In 1997, the American pianist Donald Berman forced open three old file cabinets in a musty attic above the Janiculum, the highest hill within walled Rome, and found enough years of work for each of his 10 fingers.
Channel has released another in its series of Mahler symphonies under Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Symphony No. 4 in G Major. The engineering is by far the most impressive thing about it: This SACD sounded terrific, even on my non-SACD player, displaying impressive depth and clarity of tone.
For her much-anticipated second EMI recital disc, the elegant British
soprano Kate Royal (b. 1979) graces us with a collection of gorgeously
sung arias from the last century. Inspired by the role of the Governess
in Benjamin Britten’s gothic psychodrama The Turn of the Screw, which
she sang with Glyndebourne on Tour in 2006, Royal hones in on
20th-century operatic females who, in her own words, share the
Governess’ combination of “intensity and abandon.”
There’s so much music, and more, in Kronos’ latest CD that I felt compelled to question the quartet’s founder and violinist David Harrington at his Sunset District base of operations, seeking details and explanations beyond the liner notes. Much of that conversation will be the source of a future artist profile.
The principal delight of the New Esterházy Quartet’s two-year trek through the complete Haydn string quartets has been hearing the works that never get played. The NEQ’s first CD of recordings from the series stuck to the earliest clutch of quartets, the ones eventually called Opp. 1 and 2.
The San Francisco Symphony’s “Dawn to Twilight” festival ended last week with a devastating double bill. Pairing Schubert and Berg might look like the sort of juxtaposition apt to work better on paper than in the event.
Over the last couple of decades, René Jacobs has assembled a catalog of recordings as a conductor, a major change from his earlier career as a famed countertenor. The bicentennial of Franz Josef Haydn’s death brings a happy pairing of composer and conductor, on a Harmonia Mundi disc featuring the symphonies No. 91 in E-flat Major and No.
To close a season embracing music mostly of the modern era, Chanticleer returned to its founding ideals on Sunday night at San Francisco’s Mission Dolores, with an entirely Renaissance program, sung a cappella.
