Classical Recordings Pg. 7

Schumann’s Missa Sacra , which I believe I have heard before only in an arrangement with organ rather than orchestra, is hardly a celebrated work. The...

Here we have a fine, sensitive but unimaginative artist playing some of the most imaginative music ever written. Buckets of words have been spilled describing the...

With these two releases, numbered respectively as Vols. 5 and 6, Hans-Christoph Rademann continues his project to record the entire compositional output of Heinrich Schütz over...

Bernhard Sekles (1872-1934) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher who lived in the Frankfurt area. In 1896 he became a professor at that city’s...

This album follows a plan identical in format to that of Charles Daniels and Fretwork on Harmonia Mundi 907334, incorporating a mix of Senfl’s viol consort...

Vissarion Shebalin (1902-1963) was regarded highly by Shostakovich as a teacher of composition, a fine composer, and a person of integrity and great personal courage. Many...

Constantine Orbelian, despite the exotic sounding name, is an American musician who has been the director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra since 1991. He has worked...

Available from bpo.org JoAnn Falletta has over the years garnered much respect as an orchestra builder and an interpreter. If she were male, would she now...

With the release of this third volume in the Pacifica Quartet’s survey of Shostakovich’s string quartets, here is the current status of this cycle: Volume Qrt...

This is the third two-CD release in Cedille’s and the Pacifica Quartet’s series called “The Soviet Experience,” in which several quartets by Shostakovich are complemented by...

Please indulge me, if you will, as I begin this review with a semantic objection to the uncredited back cover note, which states that “On this...

This appears to be Andris Nelsons’s second recorded foray into the symphonies of Shostakovich. His first, a live performance of the Eighth Symphony with the Royal...

Sibelius wrote choral music throughout his career. There is a great deal of music for chorus and orchestra (in Volume 3 of BIS’s Sibelius Edition); the...

These two CDs complete Naxos’s edition of the Sibelius recordings by his compatriot and friend Robert Kajanus; for a review of the first volume, see

Arturo Toscanini didn’t conduct much Sibelius. If the performances presented here are any indication, the reason was likely a complete lack of sympathy for the Finnish...

Always on the lookout for forgotten and obscure 19th- and early 20th-century composers, especially those who made significant contributions to the chamber music repertoire, I jumped...

Here is an ensemble, the Benaud Trio, new to me, but playing two mainstream piano trio works that have been joined on disc in unholy alliance...

Composer-librettist Stephen Sondheim maintains that Sweeney Todd is not an opera, and so does the annotator for the present release. Nevertheless, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber...

In his 1961 essay “Style and ‘Styles’ in Music,” Roger Sessions draws the distinction between stylistic range and stylistic refinement, and identifies with the former the...

Stockhausen’s epic opera cycle Licht poses huge problems to anybody trying to stage it, record it, or even get their head around it as a listener....

Back in 24:1 and 24:5, Brian Robins passionately took up the cudgels of advocacy for Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749) in interviews with conductor Ludger Rémy, undertaken...

Talk about sensory overload—this CD contains what are, arguably, the four most beautiful scenes of Der Rosenkavalier superbly sung by three excellent artists under an indulgent...

Jakub Haufa, Marcin Sikorski, and Katarzyna Budnik-Gałązka recorded their program of Richard Strauss, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Krzystof Penderecki in the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studios of Polish...

The notes do not specify which ensemble is performing which piece, but individual players are named, none of whom play in both works. The back page...

These splendid recordings, originally released in 1988 and 1990 by Delos, are herewith restored to the catalog. I for one am glad to have them. Readers...

It was both a financially and artistically sensible decision to record The Mikado in 1926. The last released version dated as far back as 1917. The...

The delights of G&S are the life-blood of regional amateur operatic dramatic societies in the U.K. where, let me tell you from personal experience, the comedy...

If your familiarity with Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli (Franz von Suppé to most of us) is limited to the Overtures to Light Cavalry

Reviewing a Chandos release of Saint-Saëns’s Requiem in 28:3, I confessed to giggling out loud the first time I came across the piece on an LP...

James Reel in his Fanfare 34:5 review of choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ballet on DVD hailed, as have most critics, Joby Talbot’s score...

Violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved, who wrote the notes to Toccata’s release of the first six of Giuseppe Tartini’s 30 Sonate piccole (usually numbered 26, although the...

Matthew Taylor is a British composer whose works are well known in the United Kingdom and on the continent. His Second Symphony was particularly well received...

This video documents a concert that took place in the Mariinsky Theatre’s recently constructed concert hall during the 2012 White Nights, that annual period in the...

Deutsche Grammophon has collected Mikhail Pletnev’s excellent mid-1990s cycles of the Tchaikovsky symphonies and symphonic poems (the latter including the “public, occasional pieces,” as annotator David...

As of early February 2013, here is the status of the four major ongoing Tchaikovsky symphony cycles. 1 34:3 Dubins 1 36:3 Dubins 2 36:1 Morrison/Bayley...

Let me begin by saying that Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977) is a composer represented by exactly one other CD in my collection, so I can’t claim much...

In an earlier review of Telemann works I lamented having long since given away a 1900 reprint of the Grove Dictionary, as I remembered very uncharitable...

Being the incurable chamber music addict that I am, Ferdinand Thieriot (1838–1919) has not escaped feeding my habit. His B♭-Major Octet, performed by Ensemble Acht, on...

You are more likely to encounter Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) as a writer on music rather than as a composer of music, for he was a...

Although born in New York, Joan Tower spent much of her childhood in South America. Returning to the United States, she studied music with Otto Luening,...

Turina’s music is intended to charm and most of it has that effect on my sensibilities. I suppose his most popular piece is Danzas fantásticas,

Viktor Ullmann gets top billing on this disc, over some fellow named Beethoven. Listening suggests why: This Beethoven performance is an honest, clean one on a...

It was my understanding, perhaps erroneous, that the organizations associated with the Tutto Verdi project were tasked with staging and filming all of Giuseppe Verdi’s operas...

Despite the odd, fine reissue (like DG’s epic complete Verdi set) we still haven’t had a killer new release for the bicentenary of Verdi’s birth.

The short bonus feature that comes with this live production of La Battaglia di Legnano from Trieste informs us that this opera is the 25th most...