Tír Na HiFi

How I miss SONY´s wonderful Vivarte series. It was one of the casualties of Big Business decisions that have afflicted SONY since Akio Morita passed away in 1999. Vivarte was an imaginative label that signed many excellent ensembles and musicians like Tafelmusik, Gustav Leonhardt and Bruno Weil.
Gazzaniga´s Don Giovanni was the most popular operatic Don Juan before Mozart´s.
Lorenzo Da Ponte certainly based his own libretto on Gazzaniga´s. It would be childish to compare this entertaining opera semi-seria with the greatest opera ever written, but it has good music, especially a bubbly tarantella that closes the opera.
It is great to see true opera stars like Ferruccio Furlanetto and Luciana Serra in this recording, it was their only venture into the period performance world.

I saw Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni at the Wexford Opera Festival many years ago. Quite entertaining, but no Mozart! It was in a double bill with Busoni's Turandot (see what they did there?!). The Busoni was rather better than the Gazzaniga, but had the peculiarity that Greensleeves featured among the melodies because for some reason Busoni thought it was a Chinese tune!

The Wexford Festival is amazing, I have dozens of recordings, I would dearly love to go there some day, they love to revive the most obscure repertoire: Mercadante, Meyerbeer, Mayr and sure, why not, Gazzaniga!
My kind of people :-)

markof wrote:

Lovely recording of a really fantastic piece.

I love Herreweghe's Bach.

Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto (Monica Huggett/Charles Mackerras, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, CfP)

Bax - Symphony No.7 (David Lloyd-Jones, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Naxos)

There are so many fine recordings of The Creation, boh in English and in German, that it´s really difficult to decide which one to listen. On modern instruments, both Karajan recordings are excellent, as is the Kubelik on ORFEO, I also have a soft spot for Marriner´s in EMI because of his wonderful singers.
On period instruments the decision is even more difficult, with outstanding recordings from Frans Brüggen with the Orchestra of the 18 Century, and a truly heavenly soprano in Luba Orgonasova, the latest Harnoncourt with the Concentus Musicus is also a winner. Gardiner should also be on the top, but his soprano, Sylvia McNair, in severe vocal decline lets him down. The recent René Jacobs version is very good, but William Christie has even better and more characterful soloists, his orchestra and chorus are just glorious, and so it is his recording that I´m listening today.

Bax - Tintagel (David Lloyd-Jones, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Naxos)

Bridge - String Quartet No.2 (Maggini Quartet, Naxos)

Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (Charles Dutoit, Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, Decca)

So I finally had the opportunity to dip my toe into this massive box set last night:



I started with the Marriage of Figaro having discussed it on the other thread, and while I stuck mainly to "highlights", I have to say I really enjoyed it. I don't know much about opera at all, but I really admired the sense of life and urgency about the performance, I thought the singing had real character, and I really felt like I was listening to a stage drama with singing rather than a concert.

HOWEVER, I found myself deeply disappointed by the "Shawshank Redemption" aria. (Yes yes, I know I'm a philistine, but that's the only reason I know that particular movement.) For me, the stripped down, faster-tempo approach just robbed this particular aria of nearly all its beauty. Then I got to thinking: is this the way things always are for those regular HIP-bashers? Dear God, I hope I'm not starting to understand them... :)