Classical CDs

JUST OUT

Wagner: Love Duets. Deborah Voigt, soprano; Placido Domingo, tenor; Orchestra of Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano, conductor, EMI. Complementing Domingo’s Wagner concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this month, this CD pairs two of Wagner’s most voluptuous love duets, Act III, Scene 3 from “Siegfried,” and Act II, Scene 2 from “Tristan und Isolde,” the latter containing, incredibly, the first recording of the composer’s long-lost concert ending.

J.S. Bach: Transcriptions. Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor. Sony. Salonen tries to break down the wall that the period-performance-practice crowd has built between Baroque music and modern symphonic ensembles. And he does so with a most unusual collection of Bach transcriptions by Stokowski, Elgar, Webern, Schoenberg and Mahler, the first time all of them have shared a single disc.

J.S. Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites Nos. 1, 2 and 5. Edgar Meyer, double bass. Sony. Though the massive size of his instrument creates huge technical problems in this music, Meyer makes it all sound easy as he tackles half of Bach’s monumental cello suites on the double bass.

SEPTEMBER

Wagner: “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.” Daniel Barenboim, conductor, 1999 Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus. Teldec. In the flagship of a large release of Barenboim recordings, this committed Wagnerian adds another of the composer’s operas to his catalog, recorded live in the house that Wagner built, the Festspielhaus.

Beethoven: “Diabelli” Variations. Maurizio Pollini, piano. Deutsche Grammophon. Pollini thrives on intellectually and technically challenging late Beethoven canvases like this, a lengthy span of 33 variations on a carefree tune by Anton Diabelli.

L. Bernstein: “White House” Cantata. June Anderson and Barbara Hendricks, sopranos; Thomas Hampson, baritone; London Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon. The “White House” Cantata is a posthumous reworking of “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” the 1976 Broadway musical that closed ignominiously after only seven performances and promptly vanished. Yet bootleg recordings of the show reveal a witty, tuneful, at times deeply moving score, and this concert version may finally redeem what had been the great black hole in Leonard Bernstein’s catalog.

“Teresa Sterne.” Various Artists. Nonesuch. Now here’s a rare bird, an album honoring a record executive from the label that fired her in 1980! As penance for ousting its guiding light in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Nonesuch devotes Disc One to recordings of Sterne as a child prodigy pianist made from 1938 to 1951, while including some choice recordings made under her regime at Nonesuch by Paul Jacobs, Joshua Rifkin, Jan DeGaetani and others on Disc Two.

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3; solo piano pieces. Arcadi Volodos, piano; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, James Levine, conductor. Sony. The young Russian pianist whom some dazzled listeners are already comparing to Horowitz now tackles one of the latter’s signature pieces live in Berlin at lightning tempos.

“1000: A Mass for the End of Time.” Anonymous 4. Harmonia Mundi. For those who haven’t had enough of millennium fever yet, Anonymous 4’s four female singers offer this ethereal look back at a previous turn of the calendar, a speculative re-creation of an Ascension Mass from late-10th and early-11th century British and French sources.

Shostakovich: 25th Anniversary Edition. Le Chant du Monde. This 15-CD series, coming 25 years after the composer’s death, contains electrifying live tapes of symphonies led mostly by Yevgeny Mravinsky, vintage renditions of several quartets, and new, often unusual recordings from Moscow, including the rarely heard, unfinished comic opera, “The Gamblers.”

From One Century to the Next: Great Composers of the 20th Century. Pierre Boulez, Charles Munch, Herbert Kegel and others, conducting. Naive-Montaigne. It’s foolish to expect a comprehensive survey of 20th century music on three CDs, yet this mini-box actually makes a brave stab at it, focusing on iconoclasts and innovators. Disc One launches the set in the early-20th century ethos of Mahler, Debussy, Sibelius and others; Disc Two revolves around Schoenberg, his disciples, and various Frenchmen; and Disc Three is courageously, sometimes wildly avant-garde.

“Copland the Populist and Modernist.” San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor. RCA Red Seal. Just ahead of Copland’s 100th birthday (Nov. 14), here are two recent Tilson Thomas Copland albums--one devoted to tough-minded orchestral works, the other to popular ballets augmented with unreleased material and an interview with the conductor about Copland.

