Szymanowski Le Roi Roger Thomas Hampson

Along the years, there's been some argument in the musical press whether Busoni was a great composer or if he rather was, as Richard Strauss's own pun on himself, a first class second rate one. Well, this work, one of the most intriguing operas written during the 20th Century, is indeed a very serious argument towards establishing Busoni among the great composers. It has been slow in gaining recognition since its premiere in 1925, with all too infrequent performances, a kind of cult item that saw the stage, alongside Pfitzner's Palestrina and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler,… By Plaza Marcelino

Thomas Hampson, America’s leading baritone and a champion of the art of classic song — poetry set to music — makes his Cedille Records debut with a programme of songs by five composers of the early 20th century associated with the city of Chicago: Ernst Bacon, Florence Price, John Alden Carpenter, Margaret Bonds, and Louis Campbell-Tipton. All of them, Hampson says, 'have distinguished themselves in history as great voices of the artistic American narrative'. Hailed as 'an outstanding recitalist' by Grove Music Online, the much-honored international opera star, recording artist, and 'ambassador of song' performs compositions based on poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet who became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Les Presses Universitaires de France et Frémeaux & Associés proposent cette biographie du Roi Arthur, racontée et expliquée par Alban Gautier, professeur d'histoire médiévale à l'université de Caen. …

A broadcast performance before an unobtrusive audience, this production had already enjoyed a respectable life on LPs before being reissued on CDs in 1989 as the Silver Revolution penetrated the vaults (Le Chant du Monde LDC 278879/80, Fanfare 13:1). Taken on its own, it’s a grand account—ringing voices, spirited choral work, unflagging élan—making a persuasive case for a work which remains inexplicably fringe repertoire despite abundant melody (including Breton folk song), dramatic acuity fraught with startling rhythmic novelty, and a vividly compelling story looming from the demesne of the legendary and fabulous (the same which inspired Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie)….