Don Menya

All of Rachmaninov’s music - from his earliest student compositions to his final masterpieces – has been collected together for the first time on 32 CDs, in what is definitively the most complete and comprehensive edition of Rachmaninov’s works ever released.

Claudio Abbado uses Mussorgsky's text in a condition almost as complete as Mstislav Rostropovich's but avoiding some overlap from variant readings. He brings to his conducting the same vitality and scrupulous attention to small details that are familiar from his work in Italian opera. His cast is good throughout and particularly strong in the leading roles. This is a Boris to live with, one that gets better with repeated hearings.

The great Sergei Rachmaninoff was not primarily known as an opera composer. However, his three operas have an important place in the music history books. This three-disc set includes all three of Rachamninoff's operas in their entirety (one per disc) and are presented in jaw-dropping performances under the baton of conductor Neeme Jarvi. The orchestra as well as the soloists and choirs truly deliver emotionally-drenched performances on all three operas.

This opera is a study in the psychopathology of everyday life. It exposes the kind of brutal manners familiar in naturalistic novels after the Goncourts and Zola, but Shostakovich had the misfortune of running afoul of the official Soviet position that criminality and pathology couldn't exist in the workers' paradise. Maria Ewing's strength isn't pure vocalism; anyone can find fault on technical grounds. But she is a passionate, involving actress with her voice, and she makes our anti-heroine chillingly desperate and driven–every moment is haunted. The supporting cast joins in with a broadly vicious portrayal of a spider's den passing for normal home life.

Openzone Bar, Paul Hardcastle, Weathertunes, Lemongrass, JoJo Effect, Cosmic Orient, Eskadet, Five Seasons and many more.

This 10CD box covers the entire range of the repertoire with which Boris Christoff took the world by storm; from his first opera role in La Boheme over the important Verdi roles and his devilish portrayal of Mephisto to the major roles in Russian operas; Christoff took part in no less than 600 performances of Boris Godunov.