Harmonia Mundi

Opera Album Review: A Major Baroque Opera in English Receives a Stylish Recording

March 15, 2023
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Aside from English pronunciation issues, the singers put over this remarkably polished and attractive opera by one of England’s great seventeenth-century composers with great panache, matching the superb instrumentalists.

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Opera Album Review: Carl Maria von Weber’s “Der Freischütz” Finally Makes Sense

November 25, 2022
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Conductor René Jacobs restores missing bits of this beloved opera’s story, and Ukrainian soprano Kateryna Kasper glows as Ännchen.

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August Short Fuses – Materia Critica

August 5, 2022
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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Listening During Covid, Part 12: Adventures in Ethnic and National Diversity

June 5, 2022
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I am honestly puzzled by the casualness or, at times, ferocity with which some people nowadays reject classical music as inherently narrow or elitist.

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Classical Album Review: François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles — “Stravinsky: Ballets Russes”

August 24, 2021
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Texturally, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles’ serve up diaphanous performances.

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Classical Album Review: “Americans” — Bernstein, Ives, Barber, and Crawford

July 6, 2021
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Americans is a winningly-programmed, strongly-realized effort.

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Classical Album Review: Quatour Modigliani plays Haydn, Bartók, and Mozart

May 24, 2021
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Any number of threads that tie these three pieces (and composers) together. But in this instance, such busywork is superfluous: the musical results – blazingly played and flawlessly recorded – speak for themselves.

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Classical CD Review: Antoine Tamestit, Cédric Tiberghien, and Matthias Goerne play/sing Brahms

April 3, 2021
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One might risk hyperbole by saying so, but in this instance such recklessness is worth it: this album sounds like Brahms as he ought to be played and sung.

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Classical CD Reviews: More Beethoven — Michael Gielen Edition, vol. 9 and René Jacobs conducts the “Missa solemnis”

December 18, 2020
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A captivating and thought-provoking version of Missa solemnis from René Jacobs and his forces; the Michael Gielen Edition is one of this Beethoven anniversary-year’s highlights.

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Classical CD Reviews: Beethoven Chamber Music, Part 2 – James Ehnes plays Violin Sonatas, Quatuor Ébene’s “Beethoven Around the World,” Lugansky Performs the Late Piano Sonatas

December 12, 2020
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Violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong’s Beethoven violin sonatas feel and sound absolutely right; Quatuor Ébène’s comes up with one of this anniversary year’s few, true benchmark releases; Nikolai Lugansky’s traversal of three of Beethoven’s late piano sonatas is often admirable.

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