Darcey Bussell and Roberto Bolle star in Frederick Ashton’s 1952 timeless ballet Sylvia, restored to the splendor of its elegant and opulent three-act form for the 75th anniversary celebration of The Royal Ballet. Based on a Greek myth, the ballet tells the story of Sylvia, loved by Aminta, abducted by Orion, and eventually rescued by Eros.
The music of Léo Delibes inspired Ashton to create memorable choreography such as the famous Act 3 pas de deux, as well as the mischievous role of Eros, one of the delightful, darkly comic characterizations for which he became known and loved. Sylvia is a showcase for virtuosity, invention and classical beauty— the epitome of Ashton style in stage settings of great detail and painterly perfection.
DELIBES: SYLVIA (ROH)
The Royal Ballet; The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Choreographer: Frederick Ashton ; Musical Director: Graham Bond
Darcey Bussell; Roberto Bolle; Thiago Soares; Martin Harvey; Mara Galeazzi
OPUS ARTE— the very first record label in the industry to release a classical music DVD in High Definition format onto the world market—releases their newest HD-DVD title, Johann Strauss’ timeless champagne operetta Die Fledermaus (OA HD5004 D). Glyndebourne’s effervescent production of the Waltz King’s beloved comic opera includes outstanding performances by a cast led by Pamela Armstrong, Thomas Allen, Ragnar Ulfung, and Håkan Hagegård with The Glyndebourne Chorus and London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
High Definition provides a phenomenal audio/visual experience: not only is the video resolution much higher than standard DVD, but also, the audio capacity is increased up to a maximum of 7.1 surround-sound channels. The HD-DVD format opens the door to many new levels of interactivity, together with picture-in-picture menus.
JOHANN STRAUSS: DIE FLEDERMAUS
The Glyndebourne Chorus and London Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Jurowski.
Pär Lindskog; Lyubov Petrova; Pamela Armstrong; Thomas Allen; Ragnar Ulfung; Håkan Hagegård; Artur Korn; Malena Ernman; Udo Samel; Renée Schüttengruber
On January 29, Naxos of America, distributor of ARTHAUS MUSIC, releases a live recording from the Zurich Opera House of Ferruccio Busoni’s final opera Doktor Faust (Arthaus 101283). This 2 DVD-set features renowned American baritone Thomas Hampson in the title role and also stars Gregory Kunde and Sandra Trattnigg. Special features include a backstage conversation with Mr. Hampson in the foyer of the Zurich Opera House, including backstage cuttings, and an interview with conductor Philippe Jordan.
Doktor Faust remained a fragment at the time of the Busoni’s death. He died in 1924, unable to complete what he himself described as his “state masterpiece”—an opera to which he had a deep personal attachment. The missing scenes from the score—the appearance of Helen and Faust’s closing monologue— were completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach, with whom Busoni had become acquainted during his exile in Zürich. In this form the opera was given its first performance in Dresden in 1925. Then, in the 1980s, conductor Anthony Beaumont came across previously undiscovered sketches by Busoni and produced a new version of Doktor Faust, which was premiered in Bologna in 1985. The current recording uses the Jarnach score.
Ferruccio BUSONI: DOKTOR FAUST
Thomas Hampson, Günther Groissböck, Gregory Kunde, Reinaldo Macias,
Sandra Trattnigg, Martin Zysset;
Chorus and Orchestra of the Zurich Opera House, Philippe Jordan, conductor
On January 29, Naxos of America, distributor of PROFIL Edition Günter Hänssler, releases a two-CD set featuring beloved German tenor Fritz Wunderlich. Fritz Wunderlich: The Legend—Arias, Opera & Operetta Scenes and Songs (PH08016) includes his earliest commercial recordings, most dating from the 1950s, when he was still in his early twenties. In addition to arias from such well-known operas as Cavalleria Rusticana, Madame Butterfly, La bohème, and Zaïde, the recordings feature a treasure-trove of rarely-performed operetta excerpts, including arias from Karl Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent, Fred Raymond’s Maske in Blau, and Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Zirkusprinzessin. Also featured are selections from Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and Franz Lehar’s Friederike, Der Zarewitsch, and Guiditta.
