Many times the final moments of a piece of art are the ones that leave the audience with the biggest impression. It may be the final image of a film or the final bars of a musical work. In the bel canto repertoire, the final impression is generally left by whether a singer hits a certain high note, be it {…}
At least since the advent of the compact disc has the music industry realized the commercial potential of the Christmas season and long is the line of illustrious voices who have, in turn, indulged in the more or less tasteful rendition of classics like “Adeste Fideles” or “White Christmas.” Even as sophisticated a stylist as Carlo Bergonzi has recorded a {…}
Off the Beaten Track is an album review series that takes readers on a cross-disciplinary journey through recordings, spotlighting the cool, the unusual, and the beautiful work created by artists who push boundaries and take the road less traveled. I have a spooky story for you. Ten friends (seven young women and three young men) flee to the countryside to {…}
Buckle up because we’re not just going off the beaten track, we’re going musical off-roading extreme style with “Salomé: Woman of Valor,” poet and performer Adeena Karasick’s wildly creative seven-year endeavor with Grammy Award-winning composer and horn player Frank London. The work premiered at Vancouver, Canada’s Chutzpah Festival in 2018. Now, two years later, a studio recording drops on October 13. {…}
Jonas Kaufmann is a lucky man. While much of the music world has reeled during the pandemic, he has had the luxury of reflecting, recharging, and revisiting old musical haunts: Lieder. The results are exceptional; a lovely album, maybe Kaufmann’s best recital disc yet. Intimacy Be it because of these strangest of times, the uncommon recording space (it was recorded {…}
This disc is a labor of love—and it shows. Basque conductor and pianist, Iñaki Encina Oyón, has meticulously unearthed and occasionally reconstructed the music of early twentieth century composer-couple Robert Dussaut and Hélène Covatti. He learned about them through his piano teacher and the composers’ daughter, Thérèse Dussaut. His reconstruction of their work, based largely on manuscripts (some fairly rough), {…}
Massenet’s opera “Thaïs,” set in 4th century Alexandria, focuses on two individuals with diametrically opposed outlooks and lifestyles. There is the hedonistic courtesan Thaïs, who seeks only love—although for no longer than a week at a time—and there is a cenobite monk named Athanaël, an ascetic, whose aim is to turn the courtesan to the path of righteousness. While he {…}
As we wrap up June and African-American Music Month, Off the Beaten Track explores the 2019 recording of composer and librettist Richard Thompson’s “The Mask in the Mirror,” the story of the ill-fated romance between America’s first Black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Alice Ruth Moore, a New Orleans Creole, poet, journalist, and early civil rights advocate. For those new {…}
The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro has long championed the operas composed by Rossini, including many of his forgotten works. Among those forgotten is “Ricciardo e Zoraide,” which was first performed in 1846 before disappearing from the stage until 1990 and then 1996. The festival revived the work in 2018, promptly releasing a DVD of the production; all of these {…}