Narrow my search:
From
HI-RES$30.69
CD$26.59
Illuminate
Schiller
Electronic - Released March 10, 2023 | NITRON concepts
Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$21.09
CD$18.09
Bruckner: Symphony in D Minor "No. 0, Die Nullte" – Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer Overture; Rienzi Overture
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Classical - Released October 26, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$15.56
CD$12.45
Telemann: A Christmas Oratorio
Kleine Konzert, Das
Classical - Released November 11, 2023 | CPO
Hi-Res
Booklet
Georg Philipp Telemann never wrote a Christmas oratorio, but that hasn't stopped performers from assembling them out of holiday-season cantatas. The one here by veteran choral conductor Hermann Max and his instrumental group Das Kleine Konzert isn't the first one. It is not even the first one on the CPO label. There is no basis for objecting to this kind of creative repertory expansion, for Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, was put together in basically the same way. Telemann isn't Bach, though most listeners will find satisfying listening here for the holiday season or any other time, and this album, in fact, made classical best-seller lists in early 2024. Max and company program five Telemann cantatas, unfailingly tuneful and well-made in the composer's characteristic way. One striking thing is that there are two quite late works from the 1750s and 1760s; the others are from earlier in Telemann's career, yet the style remains consistent. In some genres, Telemann caught on to the emerging light styles coming from Italy, but in church cantatas, he seems to have played it straighter. Max is not known as an adherent of the one-voice-per-part philosophy, yet here, his choruses are taken by the four soloists from his fine Rheinische Kantorei choir; there is no chorus. This is less than ideal. From what we know of Telemann's late occasional works, they were big, festive affairs. However, the decision was likely the result of COVID-era restrictions (the album was recorded in December of 2020), and in the airy acoustic of Cologne's Trinitatiskirche, one doesn't miss the choir much. Moreover, the choruses are mostly not simply chorales but are more complex polyphonic pieces; one quotes the old In dulci jubilo hymn, a pure Telemann move. The interpretations generally have Max's characteristic warmth, and the soloists (in the solos) are idiomatic and direct. Telemann lovers will enjoy this release.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$14.39
CD$10.79
Thomanerchor Leipzig: Weihnachtsliederabend
Thomanerchor Leipzig
Classical - Released November 17, 2023 | Rondeau Production
Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$17.49
CD$13.99
Transfigured
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
Chamber Music - Released September 15, 2023 | Chandos
Hi-Res
Booklet
It is becoming increasingly clear that great benefits accrue when works of the Second Viennese School milieu are performed along with those of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. The music of these composers did not represent stepping-stones on the road to atonality but rather responded to a rich constellation of cultural forces. Consider this release by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, with rising soprano Francesca Chiejina (whose voice may be sufficient reason to seek out the album all by itself, and excitement over it likely put the album on classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023). Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, in its original string sextet version, concludes the program, and leading up to it are entirely relevant works. Consider the little-known Maiblumen blühten überall ("May Flowers Bloomed Everywhere") by Alexander Zemlinsky, which was not only written for the same sextet medium as Schoenberg's work, plus a soprano but also features a text by Richard Dehmel, another of whose poems furnished the program for Schoenberg's work. The latter all of a sudden seems more enthusiastic, less murky. In between are a piano quintet movement by Webern and four songs by Alma Mahler, here arranged for the sextet medium by Tom Poster. One can question this; the recital-like program would not have been disturbed by playing these songs in their original form, but as with everything else by Alma Mahler that has been turning up lately, they are wonderful, with much of the same way of treating vernacular material that would be heard in the music of her husband. Chandos' sound is generally good, even if it puts Chiejina a bit too far back in the mix. A fine recording of music from Vienna that dispenses with the myth-making and offers a better-rounded examination of the tradition.
© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99
Vienna : Fin de Siècle (Webern, Berg, Schönberg, Mahler...)
