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Ralph P. Locke

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

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

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Review Tagged: Bridge Records, First Hand Records, Harmonia Mundi, Ieva Jokubaviciute, Itamar Zorman, order Crossing Choir and Instrumental Ensembles, Ralph P. Locke, Stella: Renaissance Gems and Their Reflections, Un Milagro de fe (A Miracle of Faith), Violin Odyssey, vol. 3

Listening During Covid, Part 11: Making Classical Music New in All Kinds of Ways

Two exquisite sopranos bring us refreshing songs, arias, and cantatas; and a noted Broadway composer and a remarkable Black librettist offer a searing opera about police brutality.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Carolyn Sampson, Chen Reiss, Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn: Arias, Gordon Hawkins, Jeanine Tesori, Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Lieder, Onyx, Overtures, Pentatone, Ralph P. Locke, Tazewell Thompson, Trennung: Songs of Separation

“Listening During Covid, Part 10”: So Much Amazing Music to Discover!

The record companies are bringing us unsuspected marvels from past and present that we might otherwise never hear, from astonishing Handel-era works and brand-new American pieces to elegantly performed guitar sonatas from 19th Century Vienna.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Review Tagged: David Starobin, Matiegka, Ophélie Gaillard, Pulcinella, Ralph P. Locke, Samuel Adler, Toccata Classics

Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Delightful Skewering of the West’s Fantasies of Japan

A major contribution to the recorded repertory, making clear just how effective Saint-Saëns’s The Yellow Princess could be on stage, its nowadays objectionable title repudiated by its varied and nuanced approach to the evocation of the exotic.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Bru Zane, La Princesse jaune, Mélodies persanes, Ralph P. Locke, Saint-Saëns, Yellow Princess

Listening During Covid, Part 9: Intriguing New Works and New-Sounding C. P. E. Bach

A varied buffet of fresh musical experiences from recent decades and from the mid-1700s.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Review Tagged: Amanda Harberg, Gilbert Kalish, Gunther Schuller, Hyperion, Innova, James Freeman, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Paul Cohen, Ralph P. Locke, Ravello, Robert Freeman, Robert Sibbing, Soprano Summit

Opera Album Review: Marti Epstein’s Resonant, Disturbing “Rumpelstiltskin”

Boston’s 15-year-old Guerilla Opera releases a recording of a fresh take on the old Grimm Brothers tale, to haunting, ritualistic music for four singers and four players.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Alina de la Guardia, Guerilla Opera, Marti Epstein, Navona Records, Ralph P. Locke, Rumpelstiltskin

Opera Review: “Iris,” A Powerful Vision of an Imaginary Japan — Six Years Before “Madama Butterfly”

The composer of Cavalleria rusticana brought his sense for characterization and drama to the all-too-plausible tale of a woman victimized by a cad.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Berlin Opera Group Chorus and Orchestra, Felix Krieger, Iris, japanese, Japanese dance, Oehms, Pietro Mascagni, Ralph P. Locke

Opera Album Review: The Most Famous French Baroque Opera, Recorded at the Palace of Versailles

Tenor Mathias Vidal shines, as does the period-instrument orchestra, in the rarely heard, trimmer version of 1761, on the Chateau’s own new award-winning label.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Ana Quintans, Chateau de Versailles Spectacles, Jean-Philippe Rameau, La Chapelle Harmonique Orchestra, Les Indes galantes, Mathias Vidal, Ralph P. Locke

Opera Album Review: World Premiere Recording of a High-Victorian “Gothic” Opera in English

Edward Loder’s well-crafted Raymond and Agnes (1855) captures much of the eerie glow of its Gothic model, Matthew Lewis’s once scandalous novel, The Monk.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Edward Loder, Ralph P. Locke, Raymond & Agnes, Retrospect Opera, Retrospect Opera Chorus, Richard Bonynge, Royal Ballet Sinfonia

Listening During Covid, Part 8: A Remarkable Black British Composer, an American Master, and an Award-Winning Salieri Premiere

CD recordings keep bringing us unexpected treasures, including chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Samuel Adler, and the (by turns) exquisite and powerful opera Armida by Mozart’s contemporary — who was not his murderer — Antonio Salieri.

By: Ralph P. Locke Filed Under: Classical Music, Featured, Music, Opera, Review Tagged: Antonio Salieri, Aparte, Armida, Azica Records, Fire Locked Up in My Bones, Ralph P. Locke, Samuel Adler, Samuel-Coleridge-Taylor, Toccata Classics

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