Visual Saidan

Giuseppe Verdi - Il Trovatore [BluRay Untouched]
Marcello Alvarez / Sondra Radvanovsky / The Metropolitan Orchestra & Chorus / Marco Amiliato
MPEG-4 AVC, 1080p, 1.78:1 | DTS-HD MA 5.1, PCM Stereo @ 24Bit | Full Artwork: 193 MB
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 00440 073 4797 GH | Country/Year: Europe 2012 | Size: 45,01 GB | 5% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Opera, Romantic, HiDef

…These performances come together brilliantly in this impressive recording. With the nicely balanced Met orchestra reproduced effectively here, the sound sometimes evokes the carefully voiced balances of studio recordings. Yet this is a live performance in which the musicians’ fine interactions add to the excitement. While some would hold that Il trovatore requires the finest principals for an effective performance, this recording also suggests that the sense of theatricality Verdi infused in this score affects the singers and drives them to give the intensely moving performances found in this exceptional release. More than that, the visual dimensions are enhanced with shots and angles that take the viewer to the stage. It is difficult not to become involved in this production through this well-crafted disc.

NEKTAR is probably the most German-like of the Seventies British bands, a fame that owes a lot to the town in which this band was founded (Hamburg) and to their stylistic approach (Assimilated to Krautrock). NEKTAR was formed in 1969 by Allan FREEMAN (keyboards & vocals), Roye ALBRIGHTON (guitars & vocals), Derek MOORE (bass, Mellotron & vocals) and Ron HOWDEN (drums).

Experimental musician Claire Rousay and visual artist Dani Toral have been in each others’ orbit since young adulthood in San Antonio, but it took a decade for them to find A Softer Focus. Before Rousay had put her compositional gray matter to task for the album’s music, she knew she wanted to work with Toral- being familiar with her past work centering her Mexican heritage. Toral’s vibrant color palette and reinterpretations of comfort in oneself and the natural, vegetative world connected easily with her explorations in communication and intimacy. Historically, Rousay primarily operated in non-melodic experimental music, sculpting compositions from obsessive field recordings, inserting voice-to-text, percussion played via text message sounds, conversations, and daily life. By contrast, the six-song collection and collaborative project A Softer Focus is lush and almost entirely melodic, even veering into pop at a couple points…

Nonesuch Records releases the first recording of Steve Reich’s Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson, on June 10, 2022, with the vinyl due August 5. The composition was originally written to be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3).

One of the most sought-after of all ‘60s cult LPs, 1967’s Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids is the sort of record that could only have emerged during the psychedelic era, and a vibrant manifestation of that period’s freewheeling, boundary-breaking spirit of musical adventure. Hapshash and the Colored Coat—the English duo of Michael English and Nigel Weymouth—initially achieved notoriety as a graphic design team whose distinctive visual sensibility placed them at the center of London’s original psychedelic explosion. The pair’s vivid visual imagination spawned album covers and countless posters promoting performances at London’s legendary UFO Club by such acts as Pink Floyd and the Incredible String Band. Those visual works brilliantly captured the London scene’s buoyant, mind-expanding vibe, and feature some of the psychedelic era’s most arresting imagery.

Camel's Coming of Age DVD begins with a fly on the wall style mini documentary showing the band in rare form rehearsing for a show. They discuss various chord structures and movements to get that distinct Camel sound and they play full pieces effortlessly. It is a wonderful start to this fabulous DVD. The sound check follows which is basically the band preparing prior to a show on a stage with an empty auditorium…