Ardour Teebs

This is playing in the grand manner… Ozawa and the orchestra are behind the soloist in all this and the deciso element is fully realized. But don't let me imply a lack of finesse; not only do lyrical sections sing with subtlety, the big passages also are shapely… In the gorgeously grisly Totentanz, both music and playing should make your hair stand on end. - C.H.; Gramophone

Jules Massenet - Werther
Rolando Villazon / Sophie Koch / Covent Garden Orchestra / Antonio Pappano
2xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 600 MB | Full Artwork: 308 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 477 9340 | Country/Year: Europe 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Opera

". . . [there are numerous times] when subtlety and beauty of his vocal effects take the breath away: the dazzling light and rapid fade, for instance, during the syllables of the word "lumière" [in act one] . . . Sophie Koch puts her best tonsils forward singing the agonized Charlotte of act three, while Eri Nakamura is suitably bubbly [as Sophie] . . . Villazón's ardour finds its match in Antonio Pappano's conducting. He never shrinks from the luscious ache in Massenet's music or its dramatic bustle. Nocturnal sighs; bucolic whooping; dark melodramatics: the Royal Opera House orchestra takes care of them all." ~The Times

Robert Schumann - Works For Piano & Orchestra
Gerhard Oppitz - Bamberger Symphoniker / Marc Andreae
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 321 MB | Full Artwork: 124 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Tudor # 7181 | Country/Year: Switzerland 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

"…The sound is every bit as good as the playing - all players are just "there" and all the highlighting of textures and balance adjustments are obviously not the work of the engineers. Enormously recommended. " ~sa-cd.net

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Mandelring Quartett - Complete Chamber Music For Strings Vol. 1
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,57 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,27 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: audite # 92.656 SACD | Country/Year: Germany 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Classicism, Romantic, Chamber Music

"…The observations of the dynamic markings are scrupulous and add greatly to the excitement as they seem to be able plumb ever greater tonal depths at either end of the dynamic spectrum. Perhaps most impressive of all is the respect shown by the Mandelring's for the unnumbered quartet of 1823, which although written some 2 years prior to the great octet shows the rapidly growing style of the young Mendelssohn. They play it with the same professionalism and joy that characterises their other performances…" ~sa-cd.net

Perhaps I should begin by reminding readers that Krysia Osostowicz (of Polish descent) and the Edinburgh-born Susan Tomes are founder members of Domus—the group whose debut recording of Faure's two piano quartets won them the Gramophone Chamber award in 1986. And once again these two artists affirm their very special affinity with this French composer. It is a record I can recommend without reservations for its style and conviction, as also for wholly natural tonal reproduction (Andrew Keener and Antony Howell) and discerning programme-notes (Richard Wigmore).

For the fourth and penultimate volume of his Fauré series, Eric Le Sage has been joined by Alexandre Tharaud, Emmanuel Pahud, and François Salque, long-standing accomplices, in order to record these pieces for four hands. Recipient of numerous prizes both in France and abroad, this complete Fauré series is already asserting itself as a reference for the interpretation of Gabriel Fauré’s chamber music with piano.

The first CD here is generously filled and contains a valuable novelty in the Magnard Violin Sonata, which may well tempt collectors already possessing a good version of the Franck. In the first movement of the latter, where the marking is Allegretto ben moderato, Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard create a feeling of serenity at the start not only tonally but also by a tempo of about dotted crotchet = 48, but fine though the playing is, I think the ben moderato has been interpreted too freely here.

This is the third period-instrument recording of Brahms’s violin sonatas I’ve heard, and by far the most illuminating. I admire the delicacy of Natalia Grigorieva and Ilia Korol’s playing on Challenge Classics, though not their choppy phrasing. Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov are fleet, flexible and at times thrilling in their abandon, even if, in his ardour, Melnikov occasionally overwhelms his partner. Indeed, theirs are performances for the concert hall.

Anyone who knows and loves the warmth of expression in Bruch's famous first violin concerto will find the same lyrical gifts amply displayed here - the slow movements are particularly heartfelt and Bruch, even at this late stage in his life, seems to have had an undiminished fund of touching melody. That is not to suggest that the Romantic ardour of these works is solely confined to the slow movements, though: the opening 'allegro' of the octet, for instance, contains writing of deeply felt passion too, as does the development section of the string quintet's first movement.