When New Music, Criticism Flowed From Same Pens
By Richard S. Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW – A new CD pulls together works by Virgil Thomson and four other composers who once served as music critics for the New York Herald-Tribune. It's a great idea for a concept album, and beautifully executed.
LA Street Opera: Scenes Assembled In Cars, At Stops
By Richard S. Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW – In fall 2015, Los Angeles was the setting for Hopscotch: A Mobile Opera For 24 Cars, with riders listening to fragments en route to various destinations. Now comes the recording on a USB drive shaped like car key.
New CD Shows Off Clarinet Mastery, With Double Twist
By Paul Robinson
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.
Wagner’s Other Comedy Makes Merry DVD Debut
By Richard S. Ginell
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.
One Prodigious CD Illuminates Music Of Adolf Busch
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
Melancholy Trios, Where Piano Rules And Strings Serve
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
Renée Fleming Explores South, North, And Bjork
By Richard S. Ginell
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.
Happily Never After? ‘Turandot’ Ending Enigmatic
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
Juilliard Quartet’s Perdurable Mann For All Seasons
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
‘Song-Cycle’ Opera Cuts To Core Of Human Trafficking
By Richard S. Ginell
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.
Power Of Music Transmutes Cruelty To Hope
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
Novel Keyboards In ‘Goldberg’ Feats Accent Variation
By Arthur Kaptainis
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.
Turn Up Volume: ‘Einstein’ Revisited On Blu-ray, DVD
By Richard S. Ginell
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.
Bruckner 3 Twice With Care, Insight From Nézet-Séguin
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
Adams On Rimsky, ‘Scheherazade.2,’ Debuts On New CD
By Richard Ginell
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.
Live And On CDs, Flock of ‘Messiahs’ To Feed The Fans
By David Shengold
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.
Young Russians Ace Etudes Of Liszt And Rachmaninoff
By Paul E. Robinson
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.
For Guitar, A New Golden Age Of Craft And Pluck
By Ken Keaton
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.
Joy To The World On One Thin Disc: Vintage Beethoven
By Richard S. Ginell
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.
