Harmonia Mundi
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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Conductor René Jacobs restores missing bits of this beloved opera’s story, and Ukrainian soprano Kateryna Kasper glows as Ännchen.
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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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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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Texturally, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles’ serve up diaphanous performances.
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Americans is a winningly-programmed, strongly-realized effort.
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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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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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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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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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