What are you listening to?

[fergus]

[fergus]

Vinyl....

[Jared]

looks like an interesting disk, Fergus... the Charpentier collection at chez Butcher certainly needs adding to at some stage and that could be a candidate.

I'm not posting much in here at present, because I have spent the past week really immersing myself in the three great Schubert song cycles... repetition helps me become closely acquainted with their subtle textures... for my friend Bob, it's all about the relationship between pianist and singer, namely how the pianist is able to reinforce and compliment these emotions...

[fergus]

looks like an interesting disk, Fergus... the Charpentier collection at chez Butcher certainly needs adding to at some stage and that could be a candidate.

I'm not posting much in here at present, because I have spent the past week really immersing myself in the three great Schubert song cycles... repetition helps me become closely acquainted with their subtle textures... for my friend Bob, it's all about the relationship between pianist and singer, namely how the pianist is able to reinforce and compliment these emotions...

French Baroque music is not to everyone's taste Jared as we all know but I think that it can be very beautiful and Christie is a wonderful exponent of the genre. The textures and performances are wonderful here lending lots of colour.

You are quite correct about pianist and singer above. That relationship must be very understanding and sympathetic on both sides to achieve a good performance of any Lied. I am glad that you are enjoying it.

[Jose Echenique]

This same performance has just been released on cd by DECCA, which makes it the first Rosenkavalier by a major studio (excepting live radio performances of course) in more than 20 years, in fact the first Rosenkavalier since the 1990´s Kiri Te Kanawa/ Anne Sofie von Otter/ Bernard Haitink version in EMI.
Fleming´s Marschallin is very much like Te Kanawa´s, beautifully sung, elegant, very competent, but missing the inner life, the dignity, of a truly great Marschallin like Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Regine Crespin or Lotte Lehmann if we go a little far back. Fleming was caught just at the end of her prime (born February 1959), the voice is still very good, but the velvet of her finest year is sadly behind her. What a pity that DECCA didn´t record her a complete Rosenkavalier at the time of a high-lights disc with her, Susan Graham and Barbara Bonney, where she can be heard in best form.
And talking of Susan Graham and Barbara Bonney, both ideal as Octavian and Sophie, brings us to Sophie Koch, a French mezzo, and Diana Damrau. Sophie Koch has a good voice, but it lacks individuality, I would have much preferred Joyce DiDonato as Octavian, a much higher, almost soprano voice which is what Strauss intended. Diana Damrau is lively as Sophie, but Barbara Bonney had a much prettier voice. Franz Hawlata is competent as Baron Ochs, and he never over does the comedy, but one misses the rotund low notes of a truly great Ochs like Kurt Moll (with Karajan).
The secondary roles are well taken, even though the great Jonas Kaufmann struggles with the high tessitura of the Italian tenor´s aria. Someone like Juan Diego Florez would have been more ideal.
Christian Thielemann has been conducting this opera for many years, in fact he conducted his very first Rosenkavalier with the divine Anna Tomowa-Sintow as the Marschallin in the late 80´s. His affection and understanding of the score show, it´s a very beautiful reading and Celi´s orchestra play splendidly for him.
I enjoyed the recording, it´s well recorded too, but it won´t displace my old affections for the Karajan, Kleiber and Solti recordings.

[fergus]

I enjoyed the recording, it´s well recorded too, but it won´t displace my old affections for the Karajan, Kleiber and Solti recordings.

That is a work that I came to like Pepe. I have von Karajan but I think that I may check out your Kleiber and Solti recommendations.

[fergus]

Great playing!

[Seán]

Vinyl....

I love Oistrakh's playing. His ICON box set on EMI is superb.

[Jose Echenique]

This post is about a new recording of Handel´s Alessandro just out in the Pan Classics label, but sorry, I couldn´t find a suitable cover, the picture is from American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo who sings the title role.
Alessandro was one of Handel´s most popular operas in his lifetime, only "Rinaldo" had more performances, so it´s puzzling why it´s so little performed in our time since the music is magnificent. Perhaps the extravagant vocal demands he puts in his 3 main characters explains this. The title role was sung by the famous castrato Senesino, the principal star of Handel´s company and perhaps the only other castrato in London to rival Farinelli. The 2 female leads were sung by Faustina Bordoni, a very famous soprano in Italy who was making her much anticipated London debut in this opera, and Francesca Cuzzoni, who was already a well established soprano. The public was eager to see sparks flying between the 2 prima donnas and Handel was only too happy to oblige, composing fiendishly difficult arias for them to display every weapon in their vocal armory.
Lawrence Zazzo braves valiantly Senesino´s music, though of course a castrato must have sounded completely different from a countertenor. The sopranos in this live recording are the Cuban Yetzabel Arias Fernández (I think it´s only proper that if you are a singer your last name is "Arias" LOL) and Raffaella Milanesi.
This recording was made live in February of this year during the Handel Festspiele Karlsruhe. The truly excellent orchestra is called the Deutsche Hàndel-Solisten and has many luminaries from the early music world. The conductor is recorder player Michael Form and he does an excellent job.
The only other recording of Alessandro is Sigiswald Kuijken´s for DHM but that is already more than 25 years old.
As it happens, DECCA has just announced another recording of Alessandro for October with a mouth watering cast including Max Emanuel Cencic and Karina Gauvin. Strangely they hired the Greek conductor Georges Petrou and his competent but not outstanding Patras Orchestra, well known for several recordings in the MDG label. The orchestra is good but not in the Deutsche Händel-Solisten class, so we will have to wait and see if Cencic and Gauvin justify the adding of yet another recording to the collection.

[fergus]

Vinyl....





....one of my more "colourful" LP sleeves!