September 21, 2006

Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi

There are a lot of sonically spectacular recordings out there (Karajan's DG recording with the Berlin Philharmonic is just one to mention), but this one has to be a sentimental favorite. Not only is Toscanini conducting music of his close countryman, Ottorino Respighi, but it's music he loved so much that he programmed it quite often.  There is a suppleness and physical energy that is surprising from such a historic recording.  The fidelity is quite impressive as well.  The Pines of Rome is obviously paired with the other Roman Trilogies: Roman Festivals and The Fountains of Rome.

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January 27, 2007

Call me a cultural chauvinist, but it is inherently pursuasive having a Russian conductor interpreting a Russian composer with a Russian orchestra.  It doesn't always work, but in this case, the great Russian maestro Gennadi Rozhdestvensky captures the essetial mood and drama of this piece.  It's one of those performances in which the orchestra seems "conductorless", and the expression seems from the heart.  Incredibly, the maturity of this work totally belies the fact that it is Shostokovich's first effort in writing a symphony.  It is paired with much less familiar Symphony no. 3, which is a real treat. The quality of the recording is very good.

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March 24, 2007

In 2000, the beginning of the Asian art film wave hit an incredible crescendo with the success of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."  Besides winning countless awards, this film demonstrated that an Asian film with an exclusive Asian theme and aesthetic could be a worldwide financial success.  Winner of the Academy's "Best Original Score" award, Tan Dun's future success was sealed with this ethnically derived and influenced music.  The "soul" of this performance is Yo-Yo Ma's plaintive interpretation, and grounds this work successfully on both sides of the Pacific.  This score does what very few East-West artistic marriages attempt to do; create an expression that does not seem obviously derivative while treating both perspectives with dignity and uncommon imagination.

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May 3, 2007

There is simply no other conductor who can conduct Leonard Bernstein's music like Bernstein himself.  The reasons are clear.  He was an artist who was uniquely blessed with the ability to speak to his generation and to interpret music like a river cascades from a waterfall.  His music is so reflective of his specific and widely diverse passions: his religion; his love of popular music including jazz, rock and Broadway; his obsession with Gustav Mahler; his wildly exuberant zest for life; his desire to express profound intellectual ideas through music. What conductor can embody all of that?  It's almost too much to ask.

So there is only one conductor that one can turn to when finding the essence of his music.  For any technical flaws or quixotic and strange interpretive decisions, the bond between composer and his notes are unmistakable. Just as Brahms was the same composer of both the Academic Festival and the Tragic Overtures, this CD shows the manic virtuosity with which Bernstein often wrote.  The deeply painful and tragic score to "On the Waterfront" perfectly captures the blending of high art and soulful angst that many Hollywood composers tried to emulate during the 1950s.  Like Beethoven, Bernstein's music is at his most powerful when portraying the human condition and the struggle for the ideal.

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