Karl Off

This is a live performance from the Bavarian State Opera of Mozart's last great singspiel, DIE ZAUBERFLOTE (THE MAGIC FLUTE) conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. It is my first video of this opera, dating from 1990, and after 15 years of off/on viewing/listening, I am still most impressed with Sawallisch, the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra, singers Araiza, Popp, Brendel, Gruberova, Moll, etc. The sound, even for VHS, is very good, and I've had much pleasure from this video… By Alan Majeska

In terms of hit singles and precise musical vision, it would have been difficult for anyone to have to follow-up the brilliant Spirits Having Flown album, but these industry veterans created a real gem in Living Eyes which seems to have gotten lost in the maze that is their deep catalog. The title track is almost up there with "Spirits Having Flown," which is significant praise, and the song "Paradise" follows suit, pretty and passionate. "Don't Fall in Love With Me" has all three Bee Gees brothers contributing to this ballad with their trademark highly creative hooks.

This Pierian CD, advertised in the May 2012 Naxos catalog as an “also available” disc, is the label’s first issue from 2000 featuring the complete recordings of Debussy as pianist. All of his records were made in two sessions, a series of four short 78-rpm sides with soprano Mary Garden (his first Mélisande) at the Paris G&T studio in 1904 and 14 Welte-Mignon piano rolls recorded on November 11, 1913. Both are famous groups of recordings, restored and reissued over the decades, but this release is the best I’ve ever heard them.

Here's the kind of big-name, big-budget Mozart concerto recording that's not as common as it used to be. And lo, even one of the giants of contemporary pianism shows signs of having encountered the leaner approach of historical performances, and even of having absorbed them. Maurizio Pollini, best known for Chopin and the other lyric Romantics, conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra from the keyboard.

The fugue of the mature Baroque was the final flowering of Renaissance and Baroque polyphony. While most composers of Bach's generation had turned to other musical forms, Bach himself continued to write in "older" styles, and was to become the unchallenged master of the fugue. Die Kunst der Fuge was written during the last years of his life, and was being prepared for publication at the time of his death.