Ardour Teebs

For while it would be idle to pretend that this 70-year-old virtuoso, struck down at the height of his career with psoriatic arthritis, still commands the velocity and reflex of his earlier years, his later Chopin and Liszt are a tribute to a devotion and commitment gloriously enriched by experience. The First Impromptu is piquantly voiced and phrased while the C sharp minor Etude, Op. 25 No. 7, could hardly be more hauntingly confided, more ‘blue’ or inturned. How you miss the repeat in the C sharp minor Mazurka, Op. 50 No. 3 (not Op. 15, as the jewel-case claims), given such cloudy introspection and if there are moments when you recall how Rubinstein – forever Chopin’s most aristocratic spokesman – can convey a world of feeling in a scarcely perceptible gesture, Janis’s brooding intensity represents a wholly personal, only occasionally overbearing, alternative; an entirely different point of view. Time and again he tells us that there are higher goods than surface polish or slickness and in the valedictory F minor Mazurka, Op. 68 No. 4 he conveys a dark night of the soul indeed, an emotion almost too desolating for public utterance… Janis is no less remarkable in Liszt, whether in the brief but intriguing Sans mesure (a first performance and recording), in a Sonetto 104 del Petrarca as tear-laden as any on record and in a final Liebestod of an exhausting ardour and focus.

Richard Wagner - Die Walkure - The Metropolitan Opera cond. James Levine (2002) [2DVD] {Deutsche Grammophon}
2xDVD -> 11.1 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 4:3 | ~ 241 min | Deutsch LPCM, 2 ch / Dolby AC3, 6 ch / DTS, 5 ch | ISO Images
Subs: Deutsch, English, Francais, Espanol, Chinese
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 156 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1991, 2002 Deutsche Grammophon | 073 049-9
Classical / Opera

The 1990 Metropolitan Opera performance of Die Walkure ("The Valkyrie") with James Levine conducting is a solid, four-square performance with few frills and no gimmicks, just extraordinarily fine singing and orchestral playing. There is no point in this where you find yourself asking why the director did something: this is the sort of production which could be criticised as unimaginative but defended as serving Wagner's intentions for this instalment of his Ring cycle. Levine and his orchestra give the music an emotional intensity that never overwhelms its grandeur, though perhaps in Wotan's farewell to Brunnhilde, we feel him more as father than as god.

Rafal Blechacz - Chopin - The Complete Preludes
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 148 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 477 6592 | Country/Year: Europe 2007
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…But indeed, I would hold up these three last pieces as touchstones of Blechacz’s current achievement. With their complete mastery of rubato, voicing and structure combined with expressive freedom, it is impossible to hear them without feeling that the tiny group of living great pianists is now a little larger. This is a career to follow, so don’t miss out.

This collection of works for cello and piano, with Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata as its centrepiece, sees Gautier Capuçon and Frank Braley paying tribute to two towering musicians of the 20th century, Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten, who recorded all four of the works on the programme: Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata, Debussy’s Cello Sonata, Schumann’s Fünf Stücke im Volkston and Britten’s own Cello Sonata in five movements, which received its first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1961, two years after composer and cellist had first met. “It is a magnificent piece,” says Gautier Capuçon of the Britten, “and too rarely played as far as I’m concerned. I grew up with Britten’s children’s opera The Little Sweep, so I am well acquainted with his language.” Moreover, 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of Britten’s birth.

Rafal Blechacz - Chopin - The Complete Preludes
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 148 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 477 6592 | Country/Year: Europe 2007
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…But indeed, I would hold up these three last pieces as touchstones of Blechacz’s current achievement. With their complete mastery of rubato, voicing and structure combined with expressive freedom, it is impossible to hear them without feeling that the tiny group of living great pianists is now a little larger. This is a career to follow, so don’t miss out.

It was in the second half of the sixteenth century that the guitar became fashionable in France: it was the instrument of the people, whereas the lute was associated with the intellectuals and the nobility. Henry Grenerin became a page (choirboy) in the Musique du Roi in 1641 and went on to invent a new way of playing the instrument and offer it music full of ‘freedom, mystery and ardour’, says Bruno Helstroffer. In the very first recording devoted to Grenerin’s music, Bruno revives this unjustly forgotten composer and makes the most of his long experience as both Baroque musician and exponent of today’s music. He became fascinated by this seventeenth-century composer, and his investigations led him to the Left Bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre Palace, where Henry’s grandfather was a fisherman, hence the punning title L’âme-son [French hameçon = ‘fish-hook’, âme-son = ‘soul of sound’]. A saga that has also generated a book and a stage show about Grenerin – the first in the line of ‘guitar heroes’ that was to lead to Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix!

'It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject', Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opera in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendes is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

Reves, the new album by acclaimed French violinist Philippe Graffin, features two world-premiere recordings of freshly discovered concertos by Belgian virtuoso violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye - the complete Violin Concerto in E Minor and Poeme Concertant. Rounding out this beautiful album are gems for violin and piano: 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op.10, and Reve d'enfant.

Nicholas McGegan has been called a “Handel master” by The San Francisco Chronicle and is considered a foremost Handel interpreter throughout the world. So who better to present the rarely performed Joseph and his Brethren than Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale? Handel’s unfairly neglected—yet splendid—oratorio depicts the grandeur of Pharaoh’s court in an intriguing plot of familial conflict and mistaken identity. With a cast of favorites including Diana Moore and Nicholas Phan, Nicholas McGegan and his historically informed Orchestra and Chorale present a lively studio recording of the program that delighted audiences and critics alike.