The lush harmonies and rhapsodic lyricism of Philip Glass' mature works may attract many listeners, especially those who enjoy his warm, neo-Romantic music more than his hard-edged, minimalist pieces of the 1970s. Both the Concerto for cello and orchestra and the Concerto Fantasy for two tympanists and orchestra offer grand ideas in their ...
Forty years ago British serialist Elisabeth Lutyens could deride the compositions of Ralph Vaughan Williams as "cowpat music," but his reputation seems to be on the rise. CDs of obscure Vaughan Williams compositions in various genres have appeared, and the centerpiece of this Naxos release of mostly choral pieces is Willow-Wood, a work that has ...
"Louis' art is not hard to follow. Louis' art is not hard to swallow." ("Everybody Loves Louis" from Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim) It's not that Alwyn's a simp -- there's heart, soul, and sincerity in his music -- and it's not that Alwyn's simple -- there's more going on thematically than appears on the tonal surface. It's ...
To commemorate William Alwyn's centenary in 2005, Naxos began its series of his complete symphonies and other orchestral works with recordings of the single-movement Symphony No. 5, "Hydriotaphia"; the Concerto for harp and orchestra, "Lyra Angelica"; and the two-movement Symphony No. 2. This composer is most famous for his scores for numerous ...
Of all the hundreds, maybe thousands of versions of Handel's Messiah on the market, ranging from full symphonic treatments with big professional choirs to sober, earnest oratorio-society readings, to the various kinds of authentic-performance recordings, this 1959 performance by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Huddersfield Choral ...
Gerard Schwarz writes in the notes that he fell in love with the music of Mahler as a child and that it was the Fourth that he fell for first. In this 2002 recording with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Schwarz turns in a performance suffused with love, a deep, abiding, simple, and even childlike love. Although Schwarz's opening movement has ...
Most of these '70s EMI recordings of orchestral music by Sibelius by Charles Groves and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic have never been issued in America. But, then, most of Charles Groves recordings have never been issued in America. Although older listeners might recall his Delius recordings that were briefly popular in the mid-'70s, apparently ...
The music of Johannes Brahms, especially his symphonic works, represents a culmination of the conservative romantic style and is a cornerstone of any musician or collector's repertoire. There is a plentiful diversity of recordings on the market large enough to suit nearly every taste, ranging from Herbert von Karajan's notoriously weighty and ...
For fans of the Danish modernist Carl Nielsen, this disc will be mandatory listening. Why? Because it's got the first recordings of the latest editions of his Violin Concerto and Aladdin Suite plus the world premiere recording of his Romance for violin and orchestra. The new editions will not present too many surprises to those who already know ...
If Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra and Shostakovich's Second Concerto for cello and orchestra had heretofore seemed to be late works shot through with nostalgia and bitterness, that's certainly entirely understandable. Rostropovich, the works' dedicatee who gave both their world premieres, played them that way in his recorded ...
A reasonable, if slightly cynical question to ask about this set including Shostakovich's completion and orchestration of Benjamin Fleischmann's opera Rothschild's Violin and his own incomplete opera The Gamblers might be, "Wouldn't it have been smarter, and more of a gift to posterity, if Shostakovich had used the time and energy he spent on ...
The music on this disc includes two of Alexander Borodin's most popular orchestral works and both of Modest Mussorgsky's two most popular orchestral works. The amazing thing is that, in fact, all four works are either editions, orchestrations, or realizations done by other composers after the original composer's death. Borodin's Overture and ...
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