Ralph P. Locke
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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreA varied buffet of fresh musical experiences from recent decades and from the mid-1700s.
Read MoreBoston’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.
Read MoreThe composer of Cavalleria rusticana brought his sense for characterization and drama to the all-too-plausible tale of a woman victimized by a cad.
Read MoreTenor 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.
Read MoreEdward 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.
Read MoreCD 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.
Read MoreEach month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Read MoreNewly recorded in the original German, Anton Reicha’s Lenore offers a vivid response to Bürger’s famous “Gothic” ballad from 1774.
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