Barbara Hannigan
Lieder (German) - Released August 24, 2018 | Alpha Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
Soprano Barbara Hannigan has become something of a cult favorite with her deep dives into specific and unusual repertories. Her self-presentation in concert is unorthodox and marked by full-scale efforts to communicate the essence of the music at hand, in works ranging from Berio to Gershwin. So it is with this set of songs from the decade and a half on either side of 1900 in Vienna. The enjoyment begins with the physically passionate cover, an example of her way of personifying the music's spirit. Hannigan's is an utterly distinctive voice, edgy and coruscating, and she knows how to tone down her considerable virtuosic powers to the dimensions of the music, such as that here, intended for small rooms. She explores the early, tonal (although sometimes barely so) songs of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, delivering insight into the controversial Richard Dehmel (attacked by the proto-fascist, German right wing) and other poets, with expertly sensitive accompaniment from her collaborator Reinbert de Leeuw. The program concludes with some familiar songs by Hugo Wolf, which in this context take on a somewhat mysterious cast. The greatest interest resides in the lesser-known material by Zemlinsky and especially by Alma Mahler, whose music is rarely recorded even in an age of rediscovery of female composers. She lost prime years to discouragement of her creativity by Gustav Mahler (who later changed his mind), and her output amounts to 14 songs from her lifetime plus two posthumously published. Nevertheless, the songs here are clearly cut from the same cloth as the others on the album, and they have a dramatic quality that seems to be characteristic to Mahler herself. Maybe they're more in line harmonically with the more conservative Zemlinsky (whom Mahler also dated), but sample Mahler's positively spooky setting of Dehmel's Die stille Stadt, which may be worth the price of admission by itself. Alpha's Netherlands Radio Muziekcentrum sound is nonpareil, and the whole project is deeply committed and highly recommended.© TiVo
From
HI-RES$17.99
CD$13.49
Still! Still! Still!
Jazzrausch Bigband
Jazz - Released October 25, 2019 | ACT Music
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$10.49
CD$7.49
Christmas ! Noël ! Weinachten !
Hans-Christoph Rademann
Classical - Released October 21, 2013 | harmonia mundi
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$21.09
CD$18.09
Schubert: Die Nacht
Anja Lechner
Classical - Released November 2, 2018 | ECM New Series
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
From
HI-RES$15.09
CD$13.09
Santtu Conducts Strauss
Philharmonia Orchestra
Classical - Released March 24, 2023 | Signum Records
Hi-Res
This hefty 2023 release on Signum Classics -- a double album of Strauss tone poems -- marks several new developments. At its core are two Strauss works performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2021 on its first concert with its new conductor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Moreover, this was the first concert by the orchestra since reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic. With Rouvali, the news is all good, and one might argue that the live setting added a special intensity. Eine Alpensinfonie, Op. 64, and Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, were recorded live, and these are impressive performances that have a bit more of an edge that the studio recordings of Don Juan, Op. 20, and Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28, that frame them. The pictorial vividness of the Alpensinfonie makes the mountain scenes almost palpable, and the Philharmonia's long history with Strauss really shows in the instrumental work in exposed sections like the "Stille vor dem Strum" ("The Calm Before the Storm"). With the sound recording on the Philharmonia's in-house label (distributed here by Signum Classics) the situation is less happy; the sound is a bit muddy in thick passages like the big fugue toward the end of Also sprach Zarathustra. It improves noticeably in the two outer tone poems, which receive beautifully characterized performances. Nothing impeded audience from putting this excellent Strauss reading on classical sales charts in the spring of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$10.49
CD$7.49
Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony)
Bernard Haitink
Classical - Released February 9, 2010 | LSO Live
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99
Licht in der Nacht
Coline Dutilleul
Classical - Released October 21, 2022 | Fuga Libera
Hi-Res
Booklet
