Classical Recordings Pg. 5

I received these two discs with high expectations, only to encounter instead crushing disappointment. To address the worst news first, Wolfgang Holzmair’s renditions of 20 Mahler...

As with Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, this chamber orchestra-with-piano arrangement of Das Lied von der Erde was made by Arnold Schoenberg for a performance at his...

This is a recording of the chamber version of Das Lied von der Erde . The arrangement is attributed to Schoenberg, who made some initial suggestions...

In case you’re coming in late: Back in the troubled days following the First World War, Schoenberg and his colleagues created the Society for Private Musical...

Although Mahler told Sibelius that a symphony must be “like the world... all-embracing,” this is not necessarily true of his First. While this work is monumental...

My immediate reaction to this release was “Why?” This is a solid, though ultimately unexceptional reading of a symphony that has had so many outstanding recorded...

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra is following the trend of orchestras who are recording under a self-named label. This is the first CD release on its new...

“A once-in-a-generation event and one of the most ambitious live recordings ever made”: So trumpets the blurb on the case of this release, and for once,...

Riccardo Malipiero (1914-2003), nephew of Gian Francesco Malipiero, was an important figure on the postwar European musical front, and organized the first Congress of 12-Tone Music...

Although well known in his day, the Neapolitan composer Francesco Mancini (1672-1737) is now sufficiently obscure that (as of the date I write this) listings of...

Born in Parma, Marco Marazzoli (1602–62) was ordained a priest about 1625 and relocated to Rome the next year, where by 1631 he came into the...

The composer, singer, and keyboard player Marianna Martines (1744-1812) had the good fortune to be born in the same building on Vienna’s Michaelerplatz in which lived...

Giuseppe Martucci’s Second Piano Concerto enjoyed a certain vogue in the decades after its 1886 premiere. Anton Rubinstein included it in his repertory. The composer played...

The live performances of these two works were reviewed in Opera Magazine in the May 1979 issue by Beate Kayser, who wrote that “Domingo, his

There are only two other discs of the music of David Matthews (b. 1943, brother of Colin Matthews) on the Fanfare Archive. This is a grave...

Like several of the Maxwell Davies symphony discs on Naxos, this one too was previously released about 20 years ago on Collins Classics. Some are better...

I have included the text icon in the headnote indicating that texts and translations are included, which is a bit of an exaggeration. As usual, Naxos...

Only two issues ago (36:2), I had my first taste of music by Simon Mayr, on a Naxos CD featuring three of the composer’s concertos led,...

Latvian composer Jánis Mediņš (1890-1966) is lucky to have such a staunch advocate as Jonathan Powell, a pianist known through his association with the music of...

Alina Ibragimova tunes her violin, made by Anselmo Bellosio in about 1775, down to A=437 for her readings of Felix Mendelssohn’s two violin concertos. The program...

Period-performance practice is often loosely associated with smallish forces—but it doesn’t need to be; and although McCreesh happily claims responsibility for the first recording of

A review is usually short for one of two reasons: Either a recording is so poor that it does not merit attention, or else it is...

While the choral singing is reasonably well executed, which is to say that there are no ensemble or intonation problems within the choirs, and the blend...

This energetic and flawlessly recorded performance of Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang” Symphony continues apace the remarkable revival of a piece, once among the world’s most deservedly popular works,...

With this disc, Tafelmusik moves its sphere of reference from the 18th century to the early 19th, and the shift is a bit more radical than...

Tafelmusik, a period-instrument orchestra based in Canada, has been nibbling away at recordings of Beethoven’s major works for several years—the piano concertos (with fortepianist Jos van...

Shapira’s recordings of the Menotti and Barber concertos date from 2001, and originally appeared on two separate ASV discs with other works by the respective composers....

Titled “American Violin Concertos,” this CD brings together works by Menotti, Barber, and Theodore Wiprud. The Menotti and Barber concertos were recorded in 2001 and originally...

I included a new Montsalvatge orchestral disc in my 2012 Want List, and now here is another: the third release in Mena’s Spanish series for Chandos....

A generation after Malcolm Bilson and Christopher Hogwood’s pioneering Mozart concerto recordings using fortepiano and period instruments, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Petra Müllejeans, and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra...

In my experience with both recordings and in person, Yannick Nézet-Séguin blows hot and cold as an interpreter. When fully engaged with the right work, he...

Back in 34:4 I wrote a lengthy “Classical Hall of Fame” entry for this recording of Don Giovanni , in tandem with a 1960 Salzburg Festival...

Though many will find it difficult to believe, Mozart’s operas 100 years ago were still not part of the general repertoire. It wasn’t until the 1930s...

In 1972, Philips issued for the “first time complete—first time in stereo,” its soon-celebrated recording of La finta giardiniera conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and featuring a...

I have to think of this assemblage of pieces by Mozart conducted by Bernhard Paumgartner as a bit of a hodge-podge. Recorded in mono between 1953...

Summer before last, I was in Vienna for a meeting, so I looked for a chance to hear a Sunday Mass at St. Augustine’s Church, reputedly...

Ideally, an opera overture sets the mood for us, although it sometimes serves the less lofty functions of quieting an audience or ushering in late arrivals....

This performance has been released two ways, on CD and on DVD, and the second format is also available two ways—as a conventional DVD and in...

The CD recording of this performance was reviewed by Bill White in Fanfare 35:2. As he states “Everyone seems to be having a good time and...

This assignment has—temporarily, I hope—diminished my imagination. I can’t imagine a more soul-satisfying short program than Mozart’s Oboe Quartet followed by His Clarinet Quintet. The quartet...

What a way to start your recording career, with a complete set of the Mozart piano sonatas. Oh well, if I remember correctly, Claude Frank’s first...

The promise of this release turned out to be greater than what it delivered. When it comes to violinist Christian Tetzlaff, I wax both hot and...

This was one of those discs that, when I received it for review, I was both excited and dismayed: excited because it was Ádám Fischer conducting...

Khovanshcina is a big, sprawling Russian opera with lots of characters, many choruses, and a rather murky plot. Composer Modest Mussorgsky spent considerable time researching the...

This disc, which bears the title Discovering a Legend: Vera Gornostaeva, Vol. II, consists of a live recital given by this Russian pianist some 53 years...

At one time, I thought that the CD as an artifact would disappear, giving way to MP3 downloads and the like, and magazines such as

Sigismund Von Neukomm was something of an institution in his day, a child prodigy, protégé of both Haydn and the French diplomat Talleyrand, an ambassadorial type...

In fairly short order, since assuming the post of music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2009, Alan Gilbert has committed a number of in-concert...