Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice

“…a quite remarkable performance from New Bayreuth's golden era, with an underrated conductor and truly classic cast. …Hotter's magnificent Wotan… his verbal sensitivity and expressive range make this tragically sympathetic characterisation unequalled on disc. ...the performance as a whole sounds splendid, carrying one along with immense dramatic sweep.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2006 *****

“Very properly, Hans Hotter, as Wotan, dominates this utterly absorbing and exciting account of Walküre, the second instalment of the rediscovered Keilberth Ring at Bayreuth in 1955.
There exist several other incarnations of his dominant reading but perhaps only that in the Krauss cycle of 1953 reveals him in such superb form. Whether arguing the moral toss with von Milinkovi?'s harrying Fricka, sunk in deep desolation after his capitulation to his spouse (Wotan's long narration so full of insights, not for a moment dull), his fury at Brünnhilde's disobedience and his final relenting in an unforgettable account of the Farewell, Hotter commands every aspect of the role. His sonorous, wide-ranging voice is matched by his verbal acuity, text and tone in ideal accord. This, much more than his portrayal in the Solti cycle, when his voice often struggles with the part, is the performance to judge him by.
As ever, his long-standing stage partnership with the Brünnhilde of Astrid Varnay pays many dividends. She, too, is in prime form; she, too, melds words and voice into a well-nigh perfect unity. Not even a god could fail to response positively to her appeals to be forgiven, and that follows a warmly sung and deeply considered account of the the Todesverkündigung in Act 2.
That wonderfully moving scene also finds Ramón Vinay's Siegmund in most eloquent form. As throughout the first two acts, his singing benefits from his attractively plangent tone and, in Act 1, his tale of his sad plight. That, of course, turns to ecstasy in the glorious love music that ends Act 1, where Gré Brouwenstijn's womanly, vibrant Sieglinde is a fit match. She is properly distraught and guilt-ridden in Act 2 but – as so many lyrical sopranos have found – the taxing passages in Act 3 prove a shade beyond her.
In Act 1, Keilberth's direction takes a while to catch fire. From the exciting start of Act 2 he is in his most persuasive form, he and his fine orchestra projecting the manifold events and changes of mood with a persuasively dramatic drive. The Ride of the Valkyries whizzes along, Wotan's fury is frightening, the Magic Fire music elating. Once more, he proves that this was the year his Ring came into its own.
The recording is again amazingly lifelike, catching the excitement of a notable occasion on the Green Hill. The stage noises are hardly ever distracting, nor should one be too bothered by two or three moments when a singer forgets his or her words. Altogether we are here in the highest realm of Wagnerian interpretation.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Hans Hotter's Wotan dominates this utterly absorbing and exciting account of Walküre, the second instalment of the rediscovered Keilberth Ring at Bayreuth in 1955, following on from the much-lauded Siegfried… Hotter command every aspect of the role. His sonorous, wide-ranging voice is matched by his verbal acuity, text and tone in ideal accord. ...Astrid Varnay... too, is in prime form; she, too, melds words and voice into a well nigh perfect unity.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“The Weimar Staatskapelle… are a top-class orchestra, with superb strings which sound overwhelmingly, sensuously beautiful.” Gramophone Magazine

