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ID: KAI0012562 CDs: 1 Type: SACD |
Collection: Vocal Collection Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraWorld premiere recording
“... and every voice reaches listening ears”: When one blocks out the context of this formulation in Ovid’s brilliant description of the house of Fama, at the beginning of Book XII of his Metamorphoses, one can imagine without difficulty a person, who would find this so obvious an experience, that at first it hardly seems worth mentioning. But everyone, who understands the world by hearing the voices that reach their ‘listening ears’ gains thereby a similar experience, which for the most part we tend to block out, whether in the noisy urban environment or mainly in ostensibly quieter rural surroundings. With every perception, we select, order, classify or, during a visit to a classical concert, aurally ‘correct’ mistunings and overhear those fine overtones, out of which a fascinating cosmos of new sounds has developed in the past decade. Yet if one reads the Ovid rather more carefully, a strange and unique feature of the place described comes into view: it does not distinguish where a sound comes from, does not ask what it is, accepts everything that comes to it, and allows it to reverberate within, transformed into a gentle resonance. What Fama, the goddess of Rumour, then does with this wealth of information lies on a different page of course, and we will yet have to return to it. The open ear registers what comes to it without prejudice, and each listener should not just consciously activate it now and then with music. And Ovid’s image contains something else: the description of Fama’s house as a space filled with sound acts as an express reminder that, for one thing, without a space, sound would be unthinkable. For another, it records both the distance between what is making the sound and the place of its perception as well as the bridging of this distance through the expanse of space. In addition, that account evokes something which fundamentally distinguishes the auditory from other senses of perception: in opposition to the visible, sounds moving in space can freely develop, overcome obstacles without effort and intermingle with one another, without losing their own unique characteristics. In was Ovid’s incredible conception of a place to which all the events and sounds of the world come and find resonance that always fascinated Beat Furrer. (Daniel Ender)
Includes booklet with text by Daniel Ender |
21.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: KAI0012702 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraStadler Quartett:
Frank Stadler, violin / Izso Bajusz, violin / Predrag Katanic, viola / Peter Sigl, cello
The stadler quartet was founded in Salzburg in 1992 by the Mozarteum Orchestra´s current concert master, Frank Stadler. The quartet´s members (Frank Stadler, Izso Bajusz, Predrag Katanic, and Peter Sigl) are also members of the renowned Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik (oenm, or Austrian Ensemble for Contemporary Music).
Together, they form the core of the versatile ensemble, which performs a wide range of music but is particularly committed to contemporary music. The stadler quartet has likewise made it their goal to devote themselves to the preparation and study of contemporary works, including the most recent compositions. Since its founding they premiered around 150 works, many dedicated to them.
The repertoire also includes the key works and the standard repertoire of the 20th-century. However, the basis of their music-making remains the great works of the classical and romantic string-quartet tradition. This diversity has earned the quartet an excellent reputation on the concert stage, well beyond specialist circles.
The quartet greatly values their on-going collaboration with contemporary composers, including George Crumb, Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Johannes Kalitzke, Peter Ruzicka, Jörg Widmann and Chaya Czernowin. The quartet´s appearance in the Salzburger Festival and their numerous concerts and concert series in Salzburg ("ASPEKTE" festival, among others) serve to demonstrate yet again the quality of the quartet and their esteem in the eyes of the public and music circles.
One of the highpoints in the stadler quartet's career was their spectacular execution of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet in the Salzburg Festival.
The Four have toured Holland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Norway, Italy, Japan, Korea and Brasil.
The stadler quartet received the prize for "Neues Hören" or "New Listening" from the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum .
In 2005, the stadler quartet interpretated (in image and sound) Steve Reich´s work "Different Trains" for a documentary film about Betty Freeman.
