symphonies on a single Blu-ray audio disc at a stocking-stuffer price.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Russian videos of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Glinka operas add greatly to our appreciation of a neglected repertoire, and in some cases imaginative direction adds an appeal that transcends national origins.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Who wouldn't want to hear what a composer does with this trio of subjects – fabled yarns of Ernest Hemingway, the rural American Gothic portrait by Grant Wood, and the epic film Citizen Kane of Orson Welles?
DIGITAL REVIEW - Deutsche Grammophon is celebrating German conductor Eugen Jochum by releasing his complete recordings for the label. Volume 1, comprising 42 compact discs, bulges with great orchestral performances.