Like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, John Adams has developed minimalism into a more expressive and versatile language than it promised in the 1970s, when pattern music was at its height but also at its most rigorous and severe. Judging from the works on this 2004 Naxos release, Adams has progressed from the limitations of static repetition, ...
The Heroes Symphony of Philip Glass is one of two symphonies he wrote based on albums by David Bowie (the other is the Low Symphony). This recording by Marin Alsop, one of Britain's (and now America's) most talked-about conductors, suggests that the idea has been successful enough to move beyond the usual Glass orbit and into conventional ...
This budget set includes a performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 that won raves from British reviewers and a Gramophone Award in the late '80s, just a few years after pianist Peter Donohoe won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Here it is united with Tchaikovsky's other major works for piano and orchestra, the Concerto No. 1, the ...
Naxos' American Classics series has here gotten around to two Philip Glass symphonies not long after their premiere recordings on Nonesuch. Philip Glass: Symphonies No. 2 and 3 combines two works from the 1990s that are more or less not in the vein that made Glass popular, which is a good thing if the insistent patterning and repetition of his ...
Famously unapologetic for bucking the avant-garde, Ned Rorem was largely ostracized by the new music intelligentsia of the 1950s, and his three symphonies from that decade were unfairly neglected. They remained so, even when neo-Romanticism became fashionable again toward the end of the twentieth century. This 2003 release from Naxos at last gives ...
Unlike his insouciant, cabaret-styled music for The Threepenny Opera, Kurt Weill's Symphony No. 1 (1921) and his Symphony No. 2 (1933-1934) seem more dutifully observant of the European Classical tradition and perhaps a little straight-jacketed by formal obligations. This is not to say that these symphonic essays are dull or artificial -- far from ...
Long familiar as a concert suite, Béla Bartók's one-act ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1926) is now more frequently recorded in its entirety, thanks to the CD's abundant playing time; the full piece easily fits with additional works. This 2004 release from Naxos offers not only the complete Mandarin, but also the rambunctious Dance Suite (1923) ...
There have been other recordings of Leopold Stokowski's transcriptions of music of Mussorgsky, later recordings by Matthias Bamert, and, naturally, many recordings by Stokowski himself. But while the Stokowski true believer would not want to part with any of the Maestro's recordings, the neophyte might want to try something a little fresher. And ...
One of the most popular of modern choral works, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has found its way into many collections just on the strength of its foreboding opening, "O Fortuna." Because this work is well represented in all the major labels' catalogs, one has a wide array of performances to choose from; while several are excellent, it is difficult to ...
The gift that conductor and composer José Serebrier inherited from his former mentor, Leopold Stokowski, is immediately apparent upon even a brief listen to this album. Both men have an alluring gift: the ability to make an orchestra sound gorgeous. Serebrier is perhaps one of the few remaining authoritative spokesmen for Stokowski, and his ...
Even though he was widely celebrated as one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century, Leonard Bernstein has already become the subject of a critical reassessment and cautious revival in the early twenty first. This 2005 Naxos CD presents three of Bernstein's appealing but underplayed and under-appreciated concert works, ...
Like Brahms, Alan Rawsthorne came late to the symphony, and approached it with a high-minded concern for structure and a mature sense of thematic development and internal unity. In Rawsthorne's practiced hands, the form is shaped along Classical lines, with only slight changes in the layout of the traditional four movements. Yet his music is ...
The examples of William Alwyn's music on this recording are much closer to late Romantic music than more modern music, even though their composition dates range from 1930 to 1967. Each of the two piano concertos and the Derby Day Overture cover a wide range of feelings with dramatic contrasts. That, combined with the flashy piano writing of the ...
Leopold Stokowski was an ardent admirer of the music of Richard Wagner, and he regularly performed excerpts from the composer's music dramas in his own orchestral arrangements, following a practice initiated by several of Wagner's followers. These "symphonic syntheses," as Stokowski called them, go further than the cut-and-dried concert ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
![Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin [Hybrid SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m09351det5c_t.jpg)
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.