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Samuel BARBER: Organ Works – Rudolf Innig – MDG Classics

Samuel BARBER: Organ Works – Rudolf Innig – MDG Classics

by | Aug 17, 2017 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

Samuel BARBER: Organ Works- Rudolf Innig – MDG Classics MDG 917-2010-6 -5.1 channel SACD TT: 65:04 (8/18/17) [dist. by Naxos] ****: Barber’s Organ music well played and nicely recorded When Samuel Barber was young, he told his mother he intended to be a musician, and not to try and dissuade him. Luckily, his mother complied, and Barber became one of the great musical voices of the 20th century. What many do not know, is that Barber was a fine organist and composer for organ. The CD under examination today is a fine collection of Barber’s organ works, ably performed by Rudolph Innig. The disc starts with Barber’s first organ composition, To Longwood Gardens, and ends with his Chorale Prelude based on Silent Night. Along the way we get a lovely transcription of Barber’s most well known work, the Adagio for Strings, opus11. Barber himself did the arrangement for organ, and the piece has been performed at the state funerals of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy and at the memorial services for Grace Kelly and Albert Einstein. This familiar piece works well transcribed, and is one of the many highlights on this disc. Organist Rudolf Innig does a fine job with each […]

VASKS: Presence – Sol Gabetta, cello – Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Sony Classical

VASKS: Presence – Sol Gabetta, cello – Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Sony Classical

by | May 3, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

VASKS: Presence – Sol Gabetta, cello – Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Sony Classical 88725423122, 61:00 ***: Vasks divides the difference between risk and reward and comes out ahead. The Latvian composer Peteris Vasks likes to take risks. His symphonies are wide sprawling affairs, romantic at core with long reflective passages that can suddenly erupt into frantic desperation. These outbursts often occur with little warning. His Concerto No. 2 for Cello and String Orchestra works like this. It begins as an extended cadenza, reflective, with Samuel Barber-ish sentimentality. The statuesque Sol Gabetta plays it with some mastery. (Also for Sony, she performed a competent − but not extraordinary − rendition of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2.) You will probably enjoy the lively Allegro. It has dramatic sforzandos and steep scalar ascents, along with subtle tempo shifts. The final movement is sedate, but with strange effects like a full-scale descending glissando, as if the air has been let out of the piece. Suddenly, ninety seconds from the finale, a keening soprano voice sings out a sweet one-minute vocalese. It’s Gabetta! Her pipes aren’t bad: Vasks’ writing for her is both ethereal and unadventurous. And we hear almost the same sequence again in the […]

Samuel Barber, an American Romantic – Twelfth Night; To be sung on the water; The virgin martyrs; Let down the bars, O death; Reincarnations; A stopwatch and an ordinance map; Sure on this shining night; Agnus Dei; The Lovers; Easter Chorale – Matt Tresler, tenor/ Thomas Burritt, timpani/ Faith DeBow, p./ David Farwig, bar./ Ch. Orch./ Conspirare/ Craig Hella Johnson – Harmonia mundi

Samuel Barber, an American Romantic – Twelfth Night; To be sung on the water; The virgin martyrs; Let down the bars, O death; Reincarnations; A stopwatch and an ordinance map; Sure on this shining night; Agnus Dei; The Lovers; Easter Chorale – Matt Tresler, tenor/ Thomas Burritt, timpani/ Faith DeBow, p./ David Farwig, bar./ Ch. Orch./ Conspirare/ Craig Hella Johnson – Harmonia mundi

by | Sep 28, 2012 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

What a welcome release to have The Lovers among us again—and the rest is just very tasty gravy.