Description: Mozart Edition: The Complete Works will make a great gift this Holiday season for the music lover in your life or someone who is hard to buy for. This collection contains 170 discs of completed works by Mozart in one beautiful package. Also included is a cd-rom containing essays on his works, artist bio's, text and libretti's. At this super low price all music lovers will enjoy the Symphonies - Concertos - Serenades - Divertimenti - Dances - Chamber Music - Church Sonatas - String Ensembles - Violin Sonatas - Keyboard Works - Sacred Works - Concert Arias - Songs - Canons and Operas in this collection.
Description: Luciano Pavarotti is the most popular and well-known classical artist he is one of the artists who is truly known as a household name. This recording features duets with the biggest names in pop music. This is the first time these tracks have been brought together in one release.
Description: Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, who has enchanted audiences for two decades with his breathtaking playing and tone of rare opulence, has recorded Antonio Vivaldi's concertos The Four Seasons. Widely considered as one of the premiere violinists of his generation, Bell is joined on this studio release by the celebrated musicians of the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields, who toured the work with him prior to the recording sessions. This recording of The Four Seasons is coupled with another masterpiece of Baroque virtuosity, Giuseppe Tartini's The Devil's Trill. The liner notes by Linda Kobler explain the curious genesis of Tartini's piece and the indisputable place of Vivaldi's concertos in the history of sonata composition.
Description: This CD is a compilation of (mainly) devotional music sung by Pavarotti when he was in or near his prime, most going back, gloriously, to 1976. Precisely what Orfeo's lament (from the Gluck opera) is doing in a recital called "O Holy Night" is beyond me, but the rest of the selections are well chosen. The title song is gorgeously enough performed to be worth the album's asking price, the tenor's voice ringing out with great clarity and beauty, and the selection from Rossini's Stabat Mater is even more thrilling, with its ascent to high D flat near its close. Verdi's "Ingemisco," from his Requiem, is handsomely and sensitively delivered, and the others elections, with or without choir, are simply stunning. A CD for Christmas and the rest of the year as well. --Robert Levine
Description: Have some friends who still haven't discovered what the Sarah Brightman fuss is all about? You'll find the perfect introduction to make converts of them all in Classics, so they'll have no more excuses to remain clueless. Sporting a Botticelli-inspired image of the platinum-selling soprano on the cover, Classics is a classy anthology including highlights from three of Brightman's chart-topping releases along with seven new tracks. Songs personally selected by the diva as her favorite classical interpretations are culled from her previous blockbusters: Time To Say Goodbye, Eden, and La Luna. And whether you're a fan already in the fold or one in the making, the new material here shows the diva at the top of her form, in new renderings of "O Mio Babbino Caro" and "Nessun Dorma" (accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic)--fascinating displays of the operatic confidence she's developed over her career. Other new offerings include a touching version of Schubert's "Ave Maria,' "Winter Light," a fresh take on her signature song "Pie Jesu" (from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem). "Alhambra" and "Dans La Nuit"--a real treat, bathing the listener in Brightman's silky, sensuous vocalism--add two original titles to her famous adaptations of classical melodies to new lyrics (using Chopin's haunting E major Etude in the latter case). All told, a lovely affirmation of the directions Brightman has boldly taken in her career to date. -Sarah Chin
Description: When he was growing up, Andrea Bocelli recalls finding inspiration in a favorite recording of sacred music performed by tenor legend Franco Corelli. Bocelli--who in the meantime has come to inspire millions of fiercely loyal fans himself--returns to the genre as the guiding theme of Sacred Arias, the release of which coincides with the first English-language biography of the singer. These performances are filled with the singer's phenomenally well-known vocal signature: his flair for long, sweetly floating high notes and the gentle sense of cadence he brings to a melody. It's a mistake to compartmentalize Bocelli into a singer of "operatic" versus "popular" styles: in truth his approach is at heart the same. Lack of color and control in his phrasing remains a drawback, but the emotional empathy Bocelli evokes is never in doubt. The arias collected here sample some of the most famous devotional pieces: Schubert's "Ave Maria" and Mozart's transporting "Ave Verum," as well as an arrangement of "Silent Night" in which Bocelli tries out his English. There's also a decidedly odd choice of bedfellows for a program of "sacred" music, such as a song from Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder (whose "angel" is the object of an overpoweringly erotic attraction) and Handel's figurative ode to a tree, "Ombra mai fu." Still, Bocelli sings with an unfeigned directness that is sure to expand his already enormous following even further. --Thomas May
Description: This is an astonishing collection of works - or parts of works - by Mozart that covers almost every aspect of his creative output: symphonic, religious music, concerti (for piano, horn, violin, clarinet, flute), chamber music, serenades (for strings; winds), a couple of opera overtures and more. Those who know and love Mozart's music will not need this, but it's a great introduction, a great overview. The selections are well-chosen and interestingly organized, with familiar pieces splrinkled among some not-so well known. A good primer. --Robert Levine
Description: Having left medieval chant and somewhat later polyphony behind and moved, musically, across the Atlantic with their last CD (American Angels), the women of Anonymous 4 are still exploring. For their move up a few centuries, their impeccable tonal purity remains, but a decidedly American twang has been added to some of the folksier, Southern mountain-based tunes and revival songs. It's as accurate and enchanting as everything else they do. Their sense of history, the when and where of the music they perform, manages to avoid academic stuffiness: this music communicates. Hymns, ballads, and revival songs make up Gloryland, and the 4 have added superb instrumentalists--Darol Anger and Mike Marshall on fiddles, mandolins, and guitars--to the mix on about half the selections. Some of the songs are begun in simple solfege* (fa, sol, la, mi, etc.) and then are sung with the actual text. Some are presented as duets or solos, and "I'm on My Journey Home" is sung by all four women; some are simple, others delightfully rich harmonically. Irresistible. --Robert Levine * Often called "shape-note" singing because the tones were frequently notated in differently shaped symbols for teaching purposes (fa = triangle, sol = circle, etc.).
