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ID: RCD26845
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection: Jazz
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
Recorded in 1934 - 1941
Celestine CALL, vocal (1,2) / Vladimir FRANK, whistling (3) / Vera KRASOVITSKAYA, vocal (17, 19) / Vladimir KOSTYLIOV, saxophon (8) / Aleksandr Y. VARLAMOV, voice (4, 6, 9, 11, 13)
Catalogue RCD:
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It’s impossible to imagine the history of Soviet popular music of the 1930s without Alexander Varlamov - composer, conductor, and pioneer of jazz-dance ensembles. Each of his groups had its own unique sound, full of freshness and originality.
Born into a famous musical dynasty, Varlamov carried forward a family tradition of serving the arts. His great-grandfather, A. E. Varlamov, wrote many popular Russian romances still performed today. Following in these footsteps, Alexander studied composition with Mikhail Gnesin, Reinhold Glière, and Dmitri Rogal-Levitsky, receiving a top musical education.
Alexander Varlamov and His Jazz Orchestra - Voices and Orchestra-Jazz
Step into the sound of 1930s Soviet jazz - feel the swing, hear the history!
Meet Alexander Varlamov - composer, conductor, and pioneer of Soviet jazz.
In the 1930s he brought swing to Moscow with his dance-jazz orchestra and later formed the legendary “Seven,” a small band that became a school for young jazz talents.
Together they recorded unforgettable tracks - “Yellow Rose”, “Lullaby”, “Moon”, “Sweet Sue”, “Happy Hour” - capturing the energy, elegance, and freedom of an era when jazz was new and exciting in Russia. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: RCD26855
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection: Jazz
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
Czech Swing Music 1937 - 1945
Catalogue RCD:
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| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: KAI0012562
CDs: 1
Type: SACD
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Collection: Vocal Collection
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
World premiere recording
“... and every voice reaches listening ears”: When one blocks out the context of this formulation in Ovid’s brilliant description of the house of Fama, at the beginning of Book XII of his Metamorphoses, one can imagine without difficulty a person, who would find this so obvious an experience, that at first it hardly seems worth mentioning. But everyone, who understands the world by hearing the voices that reach their ‘listening ears’ gains thereby a similar experience, which for the most part we tend to block out, whether in the noisy urban environment or mainly in ostensibly quieter rural surroundings. With every perception, we select, order, classify or, during a visit to a classical concert, aurally ‘correct’ mistunings and overhear those fine overtones, out of which a fascinating cosmos of new sounds has developed in the past decade. Yet if one reads the Ovid rather more carefully, a strange and unique feature of the place described comes into view: it does not distinguish where a sound comes from, does not ask what it is, accepts everything that comes to it, and allows it to reverberate within, transformed into a gentle resonance. What Fama, the goddess of Rumour, then does with this wealth of information lies on a different page of course, and we will yet have to return to it. The open ear registers what comes to it without prejudice, and each listener should not just consciously activate it now and then with music. And Ovid’s image contains something else: the description of Fama’s house as a space filled with sound acts as an express reminder that, for one thing, without a space, sound would be unthinkable. For another, it records both the distance between what is making the sound and the place of its perception as well as the bridging of this distance through the expanse of space. In addition, that account evokes something which fundamentally distinguishes the auditory from other senses of perception: in opposition to the visible, sounds moving in space can freely develop, overcome obstacles without effort and intermingle with one another, without losing their own unique characteristics. In was Ovid’s incredible conception of a place to which all the events and sounds of the world come and find resonance that always fascinated Beat Furrer. (Daniel Ender)
Includes booklet with text by Daniel Ender |
| 21.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: TPDVD102
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
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Collection: Documentary
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
Region Code: NTSC color broadcast system : Plays in all territories
Presentation: Wide Screen
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect Ratio
Duration: 53 mins
Language Note: Performance and commentary in Polish with optional subtitles in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Sound Format: Dolby Digital Stereo
DVD Format: DVD VIDEO
Notes: Booklet with program notes and English translation of texts inserted in container.
The Symphony actually dates from 1976 when Górecki was (as he tells us in the film) a 'non-person' in the political sense, when his music was banned in his native Katowice in Poland. He told me that its inspiration had come from a book he had found about the Nazi occupation of Poland. In the footnotes there was an example of the different messages scratched on the walls of a Gestapo prison. One, written by a young girl, said only: "Mama, don't cry". Very simple. Nothing melodramatic or even tragic, but a heartfelt cry that scorched the soul. At an early performance in Paris, a music critic whispered in Górecki's ear "Merde!" At the first screening of the film in 1993, the then commissioning editor of music programmes on Channel FOUR said: "what rubbish is this?" Now, only a few years later, no-one can remember either of their names. Melvyn Bragg showed the film on The South Bank Show, and even managed to persuade the hierarchy of ITV that it would be an abomination to disrupt the film with any commercial breaks for, say, Durex. The 53 minute film was shown uninterrupted, an acceptance perhaps of the urgency of its content. "I wanted to express a great sorrow", Górecki says. "The war...the rotten times under Communism...our life today...the starving. What madness! This sorrow, it burns inside me. I cannot shake it off". |
| 21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: TPDVD103
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
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Collection: Documentary
Region Code: NTSC Plays in all territories
Medium:DVD Video
Presentation: Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Subtitles: French, Italian, German, Spanish
Color mode: Colour
Screen (Picture) Format: 16:9, Aspect Ratio
Duration: 92 mins
There are so many astonishing facts about Maria Callas...
