What are you listening to?

[Jared]

pathetically small image, but lovely performance (so far!!)

[fergus]

Beautiful music and music making....





....and wonderful artwork to match!

[Jared]

^^ Fergus, a man with such a ridiculous beard should consider himself very lucky indeed to have acquired a pretty girl in the first place, but I don't think he'll keep her long if he keeps neglecting her like that..

[Seán]

Beautiful music and music making....





....and wonderful artwork to match!

Beautiful music indeed, the quartet is unfamiliar to me though.

[Seán]

I gave BBC CD Review a miss this morning.



Four Magnificat's on the one CD, Pepe is right (no surprise there of course), all are wonderful but to these tired ears one is more wonderful than the others. The conclusion of Bach's BWV 243 is really something to behold with the glorious singing of the choir rising to a heart-warming, spine tingling crescendo and leading into the foot tapping finale, which is a repeat of where we began in the first movement - Bach's symmetry to the fore here yet again. Bach's Magnificat BWV 243 is simply beyond description, words fail me, I love it.

[Jared]

well, it wouldn't be Crimble without:

Handel: Messiah (Pts I-III)
BBC Phil/ Huddersfield Choral Soc
Harry Christophers

this version of the Mozart transcription, is very fine and joyous.... just what Xmas requires!!

[Jose Echenique]

I gave BBC CD Review a miss this morning.



Four Magnificat's on the one CD, Pepe is right (no surprise there of course), all are wonderful but to these tired ears one is more wonderful than the others. The conclusion of Bach's BWV 243 is really something to behold with the glorious singing of the choir rising to a heart-warming, spine tingling crescendo and leading into the foot tapping finale, which is a repeat of where we began in the first movement - Bach's symmetry to the fore here yet again. Bach's Magnificat BWV 243 is simply beyond description, words fail me, I love it.

Of course the Bach is the finer of the 4, but that in no way diminishes the glory of the Zelenka and the Kuhnau. But if I was forced to choose the greatest Magnificat ever written I would have to say it´s the Monteverdi in the Vespro della Beata Vergine...but that´s just me :-)

[Jared]

But if I was forced to choose the greatest Magnificat ever written I would have to say it´s the Monteverdi in the Vespro della Beata Vergine...but that´s just me :-)

Pepe, it is one of the pieces which converted me to listening to CM in the first place, and taught me there was a musical world before Bach...

[Jose Echenique]

I revisited this DECCA Rosenkavalier, one of the few opera recordings of 2012, because I thought that maybe I was a little hard on my first post, but no, I have to say that besides Thielemann´s fine conducting and the wonderful playing of the Munich Philharmonic, the singing is not competitive with the finer versions. Fleming was caught a few years past her golden prime, she can be heard to better advantage in the highlights cd she recorded with Christoph von Dohnanyi also for DECCA over a decade ago, but even then she lacked the depth and warmth of an Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Regine Crespin, Maria Reigning or the late, great Lisa della Casa. Fleming is rather in the Kiri Te Kanawa class, beautiful voice but rather uninteresting personality.
Diana Damrau is fine, but Sophie Koch as Octavian just can´t compete with the likes of Frederica von Stade, Sena Jurinac, Anne Sofie von Otter or Agnes Baltsa.

[Seán]

Last night and this morning.