Stephen Biggins

Some of Stephen Hough’s most exquisite recordings come from his collaborations with EMI and Virgin Classics during this early period, offering a taste of the pianist’s impeccable touch, his musical and intellectual rigor, and his fondness for the short showpieces that filled late 19th-century salons and peppered the 78 rpm records of golden-age pianists. In the two all-Liszt recitals, Stephen Hough is also in his element, creating atmospheric colors, with notes flowing like streams of pearls, shaping and magnifying the dramatic depth of these works. From Mozart to Schumann, Brahms to Britten, looking back at the great virtuoso tradition while looking forward through his own arrangements, Stephen Hough presents, through these early recordings, a fascinating portrait of a young artist whose brilliant, artistic intellect and appetite for creativity remains unmatched today.

This CPO issue of Johann Georg Conradi's 1691 opera Ariadne is based out of a revival of this obscure work produced in 2003 as part of the Boston Early Music Festival. One might be surprised to see the name of Conradi above the title of such a large opera set – has anybody really heard of this guy? What is up with this opera?
German Baroque opera has spent centuries in the shadows. At one time this entire historical genre was considered of only marginal value when held up to the shining example of George Frideric Handel. Closer examination of the topic reveals that this was one man's opinion, namely that of nineteenth century musicologist Friedrich Chrysander.

Both Acis and Galatea and the cantata Sarei troppo felice heard here represent decisive turning points in Handel’s career. The Italian cantata came at the beginning of the one and half decades spent by Handel in the service of various patrons. Acis and Galatea marks the highpoint of this phase and therefore, like the cantata before it, clearly renders recognizable the musical means available to him in the private ensembles of his employers. Moreover, Acis and Galatea contains the musical and textual seeds of the English oratorio, which after 1742 completely supplanted opera compositions.

Betrayal, sorcery and one dazzling aria after the next…Ovid's Queen Niobe of Thebes, who turns to stone when her children are slain by the gods as punishment for her arrogance and pride, is the subject of this forgotten 1688 masterpiece. The Italian composer-priest Agostino Steffani languished in obscurity until the opera was rediscovered recently; the Boston Early Music Festival give its world-premiere studio recording with Karina Gauvin in the psychologically complex title role, and countertenor Phillipe Jaroussky singing 'powerfully and sweetly' (The New York Times) as Niobe's husband Anfione, driven to suicide in the face of family tragedy.

American tenor Stephen Costello's meteoric career has taken him to the stages of the world's top opera houses. In this, his first recording for Delos, he performs a glittering assortment of arias that will appeal strongly to any opera lover, but that will be a particular treat for fans of the bel canto repertoire. While it mainly showcases classic arias by Gaetano Donizetti, we also hear single selections by Vicenzo Bellini and Giuseppe Verdi. Polished and sensitive orchestral collaboration comes courtesy of Maestro Constantine Orbelian and his vaunted Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra. The Associated Press has called Stephen Costello ''… a prodigiously gifted singer whose voice makes an immediate impact.''

While most classical composers attempt to spread around their artistry among various mediums, Stephen Scott has put all of his eggs into the proverbial one basket, specializing in bowed piano music as founder/leader of the Bowed Piano Ensemble, est. 1977. This is not as limited a resource as it sounds; in 1930, Henry Cowell stated he had discovered 165 ways to play the inside of a piano, though if he made a list of all those methods no one has been able to find it. Moreover, Stephen Scott doesn't seem to mind being regarded as "the Bowed Piano Guy." New Albion's The Deep Spaces is his sixth bowed piano CD and demonstrates some measure of stepping out of the box on Scott's part; The Deep Spaces is a song cycle, set to poems by Shelley, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Pliny, and Pablo Medina and sung by soprano Victoria Hansen.

Towards the of 2012, Stephen Malkmus teamed up with two German musicians of his to cover Can's essential album Ege Bamyasi. It was played live on 2nd December 2012 in Cologne and committed to tape in glorious quality, veritably bursting through the speakers. An essential listen.

Just about everything about Stephen Hough’s Chopin Nocturne cycle seems ideal. His gorgeous and well-recorded sonority seduces in intimate moments, rising to the music’s dramatic climaxes with emotional force yet never losing clarity or luminosity. He applies rubato with the utmost discretion, taste, and proportion, while largely underlining the composer’s harmonic surprises through shifts of tone color and chord balances. The way in which the pianist floats soft cantabile legato lines often gives the illusion of more sustain pedal than is actually employed.