Fritz Wunderlich was born in Kusel, Rheinland-Pfalz, on September 26, 1930. During his short career (he died tragically at the age of 36 in 1966 as the result of an accidental fall), Wunderlich was Germany’s leading lyric tenor. Wunderlich studied at the Freiburg Musikhochschule, where he sang the role of Tamino in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in a 1954 student production. In 1955, he made his début at the Stuttgart Opera in the same role. By 1958, Wunderlich already was famous throughout Europe as the “ideal Mozart singer.” In 1960 he joined the Staatsoper in Munich, and from 1962 he also spent part of the year with the Vienna Staatsoper.
Wunderlich was known for his unaffected style and for the sweetness and clarity of his voice. His recordings are still prized, and his Tamino and Belmonte appear on recordings featuring conductors Karl Böhm (Die Zauberflöte/DG) and Eugen Jochum (Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail/DG). In Munich, Wunderich undertook such roles as Alfredo and Lensky, and in Vienna he performed the title role in Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina; a live 1964 recording from the Vienna State Opera is available on the MYTO label. Additionally, he created the roles of Tiresias in Orff’s Oedipus der Tyrann and Christoph in Egk’s Die Verlobung in San Domingo. Wunderlich’s last appearance was as Tamino during the Stuttgart Opera’s visit to the Edinburgh Festival. Sadly, he died before his Metropolitan début as Don Ottavio, which was planned for October 1966. Wunderlich was also a superb Bach singer, excelling as the Evangelist in both the Passions. He came to lieder late in his short career, but he was in much demand as a recitalist at the Salzburg Festival and elsewhere. His recordings of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Schumann’s Dichterliebe are among the finest renderings of these great song cycles.
“Music must live and today’s discerning lovers of classical music want originality and independence.”
—Günter Hänssler
With new recording of Symphony Nos. 2 & 3 on Pentatone featuring conductor Marek Janowski.
On January 29th, Naxos of America, the #1 independent distributor of classical music in the United States, releases a new SACD from Dutch-based surround-sound specialists PentaTone Classics (www.pentatonemusic.com) of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 & 3 by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Marek Janowski, who holds their Endowed Guest Conductor Chair.This new album is the second in a complete 3-disc cycle of Brahms’ symphonies, which will also include eight Hungarian Dances as orchestrated by Brahms and Dvořák, culled from live performances on March 2nd-4th and 9th-11th, and November 2nd-4th and 9th-11th, 2007. In August, Naxos released the first disc in the cycle, which featured Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. This disc was first by the Pittsburgh Orchestra since 2001 and their inaugural recording with Maestro Janowski.
This recording will be available in SACD format at NaxosDirect.com
On January 28, in celebration of the upcoming Elliott Carter Centenary, Naxos of America releases Volume 1 of the Complete String Quartets of Elliott Carter (Naxos 8559362). Featuring the Pacifica Quartet, renowned for their performances of Carter’s music, Volume 1 includes String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5; it is the only recording of the latter quartet currently in-print. Volume 2 is scheduled for release in early summer. Additionally, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will present the Pacifica Quartet performing the entire Carter quartet cycle at New York’s Ethical Culture Society on Wednesday, January 30 at 7:30 PM. The quartet will sign copies of the disc after the performance.
Composer’s note:
I probably decided to write what was to be the First Quartet when I read about a composition prize in Liege, Belgium, because there were many ideas swarming around in my imagination about expression, rhythm, and harmony, mostly derived from my Cello Sonata. I read through all the Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Berg, and Ruth Crawford Seeger quartets to find a way of using the four instruments to present my ideas. As I began to compose, with a Guggenheim Fellowship, in Tucson, Arizona, I soon realized that the work would make such demands on performers that it might never be performed, yet I continued. To my surprise it won the Liège Prize and the Walden Quartet became the first of many to play it. Then my Second, Third, and Fourth Quartets developed my imaginings in different ways until I began to realize that soon I would exhaust this direction, and so my Fifth Quartet became a farewell to the previous four and an exploration of a new vision. All the quartets were written about ten years apart. Now the Pacifica Quartet has had the courage and mastery to present all of them on the same program, which is amazing.
