Julius Springer Eine Lebensskizze

Anna Bolena premiered in 1830 and was Donizetti’s first great success–and it remains one of his finest works. Aside from his usual endless fount of melodies, we find through-composed scenes wherein recitative seamlessly melds into arioso and into aria or ensemble. Anna manages to come across as a real character, as does the unfortunate Jane Seymour, who has the (bad) luck to be Henry VIII’s new love; and Henry’s music, too, is composed effectively for this royal villain. Less successfully portrayed but still with a couple of fine arias and some stunning ensemble music is Anna’s brother Percy. He’s an earthbound character but his music is wonderful and difficult (it was composed for the legendary Rubini).

The Juilliard-level pianist and genre-hopping sideman with A$AP Rocky, Meshell Ndegeocello, and more makes his imaginative debut at age 23 with Let Sound Tell All. Rodriguez’s acoustic-jazz chops are formidable from the start of the hard-swinging “Blues at the Barn.” But already on this opener, there’s an intriguing blend between gritty lo-fi sound and more polished studio production, even within the same track. Rodriguez and co-producer Drew Ofthe Drew set ambitious goals and conjure a sonic atmosphere that avoids the obvious.

The Julius Project is an Italian music collective led by Giuseppe "Julius" Chiriatti, who, according to sources, started work on this concept album as far back as 1978! This would certainly account for the retro Canterbury vibe of Cut The Tongue. It also features some guest vocals from Richard Sinclair of Caravan and Hatfield and the North.
However, another classic band Camel comes immediately to mind with the opener "The Fog", the combination of flute and mellotron harking right back to the 70s. That Camel sound continues throughout "In The Room" featuring vocals by Chiriatti's daughter Bianca Berry…

The start of another Hyperion Lieder series is always cause for celebration. In advance of his bicentenary in 2011, we turn to a composer whose songs, against the vast bulk of his compositions in larger genres, were considered insignificant for well over a century.

While not many listeners in the present day may remember the name Julius Klengel, his name was virtually synonymous with the cello less than 100 years ago. The majority of Klengel's career centered around either performing – as principal cellist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, as a chamber musician, or as a soloist – or pedagogy. In fact, he was one of the most sought-after teachers of his time, and his numerous students include the likes of Feuermann and Piatigorsky. Klengel also composed a great deal of music for the cello, especially pedagogical works. His performance works, including the three concertos heard on this disc, are infrequently played. Compositionally, they are generally enjoyable works but not terribly original or moving.

The musical world has not lacked for singers to interpret the songs of Edvard Grieg, starting with the composer's wife Nina and moving through the sublime Kirsten Flagstad to the sensual Anne Sofie von Otter. Grieg's songs have been well served by sopranos and mezzo-sopranos. In her second disc for Hyperion, Swedish mezzo Katarina Karnéus performs 25 of Grieg's 180 songs. Some are nearly folk songs sung in Norwegian; some are true art songs in German; but all are deeply expressive, highly emotional, and, in these performances, entirely successful.