What are you listening to?

[Jared]

PS... I've just been searching high and low over in the Hi-End Bar, for Fergus' 'Six Nations' thread, but can't seem to locate it... ;-)

[Diapason]

Quiet you!

[fergus]

PS... I've just been searching high and low over in the Hi-End Bar, for Fergus' 'Six Nations' thread, but can't seem to locate it... ;-)

I was given out to not so very long ago for my analysis of the then Leinster performances (where are they now?) so I would probably be banned if I published my thoughts on the Irish performance today!!! Suffice to say that at the beginning of the Six Nations I predicted to someone that England would sweep the boards this year; to me they have looked very strong and I greatly admire their new coach for what he has done. On a technical point, until we learn how to offload the ball in contact we will continue to languish in around third place in the table. Good luck to England; they well earned their victory today.

[Jose Echenique]

I love Bernarda Fink's voice...

Who doesn´t :-)

[bombasticDarren]

Vaughan Williams - A London Symphony (Adrian Boult, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Decca)

[Jared]

wonderful recordings...

[bombasticDarren]

Beethoven - Symphony No.3 Eroica (John Nelson, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Naive)



A wonderful, glittering performance, from a little-known cycle that is shaping up nicely

[Jared]

Schubert: Symph No.9
BBC Scottish Symph
Takuo Yuasa
Proms 1991

and no, you weren't there Darren!

[mcq]

Listening tonight to a new recording of Richard Strauss's heart-stoppingly beautiful Four Last Songs, I am quite simply overcome with emotion.  Anne Schwanewilms' performance under Markus Stenz on the Orfeo label is so very special.  There is a radiant beauty about this singing that I find utterly compelling.  There is a gentleness, a very human warmth, an understated delicacy in this lady's singing which strikes me as inherently right in evoking the sheer open-hearted humanity of this wonderful music.  She is matched beautifully by the very sympathetic conducting of Stenz who brings the shimmering textures of Strauss's orchestral writing vividly to life in all its incandescent tonal beauty. The couplings on this CD are similarly enchanting - excerpts from Arabella, Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier.  I sincerely hope that Schwanewilms records more Strauss with Stenz and his wonderful orchestra.  There is very special rapport between these two artists.  Would it be too much to hope for a Rosenkavalier with the likes of Soile Isokowski, Nina Stemme or Anja Harteros? That would be quite something.

[Jose Echenique]

Listening tonight to a new recording of Richard Strauss's heart-stoppingly beautiful Four Last Songs, I am quite simply overcome with emotion.  Anne Schwanewilms' performance under Markus Stenz on the Orfeo label is so very special.  There is a radiant beauty about this singing that I find utterly compelling.  There is a gentleness, a very human warmth, an understated delicacy in this lady's singing which strikes me as inherently right in evoking the sheer open-hearted humanity of this wonderful music.  She is matched beautifully by the very sympathetic conducting of Stenz who brings the shimmering textures of Strauss's orchestral writing vividly to life in all its incandescent tonal beauty. The couplings on this CD are similarly enchanting - excerpts from Arabella, Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier.  I sincerely hope that Schwanewilms records more Strauss with Stenz and his wonderful orchestra.  There is very special rapport between these two artists.  Would it be too much to hope for a Rosenkavalier with the likes of Soile Isokowski, Nina Stemme or Anja Harteros? That would be quite something.

Unfortunately in these sad times it is too much to hope for an opera studio recording.
The last Rosenkavalier released on cd was the 5 or 6 year old live Munich production with Reneé Fleming and Christian Thielemann which had been around on dvd for a number of years now. Even though DECCA released it only last year, the recording itself is old.
Giuseppe Sinopoli was scheduled to record the opera for TELDEC in Dresden, but as we all know he died unexpectedly while conducting Aida in Berlin. The recording was cancelled after that, even though there were some very fine substitutes like Herbert Blomstedt or James Levine.
It is a great pity, but except for baroque opera which is relatively inexpensive to record because orchestras are 20 plus something, large orchestral and choral productions are a thing of the past.