Monthly Archive: September 2008
Mosaic – Unsaid, Undone – Snack Records
Entirely creditable East Coast indie jazz session sometimes approaching brilliance.
John Stein – Encounterpoint – Whaling City Sound
With this his seventh disc as leader John Stein lands on the ideal setting to fully give voice to his uncommon musical talents.
BUSONI: Fantasia contrappuntistica; LISZT/BUSONI: Fantasy and Fugue on the Chorale ‘Ad no, ad salutarem undam’; MOZART/BUSONI: Andantino – Hamish Milne, piano – Hyperion
Monster music played with magisterial authority for the brave and unfulfilled.
Vassilis Tsabropoulos/Anya Lechner/U. T. Gandhi – Melos – ECM
More ravishingly beautiful music from Tsabropoulos and Lechner, this time augmented by percussion.
Bob Mover – It Amazes Me . . . – Zoho
It amazes me that such a fine player as Bob Mover would even try something like this.
Elio Villafranca – The Source in Between – C.T.M.
The latest—and certainly one of the very best—Cuban pianists to burst onto the jazz scene.
Erich Kleiber Conducts = BEETHOVEN: Fidelio Overture, Op. 72b; SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944 “Great”; BERG: Three Scenes from Wozzeck – Annelies Kupper, soprano/Cologne Radio-Symphony Orchestra /Knabenchor/Erich Kleiber – MediciArts
An impeccable conductor whose musicianship found equal dignity in his moral character, Kleiber came to repute in 1923 in a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
The James Moody and Hank Jones Quartet – Our Delight – IPO
Two of the top names in jazz today, with a combined experience of around 140 years!
Sir James Galway, flute & Tiempo Libre – O’Reilly Street – RCA Red Seal
Comparison with the Rampal/Bolling originals show the older versions to sound a bit staid.
Audio News for September 19, 2008
New Digital Content Standard; Runco Introduces Hi-End In-Wall Displays; Canadian Record Industry Lawsuit; Remastering Engineer Mark Obert-Thorn Joins Pristine Audio
HANDEL: Parnasso in Festa – Diana Moore (Apollo, Euterpe)/ Carolyn Sampson (Clio). Lucy Crowe (Orfeo)/ Rebecca Outram (Calliope)/ Ruth Clegg (Clori)/ Peter Harvey (Marte)/ Choir of the King’s Consort/ King’s Consort/ Matthew Halls, conductor – Hyperion
The piece is easily deserving of at least oratorio-style concert presentations, the music not losing one ounce of freshness and attractiveness.
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 12, “The Year 1917”; Symphony No. 6 in B Minor; J. STRAUSS: Nichevo Polka; Excursion Train Polka; YOUMANS (arr. Shostakovich): Tea for Two – Philharmonia Orchestra of London/ BBC Sym./Gennady Rozhdestvensky – BBC Legends
Many of the musical figures in this rather gloomy, despair-driven piece resound with sardonic, gallows humor.
Invocation a la Nuit: Musica Notturna – Montserrat Figueras, soprano/ Hesperion XXI/ La Capella Reial de Catalunya/ Le Concert des Nations/ Jordi Savall – Alia Vox
Another wonderfully produced disc from Savall and company.
Sharel Cassity – Just for You – DW
A solid debut from a young reed player and bandleader just finding her feet in the ultra-competitive New York scene.
Bobo Stenson Trio – Cantando – ECM
This stunning trio recording fully displays and sums up ECM’s original vision of what jazz should be.
Carlos Santana – Multi-Dimensional Warrior – Compendium of nearly 40 years of recording – 2 CDs (one vocals, one instrumentals) – Columbia/Arista/Legacy
The remastering is an improvement on some of the earlier tracks, and Legacy has kindly furnished very readable lyrics for all of the vocals in the 28-track set.
ALKAN: Sonate de Concert, Op. 47; LISZT: Premier Elegie; Deuxieme Elegie; Romance oubliee for Cello and Piano; La lugubre gondole; Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth – Emmanuelle Bertrand, cello/Pascal Amoyal, piano – Harmonia mundi
ALKAN: Sonate de Concert, Op. 47; LISZT: Premier Elegie; Deuxieme Elegie; Romance oubliee for Cello and Piano; La lugubre gondole; Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth – Emmanuelle Bertrand, cello/Pascal Amoyal, piano Harmonia mundi Gold HMG 501758, 65:59 ****: Recorded 11-14 March 2001, this darkly compelling cello album features, along with the major piece by Alkan, very late works of Franz Liszt, which the composer himself arranged for cello and piano, this contributing in some small way to his modest chamber music output. The First Elegy, with its brief but supple burst in melody, was composed in 1874 as a “lullaby in the grave” for Countess Nesselrode. The Second Elegy (1877) bears a dedication to Lina Ramann, a music journalist. The “forgotten romance” resets a lyric piece from 1843. So, too, Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth finds its basis in a chivalric Rhineland legend that Liszt had set as a song in the mid 1840’s. The Sad Gondola (Troisieme Elegie), perhaps among Liszt’s most starkly modernist pieces, anticipates the death of Richard Wagner in Venice in 1883. The music conveys a melancholy, harmonically ambiguous universe, an anticipation of the lachymose poetry of Yeats and Eliot. Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) most commonly raises associations of […]
Audio News for September 16, 2008
Next-Generation HDTV by 2020; Blu-ray Sales are Transformed; Dell DVD Allows Download-and-Burn of Movies; JVC Offers Wireless Blu-ray; Random Forum Exchanges on Download Sample Rates
The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)
It brings together three superb actors at the height of their careers, glorious sets and costumes, a very clever plot, and Ophuls’ advanced moving camerawork
RICHARD STRAUSS Tone Poems: Don Juan; Death and Transfiguration; Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks; Dreaming by the Fireside (Interlude from opera “Intermezzo” – Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra/ Marc Albrecht – PentaTone
The excellent surround sonics drew me into the major work here – Death and Transfiguration.
UMO Jazz Orchestra with Kenny Wheeler & Norma Winstone – One More Time – Challenge
In the not-quite-atonal-but-not-strong-on-melody bag, though the superb playing by all concerned and the intriguing blends of instrumental sections, solos and vocals almost made me forget that.
GEORGE MUFFAT: Seven Concertos from “Selected Instrumental Music” – Holland Baroque Society/ Matthew Halls, harpsichord, leader – Channel Classics
The underrated Muffat displays great originality and cross-current styles in this much-needed SACD issue.
Stereotypes Audio
Cembal d’amour
Pure Pleasure / Speakers Corner
Cedille
