This two-disc set entitled An Anthology of English Song is just what it says it is: a very generous collection of 53 selections drawn from 13 separate discs of songs by English composers from Stanford to Britten. Some were first issued in the '90s on the late Collins label. Some were first issued in the 2000s on the vibrant Naxos label. But all ...
Like those of his predecessor Franz Josef Haydn, the British folk song settings of Ludwig van Beethoven are an underappreciated corner of his output. Commissioned by Scotsman George Thomson for publication as parlor music, they present a simple, rustic face that hides a deceptively clever and often technically demanding musical texture. Indeed, ...
Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia's recording of Mahler's First Symphony coupled with his "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" sung by baritone Christopher Maltman is not only the best Mahler's First in decades, it is one of the great recorded performances. Yes, sometimes it is almost a little bit too much. The parody woodwinds in the music do get ...
The first volume of Hyperion's complete Fauré songs is called "Au bord de l'eau" (by the water's edge) -- a reference to the French master's fondness for aquatic, nautical, and natural subjects in poetry, as well as to the title of one of his most famous songs. Having decided against a purely chronological survey of Fauré's songs, an approach that ...
Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia's recording of Mahler's First Symphony coupled with his "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" sung by baritone Christopher Maltman is not only the best Mahler's First in decades, it is one of the great recorded performances. Yes, sometimes it is almost a little bit too much. The parody woodwinds in the music do get ...
Understandably, there have been few recordings of Benjamin Britten's Canticles. Although the works are both brilliantly written and profoundly affecting, how many performers would dare contend with the performances of the Canticles by Peter Pears, the tenor for whom they were written, with the composer himself at the piano? Not many, as it turns ...
After almost 400 years, you might think Monteverdi's L'Orfeo would have lost its luster. But in the right hands it can still be deeply exciting, allowing you to relive the birth of an electric and emotionally charged new art form. Emmanuelle Haïm's new L'Orfeo, starring Ian Bostridge, is that kind of experience. It combines truly electric ...
Any volume of Graham Johnson's Schubert edition that has one of the numerous settings of Matthisson's Der Geistertanz is a good volume. And that this volume starts with the men of the London Schubert Chorale belting out the slightly inebriated 1816 setting from the D. 494 is a great start to what proves to be a great volume in the series. How ...
Volume 3 of Hyperion's four-volume set of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré is dedicated to his love songs -- unsurprisingly, a subject near and dear to the hearts of fin de siècle composers, and one that seems especially effective in Fauré's sweetly perfumed style. His chansons d'amour are tasteful, gently impassioned settings of poems by ...
Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini had a difficult genesis. Although it's a comedy, it was produced in 1838 at the Paris Opéra rather than at l'Opéra Comique, which would have been a more suitable venue had its directors not rejected the piece. It was greeted with hostility by both its performers and the audience and was quickly dropped. Liszt ...
One would have thought that at some point Graham Johnson would simply have run out of great Schubert songs in compiling his Schubert edition. And one would have been wrong: even here at volume 35 in a program with the unwieldy title of Schubert, 1822 -- 1825, Johnson has seemingly saved some of the best for nearly the end. But what else could a ...
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