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Dead Symphony No. 6
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Divenire
from: Ponderosa Italy
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Liszt: The Two Piano Concertos; The Piano Sonata
: :Since they were first issued, Sviatoslov Richter's Liszt Piano Concertos have been widely admired as the finest performances available, and for most listeners they still are. Now they have been remastered by none other than Wilma Cozart Fine, Mercury Living Presence's goddess of the sound console, and they have come up sounding better than ever. To make matters even more exciting, you also get Richter's well-nigh definitive performance of the massive Sonata in B Minor--and all for only mid-price! Even if ...
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Sergei Rachmaninoff: Vespers (Mass for Unaccompanied Chorus)
from: Telarc
: :If those Gregorian chant discs seem a little, well, limited lately, perhaps it's time to move on to something equally spiritual but a bit more harmonically interesting. This disc, well-performed by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, and conducted by the legendary choral leader, features a ravishing score by Rachmaninoff and is sung a capella, as is all Orthodox church music. (For a heartrendingly beautiful number, listen to the second cut, 'Blagoslovi, Dushe Moya,' or 'Bless the Lord, O My Soul.') Along ...
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Russian Violin Concertos [Hybrid SACD]
from: Pentatone
: :If those Gregorian chant discs seem a little, well, limited lately, perhaps it's time to move on to something equally spiritual but a bit more harmonically interesting. This disc, well-performed by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, and conducted by the legendary choral leader, features a ravishing score by Rachmaninoff and is sung a capella, as is all Orthodox church music. (For a heartrendingly beautiful number, listen to the second cut, 'Blagoslovi, Dushe Moya,' or 'Bless the Lord, O My Soul.') Along ...
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Bach: Cello Suites Nos. 1-6
from: EMI Classics
: :Mstislav Rostropovich is one of the few musicians who can create a larger-than-life experience through the combined forces of exceptional music, a beautiful instrument, and uncommonly facile communicative skills. In his performances of Bach's transcendent masterpieces for solo cello, Rostropovich finds a perfect balance between a romantic, rhapsodic interpretation and one that emphasizes the purely formal 'aridity' of Bach's structures. Although it's nearly impossible to isolate one or two highlights, the Sarabande and Prelude from Suite No. 5 are among the ...
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Schubert: String Quintet in C, D. 956
: essential recording:When not composing songs, Franz Schubert was most at home with chamber music, not because he was a miniaturist, but because his most profound thoughts were most readily contained by smaller, more concentrated ensembles. His Quintet in C--by far the great work ever written for a string quartet with an extra cello--shows him at his summit with an ethereal second movement that often communicates the sense of spiritual suspended animation that the minimalists strive for but don't often achieve. ...
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Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals
from: Decca
: essential recording:When not composing songs, Franz Schubert was most at home with chamber music, not because he was a miniaturist, but because his most profound thoughts were most readily contained by smaller, more concentrated ensembles. His Quintet in C--by far the great work ever written for a string quartet with an extra cello--shows him at his summit with an ethereal second movement that often communicates the sense of spiritual suspended animation that the minimalists strive for but don't often achieve. ...
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At The Movies
from: Denon Records
: essential recording:When not composing songs, Franz Schubert was most at home with chamber music, not because he was a miniaturist, but because his most profound thoughts were most readily contained by smaller, more concentrated ensembles. His Quintet in C--by far the great work ever written for a string quartet with an extra cello--shows him at his summit with an ethereal second movement that often communicates the sense of spiritual suspended animation that the minimalists strive for but don't often achieve. ...
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Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff
from: RCA
: :Unlike most composer/pianists, Rachmaninoff's instrumental prowess was fully commensurate with his creative gifts. He embraces his youthful First Concertos as if he had encountered an old lover, consumating his passion with stupefying fingerwork in the first movement cadenza. Conversely, the composer seems bored in the Third. He laconically dispatches its torrents of notes, opts for the easier ossias in difficult passages, and makes cuts in the first and third movements. And pianists like Arturo Michelangeli and Earl Wild have recorded more ...
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