Bresh Umore Marea

This album concludes The Brahms Trio's five-volume survey of the piano trio in Russia with remarkable works by composers whose names have all but disappeared from the musical world's collective memory. Vladimir Dyck, a student of Widor at the Paris Conservatoire, took French nationality in 1910 but his life came to a tragic end when he and his family were arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. His Piano Trio, Op. 25 contrasts Russian soulfulness with the lightness and deft scoring he brought to his film compositions. Constantin von Sternberg's genial Op. 104 reflects his career as a virtuoso pianist, while Sergey Youferov's expansive and nostalgic Op. 52 is a farewell to the Russian 'Silver Age', a world about to be destroyed by revolution.

Alessandro Stradella’s place in the annals of the history of music is not only due to the adventurous circumstances that marked his brief existence, but also to the reputation as a opera composer he has acquired since the 18th century. Inaccessible for many decades to specialists and scholars, La Doriclea is definitely the least known of all Stradella’s operas. However, it constitutes a particularly significant chapter in his overall output: composed in Rome during the early 1670s, to our knowledge La Doriclea represents the first opera entirely composed by Stradella.

Ottorino Respighi: Gli ucelli (The Birds); Vertrate di chiesa (The Church Windows) – Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy
Domenico Scarlatti (arr. Vincenzo Tomassini): Le donne di buon umore (The Good-Humored Ladies) – Cleveland Orchestra; Louis Lane
Classical | 1 CD | EAC Rip | 315 MB | FLAC+LOG+Cue | Full scans | 4 RS links
Publisher: Sony Classical

Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com
Sometime in the ‘70s, Sony (then CBS) released a two LP set called The Respighi Album which contained, among other pieces, The Church Windows and The Birds. Now The Birds had been recorded before and was pretty well known, but Church Windows was a stereo novelty, and it made a tremendous impression. Now this legendary performance has been remastered onto a budget-priced CD at a fraction of the cost of the original! It sounds better than ever–those magnificently deep organ pedals in the second movement (depicting the Archangel Michael with his flaming sword) will send your neighbors running for cover. What fun! –David Hurwitz