Lorin Maazel DG 2024

"Between 1972 and 1982 Maazel was Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra and between 1973-79 made a series of recordings for Decca – all of which are collected here. The repertory includes many orchestral spectaculars and Decca’s first recording in Cleveland, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, is one of the very best and a recording which has achieved reference status. “…. The precision of The Cleveland Orchestra is little short of miraculous… the recording is one of Decca’s most spectacular, searingly detailed but atmospheric too.” [The Penguin Guide]

TWhen the legendary Venetian Teatro La Fenice, which had been completely destroyed by fire in 1996, rose like a phoenix from the ashes again, its rebirth was celebrated with Verdi’s La Traviata, an opera that had seen its première more than 150 years earlier in the same theatre. Led by star conductor Lorin Maazel, a cast of brilliant singer-actors brought an exact replica of the March 1853 version to the stage, giving audiences the opportunity to experience the opera as the world first heard at its premiere in Venice. The original score had been found in the archives of La Fenice, so that La Traviata could relive its premiere without any revisions. The great Violetta-Germont duet, the second act finale and the opera’s last two numbers resounded through the theatre in just the way that Verdi initially intended.

It was George Szell who made the Cleveland Orchestra into a highly responsive virtuoso body, and when he died in 1970 he was in due course succeeded by Lorin Maazel, himself a renowned orchestral trainer. Here is Maazel's first Cleveland recording, notable for a quite outstanding quality of orchestral playing. The strings in particular have a remarkable depth of tone, though they play with great delicacy when it is needed; but then the orchestra as a whole plays with extraordinary virtuosity, tonal weight and exactness of ensemble. If the woodwind have a somewhat piquant blend this suits the music, which throughout is admirably served by Maazel's highly rhythmic, dramatic conducting.

Maazel's mid-Eighties Mahler cycle was a prestige project, the first time that the august Vienna Phil. had ever recorded all nine symphonies. It's generally acknowledged that they play gloriously and that Sony provided vivid digital sound. As for Maazel, his notions are never less than unusual, so it can be said that his Mahler is like no one else's.

Realistics Revelations of intimate Inner Psychology La Traviata represents a milestone in musical history, marking a move from Romantic opera towards a greater degree of realism. For the first time ever, contemporary material and figures had been chosen as the basis for an opera. A real prostitute, tuberculosis, a so-called man of honour whose provincial morality collides with the more flexible and superficial world of the French capital, money, bourgeois righteousness versus high-society superficiality and decadence – themes such as these have become well established on the operatic stage since then.

There are compositions whose title sounds purposely reductive, and these certainly include Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninov's last composition, so the name of symphony would not seem usurped even if the form does not correspond to the classical one.

Raimondi has advantages: the dark coloring of his voice, the vocal menace, the power of his bass." The three ladies - especially the Te Kanawa has become livelier, more insistent - Maazel has the singers and Mozart firmly in hand.

– Hermes Lexikon

After the death of the stupendously talented Hector Berlioz in 1869, there remained only one Frenchman to challenge the somewhat frivolous national taste. A Belgian-born Parisian, Cesar Franck became the Pied Piper for serious-minded composers who sought to ennoble French music; of his followers Chausson was as ardent as any.

Praised by Bloomberg for having “mastered the role” and “acting her socks off,” Angela Gheorghiu leads an all-star cast which includes Ramón Vargas and Roberto Frontali, with the brilliant conductor Lorin Maazel on the podium. Angela Gheorghiu is the definitive Violetta of her generation, the standard-setter against whom all other exponents of this role must be judged for the foreseeable future. Her affinity for Verdi‘s fragile, gentle-hearted courtesan is rooted in a fine balance of acting and singing skills. Giuseppe Verdi´s immortal opera in a sumptuous production by Liliana Cavani, with world famous singers – a treat for viewers everywhere!