OCTOBER

Composer Portrait Series, Phyllis Bryn-Julson (soprano), Southwest Chamber Music (Cambria). This may be the chamber music release of the year an ambitious 12-CD box of new and unfamiliar music by 17 composers, most of whom are or were Californians. Spanning a wide range of idioms, recorded mostly in the Colburn School’s acoustically superb Zipper Concert Hall, the set contains several world premiere recordings including nearly every work commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music in its first decade and fills many neglected gaps in the catalog.

“Glass: Symphony No. 5: Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanskaya.” Vienna Radio Symphony, Morgan State University Choir, Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir, Dennis Russell Davies conductor. Nonesuch. Prior to its West Coast premiere in Orange County Oct. 13, Philip Glass’ fans can hear a sneak preview of his most ambitious symphony to date, a 101-minute piece for orchestra, chorus, children’s chorus and five singers.

Adams: “Century Rolls,” “Lollapalooza,” “Slonimsky’s Earbox.” Emanuel Ax, piano, Cleveland and Halle Orchestras, Christoph von Dohnanyi and Kent Nagano, conductors. Nonesuch. John Adams’ new piano concerto receives its first recording here, while the other two boisterous orchestral workouts are from 1999’s 10-CD John Adams’ “Earbox” set.

Boulez: “Sur incises”; “Messagesquisse.” Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon. Boulez leads the first recording of his “Sur incises,” a toccata-like work of bursting, blurring colors for the unusual combination of three pianos, three harps and three percussionists.

Mahler: Symphony No. 3. Deutsches Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, Kent Nagano, conductor. Teldec. The principal-conductor-designate of Los Angeles Opera takes on a Mahler symphony on CD for the first time--the longest, most varied, and fervently pantheistic work in the cycle.

Recital 2000. Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; Lambert Orkis, piano Deutsche Grammophon. Drawing from the repertory of her much-touted year 2000 tour, Mutter continues her energetic exploration of music from the 20th century.

Kancheli: “Simi”; “Magnum Ignotum.” Mstislav Rostropovich, cello, Royal Flanders Philharmonic, Jansug Kakhidze, conductor. ECM New Series. Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is most noted for his sudden dynamic contrasts and slow, meditative tempos. In the Georgian language, simi means string, and Rostropovich describes the work as “a very personal, sacred, organic piece.” “Magnum Ignotum” is written for wind ensemble, double-bass and taped voices.

Donizetti: “The Three Queens.” Beverly Sills, soprano; Julius Rudel, Charles Mackerras and Aldo Ceccato, conductors. Decca. These classic recordings of Donizetti’s “Roberto Devereux,” “Maria Stuarda” and “‘Anna Bolena” have been curiously elusive, bouncing around from ABC to MCA to Angel, never issued on CD. After the latest round of corporate consolidation, they will finally turn up in a seven-CD box on Decca.

Schnittke: Violin Concertos Nos. 1-4. Gidon Kremer, violin, NDF Sinfonieorchester, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Christoph Eschenbach, conductor. Teldec. This is the first integral cycle of Schnittke’s fascinating violin concertos from Kremer, long one of Schnittke’s most fervent champions.

NOVEMBER

Verdi Limited Edition Boxed Set. Teatro Alla Scala, Riccardo Muti, conductor. EMI. The centennial of Verdi’s death in 2001 is the next major-composer milestone on the music-world calendar, and EMI is devoting three CDs to Muti’s large catalog of Verdi recordings as he prepares to conduct six of the operas, plus the Requiem, during La Scala’s 2000-01 season.

Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies. Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon. We hear that record companies supposedly aren’t undertaking massive projects in well-worn repertory like this anymore, but here comes another Beethoven cycle anyway, Abbado’s second for DG and the seventh in the label’s catalog.

Keiser: “Croesus.” Dorothea Reschmann, soprano; Werner Gura, tenor; Roman Trekel, baritone; Klaus Hger, bass; Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS-Kammerchor, Rene Jacobs, conductor. Harmonia Mundi. A spirited recording of a musically sparkling yet virtually unknown 1730 Baroque opera by Hamburg’s Reinhard Keiser, based on the tale of the wealthy Lydian king.

Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (Mazzetti performing edition). Cincinnati Symphony, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, conductor. Telarc. Remo Mazzetti Jr.’s performing editions of Mahler’s emotionally wrenching unfinished symphony have emerged as the most prominent challengers to the less-elaborate versions by the late Deryck Cooke. This is the first recording of Mazzetti’s latest edition and Mahler buffs should have a field day sorting out the differences.