"What could be more fascinating than the play of light and shadow? To descend into sensual melancholy, to dare to be fragile and to reveal oneself in its depths and inner nuances. I find that one way of illustrating this complexity of the senses is to compare two musical and pictorial schools: French Impressionism and German Expressionism. The colours and timbres employed by these two schools have long fascinated me just as much as the extreme refinement and detail of the paintings and compositions themselves. Each painter and composer explored the depths of the human soul in his or her own manner. This programme of works composed between 1899-1914 that laid the foundations for modern music is intended as a bridge between Expressionism and Impressionism. This parallel does not claim to illustrate their differences but rather to highlight their common points, to reveal the voluptuous and almost decadent sensuality of these two currents as well as their geographical and stylistic contrasts" (Coline Dutilleul) © Fuga Libera
From
CD$10.79
Die 30 besten Schlaflieder für Kinder
Simone Sommerland
Pop/Rock - Released November 2, 2012 | Lamp und Leute
From
HI-RES$15.56
CD$12.45
Le dolce sirene
Bach Aria Soloists
Chamber Music - Released February 10, 2023 | Reference Recordings
Hi-Res
Booklet
The "dolce sirene" of the title of this album are not figures in the compositions presented but rather the four performers of the Bach Aria Soloists. The group unites diverse talents from the Kansas City, Missouri, area and gives them a program that focuses on Baroque music but does not exclude music of other periods. Keyboardist Elisa Williams Bickers is showcased on harpsichord, piano, and organ in one of Mendelssohn's organ sonatas, and soprano Sarah Tannehill Anderson has a delicate, agile voice that she adapts to the various kinds of repertory here. Sample the last of the Four Shakespeare Songs of Cecilia McDowall, a work arranged for the Baroque configuration of voice, violin, and continuo (or piano), to hear her talents. Nothing here is exactly objectionable, but the program lacks cohesion. It features artistic director Elizabeth Suh Lane in an entire Bach sonata, and the keyboard parts in McDowall's Shakespeare Songs are given two to the harpsichord and two to the piano for no easily audible reason, although it is true that the composer approved these arrangements. Lane has intonation problems in the Bach sonata, and in general, the album has little sense of moving through any kind of narrative. The sound engineering doesn't help. The location is not specified, but it is perhaps a church or museum space with an organ that is shown in the graphics. Whatever the space is, it makes the music remote and disturbs its connection with the listener, which is tenuous, to begin with.
© James Manheim /TiVo
From
CD$15.49
Telemann: Brockes-Passion
René Jacobs
Sacred Oratorios - Released March 24, 2009 | harmonia mundi
From
HI-RES$17.99
CD$13.49
Insomnia
Katharina Konradi
Classical - Released April 28, 2023 | Berlin Classics
Hi-Res
From
CD$18.09
Bryn Terfel: The Verbier Recital
Bryn Terfel
Classical - Released May 27, 2022 | Verbier Festival Gold
Over the years, the Verbier Festival has earned a global reputation for bringin together the world’s biggest stars and promising young artists. Recently, the Swiss festival joined forces with Deutsche Grammophon and announced the launch of the Verbier Festival Gold label, which intends to publish the festivals vast archives at a rate of one publication per month. After Verdi’s Requiem conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and an album dedicated to pianist Yuja Wang, here we have Bryn Terfel’s recital which he performed in the Alps with pianist Llyr in 2011.In the nineteenth century, the beautiful Swiss mountains inspired the imaginations of numerous writers, painters and musicians. A regular at this festival, Bryn Terfel focused his recital programme on a small number of Schubert Lieder, including the sumptuous Liebesbotschaft (“Love message”), as well as Schumann’s great Liederkreis, Op. 39. It was fitting that he performed this with the Swiss Alps as a backdrop.The Welsh baritone had already recorded the vast Schumann cycle for DG with Malcom Martineau in 1999, and his vocals are equally breath-taking in this Verbier recording. His sensational diction and phrasing are coupled with beautiful expression. Something that really stands out on this recording is the increased power in his vocals, likely a result of the audience’s support and his recent involvement with Wagnerian operas that no doubt helped expand and strengthen his bass tone. Somewhat curiously, this high-level recital continued with Jacques Ibert’s Chansons de Don Quichotte and the Five Shakespeare Songs by British composer Roger Quilter. Bryn Terfel and his pianist generously provided numerous encore performances, appeasing the insatiable audience that kept asking for more. © François Hudry/Qobuz
Suppose you have a more precise idea of what you want. If you are searching for the album "Bad" by Michael Jackson, type michael jackson bad. The album in question will be displayed at the top, as it is the most relevant.
By default, search results are sorted in order of relevance. The drop-down menu to the right of "Sort by" allows you to display the results in the desired order.