The “Four Islands of the Dead” are musical “over-paintings” of “Four Serious Songs” by Johannes Brahms; a work of his later years, songs of consolation for the growing certainty, increasingly personal, of his insight into the transient nature of earthly existence. These songs are like places on a shore made safe by biblical texts, from which one glimpses a dark space, the space of the here-and-now. The idea of a hereafter in the course of modern history, with its progressive centuries-long tendency to secularisation, has become more and more diffuse, so that the phenomenon of death at present is often now entirely repressed; a facade of outwardly life-affirming diversions displaces the view to that area outside one‘s personal experience of time. Böcklin‘s “Islands of the Dead” is a suitable comparison here: what lies hidden beyond the shores of the island, behind silence and darkness, is no longer a question of faith, but has come much more a matter of imagination, of fantasy. The essential subject-matter is invisible.
Includes booklet with text by Johannes Kalitzke |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: KAI0012482 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Vocal Collection Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraLight and air in a state of constant, subtly detailed movement: this is also the nature of Sciarrino‘s music, as if it had soaked up all those delicate colours and adopted the mobility of air, captured its nocturnal buzzing-sounds with a net veil and transformed them into fluctuating sonorities, roaring and murmuring. One could almost think that the flickering odours of Mediterranean landscapes had entered the fleeting images of such music. Vague suggestions emerging from an old cultural realm, transposed into the present, lingering briefly and then disappearing once more. An interplay of sound and silence, free-floating fragments no longer within the domain of the unambiguous: one listens to them spellbound. (Lothar Knessl)
Includes booklet with text by Salvatore Sciarrino and Lothar Knessl |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: KAI0012172 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: World Music Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraThe Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa, born 1955, about his work: "European art says: Time should not pass. As in the cathedrals, which stand for eternity. Japanese art stays abreast of the times and says: transience is beautiful. A sound emerges from silence, it lives to return to silence." (T.H.)
Includes booklet with texts by Toshio Hosokawa and Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: KAI0012782 CDs: 1 Type: CD |
Collection: Vocal Collection 1 - Junge Deutsche Philharmonie - Lothar Zagrosek, conductor
2 - Claudia Barainsky, soprano / Gabriel Suovanen, baritone / Banchetto musicale, viola da gamba / Orchestre de la Suisse Romande - Marek Janowski, conductor
3 - Joan-Enric Lluna, clarinet / Orquesta Nacional de España - Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor
4 - hr-Sinfonieorchester - Pascal Rophé, conductor
5 - 7 hr-Sinfonieorchester - Peter Rundel, conductor
The five orchestral works on this CD communicate phenomenal colors and the intense sensuousness of mysterious formal progressions. Silence, shadows, absence: it is above all the darker neighborhoods of the human soul that captivate Sánchez-Verdú’s interest. Exploring marginal realms which, in their beauty and refinement of tone, contain both the brilliant light of Spain’s south and utter darkness: this is the art of composer José M. Sánchez-Verdú.
(Rainer Pöllmann)
Includes booklet with text by Rainer Pöllmann and Thorsten Palzhoff |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: DV-LSOJC CDs: 1 Type: DVD |
Collection: Opera Collection Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraRegion Code: PAL . Region 2 (Japan, Europe, South Africa, the Middle East)
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9 LB
DVD Format: DVD 9
Duration: 172 min. Concert, 49 min. Special Feature
Subtitles: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian
Sound Format: LPCM Stereo / AC 3 Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
A tribute to Verdi with the artist now known as 'the fourth tenor' recorded at The Barbican in London.
Il Travator: "Deserto sulla terra", "Tacea la notte"
Nabucco: "Overture"
Aida: "Pur ti riveggo!"
Il Corsaro: "Ah! Si, ben dite... Tutto parea sorridere" u.a.
Ernani: "Prelude - Mercé, diletti amici... Come rugiada al cespite"
Don Carlos: "Io vengo a domandar", "Prelude", "Tu che le vanità"
La Forza Del Destino: "La vita è inferno all'infelice..." u.a.
