Heinrich Best

Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg WWV 70
Albert Dohmen / Robert Dean Smith / Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Marek Janowski
3xSACD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 749 MB | Full Artwork: 745 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Pentatone # PTC 5186 405 | Country/Year: Netherlands 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Opera

"This is the 6th instalment of PentaTone’s successful Wagner Edition. It is the first time in the recording history that a label records all major Wagner opera’s with the same orchestra, choir and conductor. This makes the PentaTone Wagner Edition a great collector’s item. All operas are recorded live in the Philharmonie in Berlin. The first five recordings were awarded with “Editor’s Choice” (Gramophone), Recording of the Month and Opera Choice of the Month (BBC Music Magazine), CD of the week (Sunday Times). Based on the reviews of the concert we expect high scores for the Tannhäuser recording as well." ~prestoclassical

A large collection of religious works by two Austrian composers. Bieber's work for 36 voices is a powerful and moving piece, especially for cornets, trumpets, sackbuts and timpani bursts. Here, Junghaner is in charge of the Viennese early music group and Concerto Palatino, who has the best technique and expressiveness in the early music brass system, also contributes to this wonderful performance. It was performed in the mass format at the time, and is recorded with a sonata in front and behind. [Sony Music]

This four-disc set celebrates Flemish vocal polyphony of the renaissance era. Recorded at various times in the 1970s and 1980s by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, this is a fascinating collection in a well presented box-set, with the liner-notes provided on CD ROM. Practical tip: if you are listening to the CDs through a computer, load the CD-ROM first so that you can access the sleeve notes while listening.

In a kind of High Baroque version of the duelling guitars from the film ‘Deliverance’, Alba have contrived to set Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat against each other as rivals in a virtual virtuoso set-piece. The evidence for this is perhaps a little thin, but what is true is that both of these almost exact contemporaries worked for a while at the same time in the Court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. This period in the 1670s and 1680s gives rise to the not unreasonable speculation that there was a “rivalry that in all probability existed between them for the favour of their influential employer”, presumably with the ambition of ending up as Hofkapellmeister.

This is a gem of a CD. It's a well-chosen, well-performed and well-presented anthology of mid-Baroque German sacred cantatas. Bass Peter Kooij and the seven-person L'Armonia Sonora are directed by gambist Mieneke Van der Velden. They have a close and warm affinity not only with one another, but also for the music; it's music as varied as it's beautiful. Its rich, sustained sonorities will stay with you long after you have finished the uplifting experience of listening to the CD. Released on the enterprising Ramée label De profundis clamavi comprises seven sumptuous examples of the music written in the north German Länder in the period after the Thirty Years War. It's music which not so much 'reflects' that profound conflict, as is 'affected' by it – weighed down with detached regret and unselfconscious resignation.

San Domingo is a 1970 West German drama film directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. It tells the story of a man who joins a rock music hippie commune. When the commune members learn that his family is wealthy, they tell his parents that he has been kidnapped and demand a ransom. The film is loosely based on the story Betrothal in St. Domingo by Heinrich von Kleist. The actors are primarily non-professionals. The film received the 1971 Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Cinematography and Best Music.