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Philip Langridge (Dorian Gray), Timothy Nolan (Lord Henry Wottan), Lieuwe Visser (Basil Hallward), Roberta Alexander (Sybil Vane), Jan Blinkof (James Vane), Joep Bröcheler (Sir Thomas), Djoke Winkler Prins (Lady Gladys), Christine Harvey (Lady Narborough), Joy Workum (Lady Agatha), Hélène Versloot (Lady Victoria/Henry ) Radio Kamerorkest, Hans Kox This is an opera in two acts, written in 1974 by Dutch composer, Hans Kox and is based on Oscar Wilde’s work, The Picture of Dorian Gray. For the composer, the choice of using arguably Wilde’s most famous work as the base of his first opera, was the result of an inner ‘urge’ - not just because the ‘murder, love, horror and degrading moral deterioration’ offer all the right ingredients for an opera, but especially because language and theme were close to his heart. The opera sets a scene from Dorian Gray as a ‘movement’ over this double disc, offering music performed by the Radio Kamerorkest and conducted by the composer himself. Sung in English by soloists Philip Langridge (as Dorian Gray), Timothy Nolen, Lieuwe Visser, Roberta Alexander, Djoke Winkler Prins and Christine Harvey, this is a fascinating insight for opera lovers into the music inspired by such an iconic literary work. “the singing itself is very good indeed. Philip Langridge manages to float some occasional quiet notes to good effect, and both Timothy Nolen and Lieuwe Visser sing with lyrical intensity when they are allowed to do so...the orchestra leaves quite a lot to be desired.” MusicWeb International, April 2013 | 
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“Britten's devastating master-opera is graced with a performance to match, with stellar playing and a mesmerising tour de force each from Robert Tear's Quint and Helen Donath's Governess.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2012 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Lambert: Piano Concerto & other works
A fascinating selection of pieces by one of the twentieth century’s most original and perplexing figures. Constant Lambert is perhaps better known today for his strident views on his contemporaries, but was also as a composer of delightful, anarchic music, influenced particularly by Stravinsky and Ravel. A distinguished line-up of performers presents these works in the clearest light. This recording is a must for anyone interested in twentieth-century music. Many of Lambert’s other works are also available on Hyperion. “Superlative” BBC Music Magazine “A fascinating and generous programme, superbly performed” Classic CD “A distinguished release on all counts … immaculate production values throughout… this wonderful anthology deserves the widest possible currency” Gramophone Magazine “This reissue of recordings from 1994 affords a convenient distillation of Lambert’s genius...The Sonata and Concerto are wonderfully invigorating, inventive essays, tinged with a melancholy Lambert nicely evoked as “that four-in-the-morning feeling”. The Concerto stands with Falla’s harpsichord work among the great keyboard chamber concertos.” Sunday Times, 26th August 2012 “Make haste to this collection. It’s a cracker” The Independent | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortileges
1CD+1CDR Recording Country: United Kingdom Recording Location: 7-8 July 1981, Abbey Road Studios Mix Date: 1 Jan 2000 Producer: Suvi Raj Grubb Balance Engineer: Christopher Parker Digitally remastered at Abbey Road by Allan Ramsay. Source: CDC 7471692 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Full track-list and synopsis in English, German and French “Chung's version of Shostakovich's sardonic tragedy still packs tremendous punch” BBC Music Magazine, December 2010 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Bonus Disc contains synopsis and libretto with translation. Three new releases in the new mid-price opera packaging. Verdi's Attila with Riccardo Muti and 2 Massenet operas, Werther and Don Quichotte with idiomatic cast and orchestras under the direction of Michel Plasson. Each opera appears in a multipack with separate booklet of 16 pages. New introduction in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Original booklet material with extensive notes and complete libretto with translations is on a separate bonus disc (CDROM). “[Kraus] enters into the soul of the character” BBC Music Magazine, April 2010 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on the 25th & 30th April and 3rd May 2008.
