CD Review: Hänssler Classic’s ‘Blagoje Bersa: Lieder/Songs’

Unknown, perhaps, to a vast majority of concertgoers, Blagoje Bersa (1873-1934) ranks as a seminal figure in Croatian national musicography. His compositions, including orchestral music, opera, songs, exude all the frenzied sophistication of fin-de-siècle eclecticism that Marija Kuntaric, in her monograph on Bersa, derives “from the cantabile Italian melody, then the various masters of German Romanticism (Wagner, Mahler, R. Strauss) {…}

Dec 18, 2024

CD Review: Gordon Getty’s ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’

The score of Gordon Getty’s “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” breathes all the unpretentiously sweet melancholy of its many predecessors – from James Hilton’s 1933 novella of the same title to subsequent adaptations as, among others, radio plays and lavishly cast movie musicals. Yet it is not exactly the feel-good opera advertised in Pentatone’s press release; rather, the eponymous Mr. Chips – {…}

Dec 5, 2024

CD Review: EuroArts’s ‘I Puritani’

With Bellini’s “I Puritani” one steps into the heartland of Italian bel canto: The ensembles are mesmerizingly beautiful, the vocal lines infinitely refined, and the orchestration – with its mood painting role – proves a proto-dramatic foundation to the unfolding of the Romantic intrigue, prone to inspiring the operatic vocabulary of subsequent generations, and of Verdi in particular. Needless to {…}

Nov 14, 2024

CD Review: George Benjamin & Martin Crimp’s ‘Picture a day like this’

Every six years or so, we’re gifted with an operatic gem from composer George Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp. Their fourth and latest collaboration, “Picture a day like this,” is a revelation. This live recording, released by Nimbus Records, features the composer conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the work’s 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival premiere. While Benajmin and Crimp’s colleagues on {…}

Nov 8, 2024

CD Review: Rachel Fenlon’s ‘Winterreise’

Rachel Fenlon’s “Winterreise” is quite extraordinary for many reasons. First, Schubert’s famously melancholy cycle was originally written for tenor, and though frequently transcribed for baritonal depths or even bass, its interpretation history remains confined largely to male voices. Secondly, Fenlon achieves a high degree of German Innerlichkeit, that somewhat obscure, culturally rooted feeling of inward expressiveness which so pervaded the {…}

Oct 30, 2024

CD Review: BR Klassik’s ‘Messa di Gloria’

Puccini’s “Messa di Gloria” is not the unjustly belittled opera in disguise which musicologists, for decades, have made it to be. They objected to the unbefittingly ariose “Gratias agimus,” as well as the mass’ compilatory structure. For a “Mass of Glory,” strictly speaking, only contains the Kyrie and Gloria sections; Puccini, however, adopts all five movements of mass, and {…}

Oct 11, 2024

CD Review: Pene Pati’s ‘Nessun Dorma’

The Samoan Pene Pati is a sumptuously voiced tenor. He boasts a quintessentially lyrical sound, timbered as if made for virtually anything out of the great Romantics’ operatic pen. In “Nessun Dorma,” he once again proves his qualities: After his 2022 debut on Warner Classics, he takes on a heavily eclectic repertory which he navigates with remarkably executed showpiece notes, {…}

Sep 24, 2024

CD Review: Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Puccini: Love Affairs’

“Puccini: Love Affairs” is Sony Classical’s response to the marketing of the centenary of the Lucchese composer’s death. Sadly, instead of a complete opera recording, it is yet another compilation (in the fullest sense!) of familiar duets, and an aria from “Tosca” and “La Bohème” each. Jonas Kaufmann – its titular singer – represents the main selling point. The German {…}

Sep 17, 2024

CD Review: Charles Castronovo’s ‘Noble Renegades’

Met audiences will cheerfully remember last season’s run of “Un Ballo in Maschera” when Charles Castronovo’s signature chiaroscuro repeatedly proved the very backbone of his vocal physiognomy. “Noble Renegades,” for Delos Productions, purportedly builds on established strengths; but by dwelling mostly on (quasi-)stock characters from Verdi’s early to mid-career, the New York tenor outfits the recording’s 19 tracks with {…}

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