“This is a magnificent record. The Weimar Staatskapelle are rare visitors to disc, but they are a top-class orchestra, with superb strings which sound overwhelmingly, sensuously beautiful in the opening 'Night' and 'Sunrise' sequences.
The warm and spacious acoustic of the Weimarhalle helps; reminiscent of the Lukaskirche in Dresden, where the Staatskapelle there made their famous analogue Strauss recordings under Kempe. This disc is in that same league of excellence.
Indeed, conductor Antoni Wit must take a lion's share of the credit for the success of this mountain-climb.
His tempi are spacious but his pacing is not consistently slow. It is during the vistas that Wit takes his time to overwhelm us with the beauty of what his orchestra are describing, the 'Entry into the Forest', dallying a little 'On the Alpine Pasture' and, most telling of all, the burst of radiance on reaching the summit. Then on the way down there is a storm, thunderously captured, but in the calm before it breaks, Wit creates an almost sinister atmosphere of apprehension.
As Strauss's descent nears its end and the music winds down, Wit manages a wonderful feeling of triste, a consciousness of danger experienced and triumphed over, and in that 'Ausklang' the organ steals in magically.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is a magnificent record. It is during the vistas that Wit takes his time to overwhelm us with the beauty of what his orchestra are describing… dallying a little 'On the Alpine Pasture' and, most telling of all, the burst of radiance on reaching the summit. As Strauss's descent nears its end and the music winds down, Wit manages a wonderful feeling of triste, a consciousness of danger experienced and triumphed over, and in that 'Ausklang' the organ steals in magically.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

'Like his fellow Argentinean Astor Piazzolla, Mr. Golijov does not harness popular music; he liberates it. The energy is freed from a simple dance band function and allowed to wander into modulating keys and new meters. This is `low art' arranged in sophisticated sentences.' (The New York Times)

“Ainadamar has enjoyed success on stage but here proves a real 'opera of the imagination'. It is dazzlingly presented: guitars and percussion, Jesús Montoya's flamenco improvisations and Kelley O'Connor's startling low mezzo as the poet, Dawn Upshaw's brilliance and tonal generosity as Xirgu, all rest on glowing orchestral colours and cunning production.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2006 ****

“Osvaldo Golijov has based this dramatic work around the life and death (at the hands of a Franco-ist Civil War firing squad) of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Ainadamar (the 'fountain of tears', the Moorish name for the site near Grenada where Lorca died in 1936) is neither history nor fiction, rather a symbolic account of reactions to key moments in the poet's life.
The text, translated back into Spanish by the composer, suits Golijov's eclectic and anarchic mix of musics. At the start you hear low pedal notes similar to those that launch Das Rheingold or Also sprach Zarathustra. Within minutes we are closer to 'prog-rock' tracks of the 1970s like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir – a meeting of classical strings and heavy-metal beat – or the soundscapes, featuring combinations of riffs and sound effects (here horses' hooves or, chillingly in context, echoing gunshots), of Roger Waters. From a vocal point of view the score is deeply stained by alternations of the Jewish chants of Golijov's mother religion, the cante jondo of the flamenco of Lorca's homeland, or the Argentinian tangos worked up to symphonic proportions by Piazzolla and his contemporaries. American minimalism (of the John Adams variety) has left its mark too in the obsessive use of repetitive cells or phrases.
The effect is compelling: these words and scenes cry out for music, and Golijov delivers in full measure. While the whole is anchored to a subject of emotional power – Lorca, freakishly like Pushkin, almost seemed to anticipate and prepare his own fate – the lack of a conventional narrative is a great plus. Like the controversial Mass of Leonard Bernstein, Ainadamar is part lament and part celebration, an action of the mind rather than of dramatic events. The comfortable- sounding recording originates in performances by the characteristically adventurous Roberto Spano and the Atlanta SO; not all the cast are as famous as Golijov's champion Dawn Upshaw but they partner her well in few-holdsbarred commitment.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Osvaldo Golijov has caped his Pasión…and 'cantata' Ayre… with an opera-fusion based around the life and death (at the hands of a Franco-ist Civil War firing squad) of the Spanish poet Federico Garciá Lorca. …these words and scenes cry out for music, and Golijov delivers in full measure. While the whole is anchored to a subject of emotional power - Lorca, freakishly like Pushkin, almost seemed to anticipate and prepare his own fate - the lack of a conventional narrative is a great plus. ...not all the cast are as famous as Golijov's champion Dawn Upshaw but they partner her well in few-holds-barred commitment.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“The big orchestral canvases show Anderson’s priceless gift for making complex formal shapes totally lucid. Oliver Knussen’s beautifully integrated performances with both the BBC Symphony and the Sinfonietta help inestimably too.” ***** performance/**** sound BBC Music Magazine, August 2006

