Barenboim

This 9-CD box set features the complete Bruckner Cycle of Daniel Barenboim and his Staatskapelle Berlin. This set is timed to coincide with a complete Cycle performance at Carnegie Hall in January which marks not only Barenboim's 60th anniversary at the hall, but also the first time a complete Cycle has been performed there in one season. New booklet notes on the repertoire and on Barenboim's and the Staatskapelle Berlin's congenial work together complete the package.

Originally released in the 1980s as separate albums, Itzhak Perlman's recordings of Mozart's violin sonatas were reissued in this box set in 1991 as a special collector's edition. In these sonatas for keyboard and violin, the piano dominates as the violin often tags along in unison with the piano's melody, rarely departing from it except in an ornamental capacity. Even so, Perlman brings his customary good humor and energy to these pieces, and through his vibrant and spirited playing makes the violin's obbligato more or less equal to the pianist's elaborate part.

Robert Schumann often described the opposing “Florestan” and “Eusebius” facets of his own personality. The contrasts between the mercurial, exuberant Florestan and the more considered and introspective Eusebius comes into sharp focus when you compare these spectacular Chicago performances of Schumann’s Second and Third symphonies under Daniel Barenboim with their more recent Decca counterparts with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Cleveland Orchestra.

As a conductor, Daniel Barenboim has had a distinguished history with the orchestral music of Debussy, but this is his first full-album foray into the French composer’s solo piano works. It runs the gamut of Debussy’s Impressionist colour palette, from the shimmering “Clair de Lune”—played with the subtlety and expressive freedom that Barenboim admires so much in Debussy’s own piano-roll recordings—to the restless, swirling prelude “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest.” The simple, hymn-like “La fille aux cheveux de lin,” meanwhile, shines anew under Barenboim’s fingers.

The New Year's Concert in Vienna has been a glorious tradition for over six decades. A best-selling classical event year on year, the concert has unique global appeal. It is broadcast on TV and radio to over 50 countries, and is viewed by tens of millions of people all over the world.

The old model for creating a hit classical recording – big-name soloist plus big-name conductor in major repertory work – is not so common anymore, but this live Brahms recording from the Staatskapelle Berlin under Venezuela's Gustavo Dudamel, with Argentine-Israeli-Palestinian-Spanish pianist Daniel Barenboim as soloist, shows that there's life in the concept yet. One could point to the virtues of pianist and conductor separately: it's a rare septuagenarian who can combine power and clear articulation of detail the way Barenboim does, and Dudamel builds a vast sweep in, especially, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15. But it's the way that the two work together that really makes news. Chalk it up to shared South American heritage or to whatever the listener wants, but the way the orchestra and piano define separate spheres and work them together is extraordinary. Again, it is in the Piano Concerto No. 1 and its Beethovenian drama that their mutual understanding is most evident, but there is a sense of great variety powerfully unified throughout.

When the name Chopin is mentioned, what often comes to mind first are his Nocturnes and their dreamy qualities. Chopin, of course, wrote much more than that, and some of it is quite dramatic and intense. However, Daniel Barenboim seems to have missed getting that memo before recording Chopin's Preludes and the other works on this album. There is both drama and intensity in at least a few of the Preludes, often overdone, but not here. Those marked agitato, Nos. 1, 8, and 22, are placidly performed, with little impetus to them, while the "Polish Dance," No. 7, has no strength in it. No. 12 in G sharp minor has a little more energy, and No. 16 has a little more forcefulness, both coming closer than the other Preludes to living up to their potential.

Pianist/Conductor Barenboim continues his 2020 Beethoven Journey with a complete recording of Piano Trios. "There is a lack of equality in this world. For only if everyone were equal there would be no conflicts", he says. Equal standing is also indispensable for the piano trios of Beethoven, whom he's always regarded as one of the most important composers. Performed w/ Michael Barenboim & Kian Soltani, who were shaped as concertmaster and principal cellist of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

On its face, this CD is a real curiosity because Daniel Barenboim offers his first-ever recordings of Franz Liszt's two piano concertos, and Pierre Boulez leads the Berlin Staatskapelle in performances that would have been unimaginable when these artists were younger. Barenboim, a subtle intellectual at the keyboard, is one of the last pianists one would envision playing the flashy, virtuosic parts of these works, while Boulez, once the supposed enemy of all things Romantic, seems to have yielded at last to the attractions of Liszt's vision and conceded that these grandiose warhorses contain music of considerable merit.

With tangos and Ellingtonia under his belt, this ever-curious occasional crossover classicist takes another break from the Berlin Staatsoper, the Chicago Symphony, and Bayreuth to dabble in an unfamiliar (to him) idiom. Though the results are about as spontaneous as a sunrise, this collection does cover a wide range of brief bits of Braziliana from inevitable tunes by Ary Barroso, Luiz Bonfá, and Antonio Carlos Jobim to songs by Milton Nascimento and Caetano Veloso and classical selections by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Darius Milhaud.