Historical Periods


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Buy Now	Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies and Piano Concertos (more) »rank: 3771 from: EMI Classics : essential recording:Otto Klemperer's Beethoven is one of the towering achievements in the history of recordings. By today's standards, these performances are hopelessly old-fashioned: dark, heavy, and frequently very slow. But they are also the grandest, most unsentimental, most purposeful versions in the catalog. In addition, the relatively slow tempos (only in the fast movements--the slow ones are pretty swift) and forward wind balance permit more detail to be heard than in most original-instrument performances. At budget price and with the entire piano concerto cycle thrown in for good measure, this is greatness incarnate. --David ...	Buy Now	Vittorio (more) »rank: 3966 from: Decca : : Unlike Russell Watson, to whom he is being compared (along with Andrea Bocelli), Vittorio Grigolo is a real opera singer. He sang as a boy treble with Pavarotti many years ago and has sung in West Side Story, Verdi's Otello (the smallish role of Cassio), and Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff on stage in major opera houses. He is clearly a tenore di grazia--a true, light tenor, with a graceful, easy top, no sense of pushing or forcing--and would probably be ideal for the operas of Donizetti. But the crossover bug has bitten Vittorio. He ...
Buy Now	Hilary Hahn: A Portrait (more) »rank: 15648 starring: Hilary Hahn directed by: Benedict Mirow : : Unlike Russell Watson, to whom he is being compared (along with Andrea Bocelli), Vittorio Grigolo is a real opera singer. He sang as a boy treble with Pavarotti many years ago and has sung in West Side Story, Verdi's Otello (the smallish role of Cassio), and Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff on stage in major opera houses. He is clearly a tenore di grazia--a true, light tenor, with a graceful, easy top, no sense of pushing or forcing--and would probably be ideal for the operas of Donizetti. But the crossover bug has bitten Vittorio. He ...	Buy Now	Ravel: Boléro (more) »rank: 6900 from: Decca : : Unlike Russell Watson, to whom he is being compared (along with Andrea Bocelli), Vittorio Grigolo is a real opera singer. He sang as a boy treble with Pavarotti many years ago and has sung in West Side Story, Verdi's Otello (the smallish role of Cassio), and Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff on stage in major opera houses. He is clearly a tenore di grazia--a true, light tenor, with a graceful, easy top, no sense of pushing or forcing--and would probably be ideal for the operas of Donizetti. But the crossover bug has bitten Vittorio. He ...
Buy Now	Perpetual Motion (more) »rank: 42112 by: Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Evelyn Glennie, Joshua Bell, Gary Hoffman, John [guitar] Williams, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Sebastian Bach, Claude Debussy, Fryderyk Chopin, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Niccolo Paganini, Ludwig van Beethoven : :Bela Fleck is one of the greatest five-string banjo players performing today. Beginning in the 1970s, he honed his lightning-fast chops performing bluegrass, then moved on to contemporary jazz and fusion sounds. With this album, he broadens his horizons once again by performing an entire program of classical music transcriptions. Reminiscent of classical guitar albums by John Williams (who makes a guest appearance here), the disc traverses a wide range of repertoire--from Chopin mazurkas to Bach's Two and Three Part Inventions. Throughout, Fleck displays a feathery touch on his banjo, and his instrument offers a ...	Buy Now	Brahms: Concertos for Piano No. 1 & 2, Fantasia Op. 116 (more) »rank: 20517 by: Eugen Jochum, Ottomar Borwitzky, Emil Gilels : :These performances mount the only serious competition as a complete set to the Leon Fleisher/George Szell versions on Sony Classical. Emil Gilels was an extraordinary virtuoso who decided to place his technical wizardry in the service of the most disciplined and demanding classical masterpieces. No piano concertos live up to this description more than the two by Brahms. Himself a pianist, Brahms placed every purely musical stumbling block that he could in front of the soloist--only audiences never notice because there's no gratuitous display at all. A performer who has not mastered these pieces doesn't ...
Buy Now	Ludwig van Beethoven: 9 Symphonien (more) »rank: 1519 by: Gundula Janowitz, Waldemar Kmentt, Hilde Rossel-Majdan : essential recording:By general consensus, Herbert von Karajan's first (1963) Beethoven cycle for Deutsche Grammophon is the best of the four (!) that he recorded. The Berlin Philharmonic was in top form, and they had not yet made an artistic fetish out of the bland smoothness that typified the conductor's later recordings of this music (and just about everything else). Karajan's squeaky clean, emotionally cool Beethoven will always be something of an acquired taste, but this set makes the best possible case for it. --David Hurwitz	Buy Now	World's Very Best Opera for Kids... in English! (more) »rank: 7888 from: Children's Group : essential recording:By general consensus, Herbert von Karajan's first (1963) Beethoven cycle for Deutsche Grammophon is the best of the four (!) that he recorded. The Berlin Philharmonic was in top form, and they had not yet made an artistic fetish out of the bland smoothness that typified the conductor's later recordings of this music (and just about everything else). Karajan's squeaky clean, emotionally cool Beethoven will always be something of an acquired taste, but this set makes the best possible case for it. --David Hurwitz
Buy Now	Horowitz in Hamburg: The Last Concert (more) »rank: 27847 by: Vladimir Horowitz :Album Description:First-ever release in any format of this momentous musical event! In 1987, Vladimir Horowitz, the last of the keyboard titans of the 20th century, made a triumphant European tour, giving what turned out to be his final series of performances before an adoring public. The very last of these concerts, on June 21 in Hamburg, was recorded by the North German Radio. Apart from a single encore, no part of this valedictory concert has ever been issued before. This recording constitutes a unique souvenir of Horowitz's final public appearance, where the sense of occasion ...	Buy Now	Great Recordings Of The Century - Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Brahms: Double Concerto / Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Richter (more) »rank: 16485 by: David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Herbert von Karajan, George Szell : :Among the concertos of Beethoven and Brahms, these two have always been stepchildren. One reason is their extreme difficulty; both composers were pianists, so Beethoven wrote an idiomatic part only for the piano. Brahms's friend Joseph Joachim offered advice for the violin concerto, but not for the Double Concerto, which was written as a peace offering after a falling-out. The Beethoven Triple Concerto demands utmost virtuosity, as well as intimate teamwork among the soloists, and that is exactly what these three supreme masters of their instruments bring to it. Free--indeed unaware--of technical problems, they give ...