It’s about time. And isn’t it interesting that the orchestra has chosen to showcase Levine’s recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë, a party piece for former BSO maestro Charles Munch? Both of Munch’s commercial recordings with the BSO are among the greatest glories of the RCA Red Seal catalogue, and an extraordinary 1962 stereo aircheck from Tanglewood has also circulated among collectors for some time. Full press release below the break…
Category Archives: Classical Music, Recorded
David Patrick Stearns on RCO Live’s SACDs
One of the best music critics in America weighs in on the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s outstanding SACD series. DPS cites the Debussy/Dutilleux disc conducted by music director Mariss Jansons an all-Berg program conducted by Daniele Gatti, and I’m also mighty impressed…
Some Holiday Cheer…
… from the dawn of the electrical recording era: Vaughan Williams’s wonderful arrangement of the Gloucestershire Wassail as recorded in 1926 or 1927 by the English Singers, courtesy of Mickey Clark.
UPDATE, 2009:
Looks like the YouTube police pulled it. Good thing I kept the audio track!
{enclose VaughanWilliams.GloucestireshireWassail.EnglishSingers_eq.mp3}
DG Dumps Li
Sybille Werner forwarded Benjamin Ivry’s WSJ article reporting Team Yellow’s decision to dump arguably their most interesting young artist, Yundi Li. [more]
Two decades before Thomas Edison recorded sound on tinfoil…
… Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville was making recordings with the phonautograph. A century and a half later, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory devised a way to play them back. Read the article here.
New York Polyphony’s I Sing the Birth
With a little help from Avie Records‘ Simon Foster, remarkable producer Malcolm Bruno, and a few friends – including Anonymous 4 alumna Ruth Cunningham – New York Polyphony, a quartet of gentlemen who bring a highly individualistic sound and passionate musicality to a millennium of vocal music, have issued their first CD: a program of music for the festive season. You can order a copy here.
Full disclosure: I’m marketing advisor to Avie’s US distributor.
FT raves about Pinnock’s new Brandenburgs
My client Forte Distribution is distributing Trevor Pinnock’s new recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, just released on the UK’s hottest classical indie label, Avie. FT‘s Andrew Clark calls them “my first-choice recording of the Brandenburgs.” You can buy them here.