—Elliott Carter
Beginning with his Cello Sonata (1948), Carter began to develop a new aesthetic, synthesizing the techniques of the European modernists like Berg, Bartók and Debussy with those of the American “ultra-modernists”: composers like Conlon Nancarrow and Henry Cowell. Carter’s String Quartet No 1 (1950–1951) was written during the year he spent in the Arizona desert, and it was the first work in which he blended his most advanced techniques—i.e. rhythmic contrast, based on complex polyrhythms and proportional tempo changes—on such a large scale. And while the use of proportional tempo changes was not new—Stravinsky had already utilized them—Carter expert and composer David Schiff has noted that “the scale of tempos is larger, their ratios are more complex and, most importantly, changes in notated tempo often happen within rather than between phrases.” Carter’s music from this point forward became known for this unique rhythmic innovation, to which he referred as temporal modulation (and theorists later called “metric modulation”).
Of his String Quartet No. 1 Carter has commented:
The first thing that struck me about contemporary music in general had been that there was not much interest in rhythm. Stravinsky was maybe the only one that experimented, and only in certain works like the Rite of Spring. Also, Schoenberg had looked at it in that he wanted to make music sound like talking. It had the irregular rhythms like the way we talk. I felt that I would like to find a way of making music that developed the rhythmic side more than these people had done. I really tried to do that, and also at that time began to find various chords that interested me. My First String Quartet uses one of these chords very frequently. Finally I wrote this piece that had all kinds of rhythmic innovations in it. It had a last movement in which every theme gets faster each time it comes in. There is a counterpoint of themes, some of them are getting faster at one rate, and some are getting faster at another rate. It was a very interesting kind of thing to figure out how to do that. I think it worked quite well to my surprise…The whole piece is built on this system of constantly switching from one speed to another, not suddenly, but like shifting gears in a car. You don’t know you’ve gotten into a new speed until something defines it more clearly, but at the transitional moment, you don’t know that it’s changing.
In his liner notes for the disc, Bayan Northcott writes: “The quartet is organized in a quasi-Classical four-movement sequence: Fantasia, Allegro scorrevole (a kind of scherzo), Adagio, and Variations, with only two short pauses in its 45-minute unfolding, occurring not between, but within movements; the first pause is in the middle of the Allegro scorrevole, and the second shortly after the beginning of the Variations. Moreover, Carter begins with a jagged solo cello recitative that is only completed by the violin at the end of the quartet, as if to suggest that everything that happens in between is a gigantic parenthesis in time.”
String Quartet No 5 (1995) consists of six short movements and five interludes and, in direct contrast to Quartet No. 1, displays a playful freedom that borders on improvisation. Mr. Northcott continues, “The even-numbered movements comprise a suite-like series of character pieces, each focused on a particular area of expression or tone color: a nervy, volatile Giocoso; a Lento espressivo of slowly shifting chords; a scurrying, scherzo-like Presto scorrevole; an Allegro energico of forceful rhetoric; a remote Adagio sereno of high string harmonics; and finally, a bizarre pizzicato coda marked Capriccioso. By contrast, the comparatively random-sounding (though exactly notated) Introduction and linking Interludes 1-V evoke those breaks in rehearsal when individual players may be heard simultaneously practicing snippets of a movement just played, or the next to come. The result is a teasing kind of double focus in which the same materials are heard in contexts of order and (apparent) disorder, raising interesting questions about the nature of musical coherence and continuity, and typical of the mercurial lightness of spirit that has increasingly characterized Carter’s later works.”
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