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BIZET: Carmen Suites 1 & 2; L’Arlesienne Suites 1 & 2 – London Sym. Orch./ Neville Marriner – Pentatone

BIZET: Carmen Suites 1 & 2; L’Arlesienne Suites 1 & 2 – London Sym. Orch./ Neville Marriner – Pentatone

by | Oct 5, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

Pentatone restores Sir Neville Marriner’s intensely effective 1978 Bizet suites.  BIZET: Carmen Suites 1 & 2; L’Arlesienne Suites 1 & 2 – London Sym. Orch./ Neville Marriner – Pentatone multichannel SACD PTC 5186 234, 65:10 (4.0 channels) [Distr. by Naxos] (7/8/16) ****: Composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875), tragically and ironically, died suddenly in June 1875, only three months after the unsuccessful première of his opera Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, 3 March 1875. The opera’s première in Vienna in October that same year scored a global triumph, a Pyrrhic victory for a composer who thought this most revered opera a dismal failure. A fellow student of Bizet, Ernest Guirand, collated the suites from selected arias and scenes he had arranged for a version of the opera in Vienna. Neville Marriner, for this 1978 recording, includes the Seguidilla, which would otherwise consist of originally instrumental pieces. On this album they are combined with the Arlésienne suites No. 1 and 2, Bizet’s other hugely popular set of orchestral suites, which are taken (1879) from the incidental music he had composed for L’Arlésienne, a tragedy by French novelist Alphonse Daudet. The suites from both scores, having become thoroughly familiar, it suffices to applaud […]

MOZART: Piano Concertos No. 12 & No. 17 – Alfred Brendel, p./ Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/ Neville Marriner – Pentatone RQR

MOZART: Piano Concertos No. 12 & No. 17 – Alfred Brendel, p./ Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/ Neville Marriner – Pentatone RQR

by | Aug 29, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

If there is any justice in the world, this will continue through the whole series. MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K. 414; No. 17 in G, K. 453 – Alfred Brendel, p./ Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/ Neville Marriner – Pentatone multichannel (4.0) SACD PTC 5816 236, 55:47 [Distr. by Naxos] *****: Anyone who knows the series of piano concertos of Mozart with Brendel and Marriner knows of its importance and significance. Few pairings of conductor and pianist have so successfully navigated Mozart’s supreme masterpieces with such panache and style, and when these were released both critical opinion and public acclaim merged as if one voice to proclaim them the most sensational recorded issuances of these works ever accomplished. They were not entirely complete—and this is a shame. But the greats and almost-greats were, making them mandatory acquisitions. This release, one in Pentatone’s series dedicated to reissues of recordings originally made in four-channel surround sound for quadraphonics, is a real beauty, and self-recommending, one of two the company has released so far. One hopes for a complete traversal of all the Phillips Brendel Mozart concertos, but I have no idea if this is in the offing […]