John Tomlinson (The Minotaur), Johan Reuter (Theseus), Christine Rice (Ariadne), Andrew Watts (Snake Priestess), Philip Langridge (Hiereus), Amanda Echalaz (Ker), Rebecca Bottone, Pumeza Matshikiza, Wendy Dawn Thompson, Christopher Ainslie, Tim Mead (Innocents) The Royal Opera Chorus & The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano (conductor) & Stephen Langridge (stage director) This world premiere of a gripping new work by composer Harrison Birtwistle and librettist David Harsent, commissioned by The Royal Opera, brings the monstrous, Greek mythological character to the stage. John Tomlinson stars as the Minotaur, part man, part beast, trapped in his labyrinth and constrained by his bloodthirsty role there, longs to discover his true identity and his own voice. Athens must pay a blood sacrifice to Crete and among the innocents is Theseus, who has come to challenge the violent Minotaur, but who also attracts the attention of Ariadne, half-sister and keeper of the monster; it is with her help he succeeds. Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House. ‘Thanks to a superb cast and impeccable playing under Antonio Pappano, the evening is a glittering success. …what Birtwistle has done is give us one opera inside another. The outer one is strident and earthbound; the inner one – ending with the Minotaur's Caliban-like dying aria – burns with visionary fire.’ The Independent Extra features: Documentary: ‘Myth is universal'. Illustrated synopsis & cast gallery. Running time 175 mins Region code All regions Video codec: AVC/MPEG-4 Disc size: BD50 Picture format 1080i High Definition / 16:9 Sound format 2.0 & 5.0 PCM (TBC) Menu language EN Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES/IT “This opera, premiered at the Royal Opera last April, seems to me to be a masterpiece, of the kind that one feels the greatness of before one has a complete understanding of it. …the Minotaur is a terrifying and pained figure. This performance is the climax of John Tomlinson's career, in a part written with his huge, gravelly voice in mind. The other compelling figure is Ariadne... Christine Rice, bearing the weight of exposition and of suffering, uses her wonderfully rich mezzo to stunning effect.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 ***** “The filming reinforces the strengths of Stephen Langridge's tightly controlled, potently expressive production in an economical yet atmospheric setting, with the whole ensemble totally engaged in the drama's dark enterprise. Repeated hearings underline that, in the end, this tragedy is the more convincing for the way its turn towards pathos does not involve any false consolation.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2009 “Birtwistle's latest large-scale music drama, written for Covent Garden, is a quite different experience on DVD: what might have been planned by composer and stage director to be witnessed from a distance is shown in unsparing close-up.
But this seething, monumental reinvention of one of the most disquieting Greek myths – with a pithy libretto by David Harsent – is neither betrayed nor diminished by this excellent film.
Only in its final stages does the opera's focus shift decisively to the doomed Minotaur from the scheming Ariadne, and the drama's most essential point is that this Ariadne – as different from Strauss's as Birtwistle's Orpheus is different from Gluck's – is in her own way as much of a monster as the half-man/half-bull. These demanding roles are projected with maximum musical eloquence by Christine Rice and Sir John Tomlinson, no doubt because – as Rice makes clear in the absorbing 30-minute documentary that accompanies the performance – what is demanding is also intensely rewarding to singers prepared to commit themselves to a steep learning curve. Equal commitment is evident in Johan Reuter's Theseus, the conventions of heroic posturing given new depth and relevance in text, music and vocal acting alike.