Otello: "Già nella notte densa" |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: TPDVD102 CDs: 1 Type: DVD |
Collection: Documentary Subcollection: Voices and OrchestraRegion Code: NTSC color broadcast system : Plays in all territories
Presentation: Wide Screen
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect Ratio
Duration: 53 mins
Language Note: Performance and commentary in Polish with optional subtitles in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Sound Format: Dolby Digital Stereo
DVD Format: DVD VIDEO
Notes: Booklet with program notes and English translation of texts inserted in container.
The Symphony actually dates from 1976 when Górecki was (as he tells us in the film) a 'non-person' in the political sense, when his music was banned in his native Katowice in Poland. He told me that its inspiration had come from a book he had found about the Nazi occupation of Poland. In the footnotes there was an example of the different messages scratched on the walls of a Gestapo prison. One, written by a young girl, said only: "Mama, don't cry". Very simple. Nothing melodramatic or even tragic, but a heartfelt cry that scorched the soul. At an early performance in Paris, a music critic whispered in Górecki's ear "Merde!" At the first screening of the film in 1993, the then commissioning editor of music programmes on Channel FOUR said: "what rubbish is this?" Now, only a few years later, no-one can remember either of their names. Melvyn Bragg showed the film on The South Bank Show, and even managed to persuade the hierarchy of ITV that it would be an abomination to disrupt the film with any commercial breaks for, say, Durex. The 53 minute film was shown uninterrupted, an acceptance perhaps of the urgency of its content. "I wanted to express a great sorrow", Górecki says. "The war...the rotten times under Communism...our life today...the starving. What madness! This sorrow, it burns inside me. I cannot shake it off". |
21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: TPDVD103 CDs: 1 Type: DVD |
Collection: Documentary Region Code: NTSC Plays in all territories
Medium:DVD Video
Presentation: Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Subtitles: French, Italian, German, Spanish
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect Ratio
Duration: 92 mins
There are so many astonishing facts about Maria Callas...
First, she was born not in Greece but in Manhattan and went to school there. Second, considering her colossal influence and in contrast to the pumped-up, preposterous, overpaid pipsqueak divas of today, her actual international career was tiny - 18 years at most. Third, and in spite of her reputation, her cancellation record was the lowest of any great singer of her day. Fourth, she rarely looked at the conductor during an opera, simply because she could not see him - she was very short-sighted, and often appeared (partly as a result) to be in a trance while on stage. Fifth, she was betrayed by most of those intimate with her throughout her life, and eventually abandoned by many of those who should have known better and who claimed to have loved her. Sixth, she died almost penniless - even her grotesquely rich long-time lover, Onassis, whose marriage to Jackie Kennedy she only discovered by watching the 6 o'clock news, had invested her money in half a cargo boat, which sank. Paradoxically, although she died 30 years ago, her records today outsell every other recorded classical artist, and single handedly keep EMI Classics afloat. Last, hers was not the most beautiful voice of her time, as she frequently admitted. Some days it worked; other days it just didn't.
In the end, those who met her in Paris in the seventies agree that she was one of the loneliest, most desperate of women they had ever encountered, slowly drugging herself to death. "Every day, thank God, is one day less", she told Di Stefano. A summons to tea (for half an hour at most) often lasted until the early hours, with the guest or guests pleaded with not to leave.
It was pathetic and horrible, but it was Callas. It was always Callas, and that was the secret and the magic. We witness on stage a broken woman who sings nakedly from her heart, about herself and her life, who acts with such incredible power and unashamed truth that we stagger back before what we know, in our hearts, is all of her. No artifice here; no vulgar posturings to which her absurd imitators - and there are many - aspire. Gheorghiu, Battle, Garrett - they cannot touch her hem.
Maria - just a woman, who often spoke of Callas in the third person, in trouble, asking, begging sometimes, for our understanding and our love. She deserves it, because there was no greater singing actress in our time. And she was only 53 when she died.Tony Palmer |
21.00 eur Buy |
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