On Friday, March 10, 2023, American violinist Stella Chen releases her debut album, Stella x Schubert, with pianist Henry Kramer on the Apple-owned Platoon platform. Performing on the 1700 ex-Petri Stradivarius violin, Chen garnered worldwide attention with her first-prize win at the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, followed by the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
In a scene where the recordings of young sopranos tend toward an extreme sameness, Austria's Anna Prohaska would deserve kudos simply for the ambition of this release of soldiers' songs. The idea, especially for a female singer, is original, and the music draws on a great variety of sources, from Scottish song to Wolfgang Rihm. Better still is the execution, which shows Prohaska's extreme versatility.
The performance given on 21 March 1967 at Carnegie Hall in New York stems from the now outmoded tradition of casting baritones and basses in the castrato roles, and uses a special concert arrangement. Not only are several cuts made to the score, but the order of the arias is changed and the recitatives are heavily truncated and provided with new English texts, and given not to one of the characters but to a 'narrator'.
Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.
The box contains a perfect overview of VIVARTE’s legendary catalogue of ancient music ranging from Vivaldi to Brahms. Most of the recordings received critical acclaim all over the world, many of them won prestigious awards and many are reference recordings.
Classical Discovery offers an ideal package, providing an overview of classical music and its history in an entertaining and easy-to-understand form. In a lavishly presented cloth-bound book, accompanied by 12 CDs with over 900 minutes of playing time, Classical Discovery tells the story of the classics in word, music, and images from its earliest days until modern times. With Classical Discovery, anyone can gain entry to the world of classical music, whether for the first time or to gain new insights and perspectives.
Italian pop singer Antonella Ruggiero used to sing at parties as a child, her first step to becoming a local star years later. After attending the Fine Arts Academy, she started working as a designer for an advertising company. In 1975, Ruggiero joined Matia Bazar, a popular vocal group founded by Aldo Stilita, which achieved international recognition in the late '70s. In October 1989, she decided to leave the band. After an inspiring length of time in India, Ruggiero began her solo career with the release of an album called Libera in 1996. That was followed by 1997's Registrazioni Moderne, produced by Roberto Colombo. It included the song "Per Un'Ora d'Amore," which climbed the most important Italian charts. In 1998, she came in second place at the San Remo Festival for singing "Amore Lontanissimo."
The legendary label, deutsche harmonia mundi, releases a special 50 CD boxset featuring star performers such as Hille Perl, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dorothee Oberlinger, Simone Kermes, and Nuria Rial and more! This collection displays the sheer variety available from the dhm archive. A perfect collection ranging Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic music.