We see little of Antonio Pappano and his orchestra, but the excellent sound never lets us escape the inexorable magnetism of the instrumental continuum.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Holst - The Hymn of Jesus & Choral Symphony
Michael Rippon, Norma Burrowes, Michael Langdon, Robert Tear, Steuart Bedford, Philip Langridge, Sir John Tomlinson, Elise Ross & Felicity Palmer English Opera Group, English Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra & Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra, David Atherton & Sir Adrian Boult | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Simon Keenlyside (Prospero), Kate Royal (Miranda), Toby Spence (Ferdinand), Ian Bostridge (Caliban), Cyndia Sieden (Ariel), Philip Langridge (Alonso), Donald Kaasch (Antonio), Jonathan Summers (Sebastian), David Condier (Trinculo), Stephen Richardson (Stefano), Graeme Danby (Gonzalo) The Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Thomas Adès 2CD Multipack with libretto and slipcase When Thomas Adès conducted his opera The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2007, EMI Classics microphones were on hand to record this “masterpiece of airy beauty and eerie power.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). The cast included Simon Keenlyside, Cynthia Sieden, Ian Bostridge, Toby Spence, Kate Royal, Philip Langridge, and Stephen Richardson, many of whom took part in the critically acclaimed world premiere three years earlier. “there are moments in all three acts which are by any standards sheerly, heartstoppingly beautiful; passages in which the music seems to be mined from an unfathomable depth of feeling …” Andrew Clements, The Guardian “It’s probably the first new opera I’ve experienced in 20 years that left me feeling not just intellectually aroused but deeply moved … A coming-of-age piece. And, yes, momentous.” Michael White, The Independent “Adès does not shirk the traditional big operatic moments. There is a thrilling and moving quintet of reconciliation and he gives each of his main characters an imposing and impressive aria…these are expressed in music of extraordinary imaginative power.” Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph "The evening deservedly belongs to Adès, who himself conducts a score as orchestrally lush and evocative as vocally varied and articulate. The cumulative effect is by turns ethereal, witty, incandescent, often ravishing". The Guardian 2004 “(Adès’s The Tempest) has the potential to be one of the most enduring new operas of the decade. (…) If you need proof that the hype surrounding Adès is more than just hope and expectation, you will find it here” The Guardian on the Royal Opera House revival in March 07. “Adès has provided Covent Garden and British opera in general with one of its great moments. The cheering from every corner of the theatre on Tuesday - orchestra pit included - felt like what it was: British opera’s equivalent of the England World Cup rugby win.” The Guardian “Out-Brittening Britten’s Grimes storm music in the prelude, and the eerily beguiling tintinnabulations of the Magic Banquet music that make the recording so rewarding” Sunday Times, 21st June 2009 “Performances are almost all first rate. It's a measure of the strength of the mostly British casting that singers of the quality of Stephen Richardson and Jonathan Summers take some of the smallest roles. Simon Keenlyside's no-nonsense Prospero, a force to be reckoned with from the very start of the opera, is outstanding, and it's hard to think of another singer who could manage the stratospheric writing for Ariel more effortlessly than Cyndia Sieden. Ian Bostridge's Caliban, Philip Langridge's King of Naples, Kate Royal's Miranda and Toby Spence's Ferdinand are excellent, too. It's a fine production, which does full justice to Adès's sometimes remarkable work.” The Guardian, 19th June 2009 **** “Simon Keenlyside makes an authoritative Prospero, Ian Bostridge’s Caliban tugs at the heartstrings in his radiant Act 2 aria and Cyndia Sieden is phenomenal as a stratospherically high coloratura soprano Ariel.” The Telegraph, 10th June 2009 **** “From the tornado-like prelude to Ariel's stratospheric yet ethereal "Five fathoms deep" the music illuminates rather than merely illustrates the drama. …Kate Royal as Miranda, is fully inside her part and sings alluringly… For many, the most memorable writing in The Tempest comes attached to Ariel's vocal high-wire act. Few coloratura sopranos are able to dispatch it like Cyndia Sieden, whose sound lends special colour to the performance... Simon Keenlyside, on the young side as Prospero, mixes brain and baritonal brawn in his characteristically charismatic way. Ian Bostridge sings unstintingly as a wonderfully weird Caliban... The playing of the Covent Garden orchestra is another luxury - no, a necessity, given the brilliantly conceived and demanding orchestral aspect of this piece.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2009 “…everyone reaches out to the purple passages when Adès touches something rich and strange. Those include the evolution of the young lovers' music from homages to midsummer Britten and Tippett to the heights of Act II, Ariel's banquet and masque in Act III, and the ensemble-passacaglia which takes the ultimate centre of gravity from Prospero's perfunctorily written farewells.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2009 **** “It may not be a flawless masterpiece ... but it is one of the most viable and stageworthy of modern British operas...The playing of the Covent Garden orchestra is another luxury no, a necessity, given the brilliantly conceived and demanding orchestral aspect of this piece.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “well constructed and dramatically effective in its clever timing and contrasted textures...The late Philip Langridge in one of his last performances at Covent Garden...makes a memorable King of Naples, while Ades's evocative orchestration with its percussion effects vividly conjures up the atmosphere of the magic island of Prospero...A strong and memorable opera” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Dvorak - Cypresses
“A fascinating opportunity to compare Dvorák's original song-cycle with its later imaginative reworking as a string quartet. Performed with warmth and freshness, it's an admirable foil for the charming and underrated Terzetto.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 *** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Gramophone Awards 2009
Gramophone Magazine