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: There are worse things in life than making your acting debut on the much ballyhooed season finale of Ally McBeal, though teen operatic baritone Josh Groban doesn't seem destined to encounter them anytime soon. As the awkward high school student-client who asks the typically romance-jinxed Ally to his senior prom, Groban performed this debut album's "You're Still You" (adapted from film-composing legend Ennio Morricone's Academy Award-nominated score for Malèna, with lyrics by Linda Thompson) as a heart-tugging, literal showstopper. The young phenom was just 17 when veteran producer-writer David Foster tapped him to fill in for Andrea Bocelli at rehearsals for the 1999 Grammys, where Groban found himself suddenly dueting with Celine Dion.
Indeed, such were his fortunes that the young Foster protégé was forced to drop out of Carnegie Mellon when professional commitments--including this record--interfered. And if this collection tends to hew sometimes uncomfortably close to Foster's own MOR sonic instincts, the material offers enough challenges to display Groban's talent and the potential of his warm, mature voice: a lyrical take on another Morricone classic, "Cinema Paradiso"; melancholy readings of Don McLean's "Starry, Starry Night" and Albert Hammond's "Alejate"; masterfully dramatic takes of the Neapolitan "Alla Luca Del Sole" and "Canto Alla Vita," the latter featuring the Corrs. Many of Groban's performances here, including a neo prog-rock-opera take on Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (with Lili Haydn), seem both bigger and bolder than their precious musical frameworks, a telling hint that Grand Opera can't be far from his grasp. As said earlier, there are worse things in life. --Jerry McCulley
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: On her fourth album for Deutsche Grammophon, opera superstar Anna Netrebko gives a very personal and intimate performance of cherished lighter works. From sparkling operetta classics to seductive salon songs, each selection comes with a special memory for Netrebko. Netrebko is joined by some friends, Elı¯na Garancˇa and Piotr Beczala-- her joy of collaboration is heard in these magnificent selections. Anna Netrebko is one of DG's best-selling artists and consistently performs in sold-out opera houses and concert halls around the world. She returns to the Metropolitan Opera in January 2009 in Lucia di Lammermoor. Available in a special, deluxe limited edition package! The beautiful cap box includes the CD; a DVD of behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and musical excerpts; beautiful booklet; three postcards and one poster of Netrebko. A must-have for Netrebko fans and the perfect holiday gift!
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: Josh Groban in Concert has all the ingredients to be a long-running PBS staple: a young (21), good-looking performer with a golden voice; songs in Italian and Spanish for the crossover crowd (i.e., Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman) and pop and movie songs for the mainstream; guest stars galore (David Foster, John Williams, Angie Stone, Andrea Corr, Lili Haydn); a large orchestra; and striking but not obtrusive visual effects. The centerpiece of this DVD-CD combo (also available in a DVD keepcase) is the 80-minute concert DVD, filmed in Pasadena in October 2002 and featuring numerous songs from Groban's debut CD, including "You're Still You," which catapulted him into stardom when he sang it on TV's Ally McBeal. There are also two new songs--the ballad "Broken Vow," with Groban accompanied by Foster, and "For Always," with the orchestra conducted by John Williams, who wrote the song for the Steven Spielberg film A.I..
The 37-minute CD offers seven songs performed in the concert (including the two not on the previous CD, "Broken Vow" and "For Always"), plus "O Holy Night." The DVD has excellent picture and sound (PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, and DTS), interviews, and backstage footage, and the combination with the CD is an excellent value. Groban's fans, of course, will consider it a treasure at any price. --David Horiuchi
Description: Here's a feast of great tenor singing. It's also a feast of thrills--one selection after another offers Pavarotti's remarkable, full-throated excitement in the music, whether the infectious spirit of his renditions of Neapolitan songs or the trumpet-like High C's he effortlessly tears off in the extended scene from Donizetti's La fille du regiment. Apparent throughout is Pavarotti's big-hearted emotional generosity that infuses this superb collection with an immediacy and communicative power that's impossible to resist. Of course, "Nessun dorma!" is here to lead off the set with the tenor's biggest hit, but his other Puccini arias are, if anything, even more compelling. Verdi is represented by such well-loved Pavarotti favorites as "La donna è mobile" and "Questa o quella" from Rigoletto. He's as compelling in the "Ingemisco" from Verdi's Requiem, the voice blooming in the "Inter oves" section and then fined down to a gorgeous pianissimo. But there's not a single weak track on these discs, whose attractions are enhanced by full texts and translations. --Dan Davis
