Integrity Plus 12.8.2

A selection of Richard Strauss’s most-loved lieder and songs, and Elisabeth’s arias from Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the role in which Lise Davidsen will make her debut at Bayreuth Festival. Plus Ariadne’s aria from Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos: her 2017 Glyndebourne debut in the title role was named “one of those ‘I was there’ moments” (The Times).

Combined, Prokofiev’s three suites from Romeo include about half of the score. Still, most conductors who want to give us a full CD (or even a full LP) of Romeo pick their own extracts from the complete ballet instead of stringing together the suites. That’s probably at least partly because they don’t share Prokofiev’s preferences when it comes to favorite moments—but it’s also because, as written, the suites are organized for musical rather than narrative coherence, and thus provide little sense of the play’s dramatic trajectory. One way around the second of these issues, of course, is to reorder the suites: that’s, for instance, what Mitropoulos does with selections from the more popular First and Second. Here Andrew Litton pushes that idea to its limit, giving us all 20 movements of the three suites “in the order the music appears in the ballet score.”

Austin’s Grupo Fantasma enters their 19th year as a band with an exciting new record and a fresh take on their unique sound. With six previous albums in their back catalog, plus collaborations and backing gigs with the likes of Prince, Spoon and Los Lobos, not to mention a GRAMMY award and a loyal fan base, they are ready to turn people’s heads again with American Music: Vol. VII (Blue Corn Music).