“Anderson's confidence in handling and shaping his musical material and his wonderfully precise ear for instrumental colour have been constants in his music… Oliver Knussen's beautifully integrated performances with both the BBC Symphony and the Sinfonietta help inestimably... and the detail in the recordings is always faithful to Anderson's fastidious sensibility.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2006 *****

“For more than a decade British composer Julian Anderson has been consolidating his reputation as a leading talent. This first CD shows that talent at full stretch. The music is always direct in its tone of voice and unfailingly approachable without turning its back on all contact with progressive modernism. It has the benefit here of superbly prepared and executed performances, recorded with fine responsiveness to instrumental colour and textural balance.
The earliest work, Diptych, is already formidably accomplished in its control of gradually intensifying formal design but it is in Khorovod, Anderson's first London Sinfonietta commission, that his feeling for balancing resonant harmonic densities and spontaneous melodic flow comes into its own. Anderson filters his admiration for such powerful contemporary presences as Per Nørgård and Tristan Murail through aspects of folk and popular music which are most immediately evident in the rhythmic and motivic profile of the piece. The result of such conjunctions could be mindlessly disparate but Anderson's knack for dramatising unexpected compatibilities makes for an enthralling structure of genuine substance, and this kind of process is replicated on the more ambitious scale of his 1998 Proms commission The Stations of the Sun, as well as in a second, no less rewarding Sinfonietta piece, Alhambra Fantasy.
The Stations of the Sun is complemented by TheCrazed Moon, written slightly earlier, whose much darker, dance-free character indicates that Anderson is well able to inhabit quite different emotional spheres with equal success.
With this release Ondine has made an impressive start to the Anderson discography; it is high time that Anderson was given his due.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The music is always direct in its tone of voice and unfailingly approachable without turning its back on all contact with progressive modernism. It has the benefit here of superbly prepared and executed performances, recorded with fine responsiveness to instrument colour and textural balance.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“…I listened with increasing awe to this dynamic and determined young pianist. Only 25 and already an international award-winner, Schlime has established his own ensemble alongside conducting and performing engagements…The principal works on this disc are often paired and compared, given their shared artistic influences; Schlime draws you into this mesmerising and sometimes playful Parisian whirl, especially in the final exhilarating movements from Prokofiev. Terrific orchestral playing under Pletnev…” Jane Jones, Classic FM Magazine

“Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely in their history can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev – his more-thandistinguished partner on this disc – among his teachers and has won first prize in one of the less celebrated competitions (so often venues of true musical discovery).
What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel's clowning surface, shadowed, as it were, by the Left Hand Concerto, by an inwardness mirrored in his own haunting ThreeImprovisations. The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency, a far cry indeed from a more superficial tradition emanating from Marguerite Long, the work's dedicatee. In the Prokofiev Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. Nothing sounds bleak or conventionally percussive and a mysterious, winterfairytale aura hangs over the entire work (never more so than in the Larghetto).
Schlimé confesses that he has always felt impelled to play what he calls his 'other' music, in this case improvised reflections on the two concertos. Recorded late one night in the Moscow Conservatoire, they were added with Pletnev's blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman's chime is very much music that registers 'long after it was heard no more'.
Pentatone's sound and balance are exemplary.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Here is music-making to wonder at. Rarely can the two concertos have been performed with such meticulous care and affection. The Luxembourg-born, 25-year-old pianist includes Pletnev among his teachers. What sadness and introspection he conveys beneath Ravel's clowning surface... The central Adagio emerges as a timeless reverie, making it hard to recall a performance of greater magic or tonal translucency... In the Prokofiev, Schlimé and Pletnev take an almost chamber music-like view of the grotesquerie and acrobatics, and the result is lyrical and musicianly in a wholly fresh and unsuspected way. ...Schlimé's... improvised reflections on the two concertos... were added with Pletnev's blessing, and the concluding mournful, jazzman's chime is very much music that registers 'long after it was heard no more'.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2006