First, she was born not in Greece but in Manhattan and went to school there. Second, considering her colossal influence and in contrast to the pumped-up, preposterous, overpaid pipsqueak divas of today, her actual international career was tiny - 18 years at most. Third, and in spite of her reputation, her cancellation record was the lowest of any great singer of her day. Fourth, she rarely looked at the conductor during an opera, simply because she could not see him - she was very short-sighted, and often appeared (partly as a result) to be in a trance while on stage. Fifth, she was betrayed by most of those intimate with her throughout her life, and eventually abandoned by many of those who should have known better and who claimed to have loved her. Sixth, she died almost penniless - even her grotesquely rich long-time lover, Onassis, whose marriage to Jackie Kennedy she only discovered by watching the 6 o'clock news, had invested her money in half a cargo boat, which sank. Paradoxically, although she died 30 years ago, her records today outsell every other recorded classical artist, and single handedly keep EMI Classics afloat. Last, hers was not the most beautiful voice of her time, as she frequently admitted. Some days it worked; other days it just didn't.
In the end, those who met her in Paris in the seventies agree that she was one of the loneliest, most desperate of women they had ever encountered, slowly drugging herself to death. "Every day, thank God, is one day less", she told Di Stefano. A summons to tea (for half an hour at most) often lasted until the early hours, with the guest or guests pleaded with not to leave.
It was pathetic and horrible, but it was Callas. It was always Callas, and that was the secret and the magic. We witness on stage a broken woman who sings nakedly from her heart, about herself and her life, who acts with such incredible power and unashamed truth that we stagger back before what we know, in our hearts, is all of her. No artifice here; no vulgar posturings to which her absurd imitators - and there are many - aspire. Gheorghiu, Battle, Garrett - they cannot touch her hem.
Maria - just a woman, who often spoke of Callas in the third person, in trouble, asking, begging sometimes, for our understanding and our love. She deserves it, because there was no greater singing actress in our time. And she was only 53 when she died.Tony Palmer |
| 21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: TPDVD167
CDs: 1
Type: DVD
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Subcollection: Opera
Region Code: NTSC. Plays in all territories
Classification: Exempt
Presentation: Wide Screen
Picture Format: 16:9
Sound Format: Dolby Digital Stereo
Language: English
Subtitles: None
Duration: 116 mins
Recorded: Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, Ravello, Siena, Bayreuth
Placido Domingo (Parsifal)
Violeta Urmana (Kundry)
Matti Salminen (Gurnemanz)
Nikolai Putilin (Klingsor) & Anna Netrebko
Tony Palmer’s documentary about Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Parsifal’, with extracts from Tony Palmer’s stage production of Parsifal starring Placido Domingo, Violeta Urmana, Matti Salminen and Anna Netrebko.
The Grail - the cup which Jesus Christ is said to have used at The Last Supper - is one of the most powerful symbols in Western culture. Wagner’s three-act opera, Parsifal, is the most famous work which celebrates the search for the Grail. Parsifal is an opera about ideas, about philosophical questions rather than answers, where the questions themselves are what is important, and the power and eloquence with which they are expressed. With the help of a rare interview with Wolfgang Wagner, Richard Wagner’s grandson, who explains what his grandfather intended and why, plus an all-star cast including the first performance on film of Anna Netrebko, this documentary explores the explosive nature of Wagner’s dangerous ideas. Wagner was virulently anti-Semitic - to this day, it is not possible to perform Parsifal in Israel - and thus provided the Nazis with some powerful cultural propaganda, because for Hitler, Parsifal, the hero of the opera, was pure Aryan blood. When the film was originally released on DVD, the Germans censored 30 minutes of the film which they considered ‘political’, ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘irrelevant’. This is the original version, uncensored, as approved by Domingo.
“It succeeds in exploring the legend of Parsifal quite brilliantly, while making it brutally relevant to us today.” John Ardoin, Great Performances (PBS)
Interviews: With Placido Domingo, Wolfgang Wagner, Robery Gutman & Karen Armstrong |
| 21.00 eur Buy |
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ID: PTC5186363
CDs: 1
Type: SACD
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Collection: Vocal Collection
Subcollection: Voices and Orchestra
Multichannel Hybrid SACD - DSD
Berg’s chamber music version of the Strauss waltz ‘Wine Women and Song’, Op.333 is considered one of the curiosa of his oeuvre, and even today is seldom performed. Coupled here with Berg’s more substantial orchestral works, Christaner Iven is a great singer and is equally talented as an actress. |
| 23.00 eur Buy |
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