Angela Somer

Starring Angela Gheorghiu as the celebrated French actress Adriana Lecouvreur and Jonas Kaufmann as her lover Maurizio, Count of Saxony, Cilea’s verismo drama explores celebrity, romance, jealousy, and death. The trio of sublime voices is completed by Russian mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina as Adriana’s jealous rival, the Princess de Bouillon. David McVicar’s hit production – the first performance of the opera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for more than a century – presents the life of the French actress as a blurring of the distinction between fantasy and reality.

Angela Hewitt is rapidly establishing herself as one of the great pianists of our age, her concert career expanding as rapidly as her discography, so it seems only right that, following her success in tackling one of the pillars of classical music in Bach, she should tackle another in Beethoven. This volume commences a survey of Beethoven sonatas which will couple the well known, in this case the ‘Appassionata’, with the comparatively neglected, here the grandest of Beethoven’s early sonatas, his Op 7. The disc is completed with a superb performance of Op 10/3, one of the early sonatas where Beethoven can be seen breaking the bounds of convention to create the style which would define the great works of his middle period.

Angela Hewitt’s legion of fans will be delighted at this eagerly awaited third volume of Beethoven sonatas. Her first two releases in this series were praised for their ‘clarity, intelligence and elegance’ … ‘fusing poetry and passion’, and all these trademark qualities of her playing are fully present in this third disc.

"Love Is" is the debut album of American singer-songwriter and musician Angela Wong. It was released on September 2011. The music in this album applies a fusion of Jazz/ Classical/ Rock/R&B music. It is about joy and pain on this journey of love and understanding of life. "A rich tapestry of beautifully composed music. It captures the soul and refreshes the heart. Angela Wang is a cultural treasure for the city of New York and I look forward to hearing any future work by this fantastic artist".

This studio album from soprano Angela Gheorghiu sometimes has almost the flavor of experiment as she tries to find new roles in the verismo repertory to replace the Puccini heroines with which she made her reputation. The results are a mixed bag, but for those specifically interested in verismo the album is probably a must-have: It's rare to hear a singer of Gheorghiu's caliber in novel works: a piece like Stefano Donaudy's O del mio amato ben, one of the 36 Arie di Stile Antico, both showcases the alluring cream of Gheorghiu's voice and enlarges the concert repertory.

Born in Chelyabinsk in 1973, Lera Auerbach defected from the former Soviet Union to the United States while still in her teens, and she has since garnered much attention as both pianist and composer, notably in her recent work with Gidon Kremer. Written in 1999, Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano amply showcase her stylistic leanings and wide emotional range. Clearly, she's imbibed from the Shostakovich/Schnittke watering hole, as we hear in the frequent sparse textures in extreme registers, petulant dynamic shifts, obsessive pedal points, and caustic, folk-oriented tunes. Auerbach also has figured out what makes Astor Piazzolla tick, and manages to personalize his sultry harmonic idiom. The most interesting moments occur when the composer's original voice pushes her influences out of the way, as in the sudden, unexpected violin cadenza that immediately follows Prelude No. 15's unrelenting dance. This leads to a threnody that gradually dematerializes into a high-register mist, and before you know it, Prelude No. 16 is over. The Postlude and solo violin piece also typify the ease with which Auerbach communicates her ideas. Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high. Such big playing requires the larger-than-life engineering BIS provides.