Adam Baudych

This Bartered Bride ’s acting and singing is generally of a high level. Lucia Popp was caught at a perfect time for this role. She’d gradually been developing her voice into a larger, more dramatic instrument, and here displays a lyric’s warmth with the power of a spinto. She clearly enjoys the challenge of the only serious aria in the entire work (in act III; performed in German as “Wie fremd und tot”), providing many fine interpretative points and a great deal of tonal variety. The audience goes wild, as well they might.

From jazz and soul to rock and country, the blues are the bedrock and a uniting feature for much of the popular music originating in the United Sates. The simple and repetitive structures are easy to grasp and perform, making the blues extremely approachable. Under the command of brilliant writers like the legendary Lead Belly, the blues maintains a unique place between high art and common expression.

French Works for Flute is the Chandos début of Adam Walker, ably accompanied by James Baillieu. The pair is joined by the violist Timothy Ridout in Duruflé’s Prélude, récitatif et variations.

"Ascanio in Alba" K. 111 came about through the good offices of Count Firmian, who had shared the Milan audience's enthusiasm for "Mitridate" and exerted his influence on the Empress in Vienna. He suggested entrusting the young Mozart with the composition of a festa teatrale for the wedding of the Empress's son, Archduke Ferdinand, and Maria Beatrice d'Este of Modena. Mozart began working on the score in late August 1771.

Though a pupil of the great orchestrator Rimsky-Korsakov, and in turn a teacher to the likes of Rachmaninov, Glière, and Scriabin, Anton Arensky himself is a composer often forgotten when contemplating the Russian greats. Productive in many genres, it is perhaps in his chamber music that this unduly neglected composer truly shines. His writing has much of the same textural sophistication and melodic beauty as his close friend, Tchaikovsky. In fact, the theme on which the Second Quartet's Variations are based is drawn from a Tchaikovsky quartet. Performing Arensky's First and Second string quartets, along with the Piano Quintet, is the Ying Quartet. This ensemble's playing is characterized by a surprisingly precise, consistent uniformity of sound and exactness of articulation, making it seem as if a single instrument were playing as opposed to four independent parts. All aspects of their technical execution are polished and refined, which only enhances their equally enjoyable musical effusiveness, rich, deep tone, and understanding of Arensky's scores that casts them in the best possible light.

Damian and Adam will release their 3rd full-length studio album 'Can We Leave The Light On Longer?' on January 12th.

Violonist MI-Sa Yang and pianist Adam Laloum present a program that mirrors four composers of different sensitivities who, in their confrontation with the second Vienna School's radical theories, have each sought in a genuine, personal way, to provide an alternative solution to the problems raised by the evolution of the musical language.

Following in the footsteps of your father is a difficult task, particularly if your father is someone as darkly gifted and idiosyncratic as Leonard Cohen. Adam Cohen, however, is sharp enough to avoid being pegged as a "new Leonard Cohen." That doesn't mean he establishes himself as an individual musical talent on his eponymous debut. Cohen does occasionally flirt with the somber poetry his father made famous, but his music is altogether more polished, sounding like smooth adult contemporary instead of haunted folk. That would have been forgivable if the songs actually said something. Instead, Cohen wallows in sophomoric poetry and insights that are far removed not only from his father's work, but most of his late-'90s peers. There is some promise in his melodies, as in "Tell Me Everything," but for the most part, Adam Cohen delivered his debut album before his talent had truly gestated.