Viridian Sun is Dave Tollefson and Mike Griffin, founder and owner of Hypnos Recordings, a Portland, OR-based e-music label. Griffin is also an excellent synthesist and Tollefson is one of the world's leading electronic guitarists. Solar Noise is their debut CD. The title fits the music perfectly. Some listeners might remember the NASA recordings of space noise that were released in the '80s. The noise was completely random with no discernable patterns or repetitions. The organic atmospheres on this CD sound like space noise with structure, pace, and timbre. Griffin and Tollefson have organized the sounds into very psychoacoustic patterns. The music swirls around the brain and stimulates the neurons and dopamine and all that stuff. And, while it is minimalism, it is subtly exciting.
Schubert himself was an able violinist, whose idiomatic writing for the instrument is charmingly evident in his violin and piano sonatas. Moreover, enhanced by sympathetic recording, Biondi and Tverskaya here play a modern copy of a 1740 violin, and a c1820 Graf fortepiano that vividly evoke this music’s fragrant atmosphere. Arresting spontaneity invigorated by Biondi’s stylish extempore ornamentation reveals a potent mix of youthful vigour, ardent passion and delicate poignancy. An essential disc for all Schubertians.
Interesting and pleasant, but the soundtrack to Louis Leterrier's Danny the Dog will throw longtime Massive Attack fans for a loop. The band's trademark deep sound is untraceable for the most part. It's probably a testament to how hard they stuck to the soundtracking rules, but this program music is rather run-of-the-mill, especially when compared to Massive Attack's proper albums, which – to be fair – would overtake most filmmaker's visuals. Harpsichords play over neo-noir beats and guitars echo forever as tension builds, and while the band's keen sense of sonic structure is intact, they're layering things much less than usual here and traveling some previously explored territory.
Born Caroline Catharina Müller in the Netherlands, she moved with her family to Germany in the late '70s. In 1980, she became a member of the girl quartet Optimal, who issued two singles. During one of the band's concerts in Hamburg, she was approached by songwriter/producer Dieter Bohlen who had just taken the continental charts by storm with his duo Modern Talking…
Giuseppe Verdi's first big Paris hit, Jérusalem is an 1847 rewrite of I Lombardi. Along with a new French text, the action is clarified, characters and scenes are dropped, the tenor role is beefed up, and the obligatory ballet is added, among other changes. It's a more coherent opera in this version, although Italian audiences have clung to I Lombardi, which is still mounted on the world's stages. The Philips team, however, makes a powerful case for this French grand opera story of betrayal, love, war and rescue, penitence, and vindication painted in primary colors on a canvas of Crusaders and villains, rousingly set to effective, if blunt, music.
There is no complete surviving score for Vivaldi's Ercole su'l Termodonte, but there is enough existing material that modern scholars have been able to reconstruct it primarily by making new settings of the lost recitatives. The first production of the opera since Vivaldi's time was at Spoleto in 2006 in a version by Alessandro Ciccolini, which was released as a DVD. Conductor Fabio Biondi made a version introduced in Venice in 2007, which is recorded on this 2010 Virgin CD. Biondi's recording has the advantage of two international superstars in the leading roles, tenor Rolando Villazón and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and soprano Diana Damrau is nearly in their league. Villazón's earthy voice is usually associated with 19th century and verismo Italian repertoire, but he has an acute sensitivity to Baroque vocal style, and his robust, almost baritonal tenor is entirely appropriate for a larger-than-life character like Hercules.
The soprano Daniela Dessì died suddenly on 20th August 2016, aged 59. She was hailed by critics and colleagues as one of the finest voices the world of opera has ever known. Dynamic pays tribute to the great soprano with this recording, filmed just one year before her untimely death. Her performance of Giordano’s Fedora was one of the pinnacles of her stunning artistic career. In the famous aria O grandi occhi lucenti from Act One, she delivers a technically perfect and emotionally passionate performance worthy of a great star. The story takes place at the end of the 19th century, in St. Petersburg (Act One), Paris (Act Two) and Switzerland (Act Three).
Studio Armide represents magnificent documentary film Olivier Simonnet «Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un automne musical à Versailles». Marc-Antoine Charpentier never had an official function at the court of Louis XIV. In 2004 Versailles finally opened its doors to him for the tercentennial commemorations of his death. The finest performers of baroque music, from Jordi Savall to Christophe Rousset, played the most important works of the time in the Royal Chapel opera house, as well as in the chateau salons and galleries: from instrumental music (Lully’s Alceste) to vocal music (Actéon), from lyric tragedy (Médée) to sacred music (Missa assumpta est Maria). The life of this collaborator of Molière’s and cultural life under Louis XIV are enriched by the participation of conductors and musicians.