ORFEO International – Reviews
Important Releases Briefly Introduced
April 2020
ORFEO 5 CD C 992 205
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Lied Edition Vol. 1
Vol. 1 of the “Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Lied-Edition” presents Lieder by two almost forgotten song composers – Carl Friedrich Zelter (CD1) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (CD2), who owe their significance not least to their affinity to Goethe. [more...]
top April 2020
ORFEO 3 CD C 991 203
Richard Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten
Not many masterpieces have premiered at the Vienna State Opera. Die Frau ohne Schatten – the fourth collaboration between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal – make one of the few exceptions. [more...]
top March 2020
ORFEO 1 CD C 999 201
Ludwig van Beethoven: Missa solemnis
Historical recording from 1985. Michael Gielen ( †8 March, 2019) conducts the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Michael Gielen, who passed away in March 2019, can be heard in this historic recording from 1985 with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. [more...]
top March 2020
ORFEO 1 CD C 995 201
Sharon Kam: Weber, Kurpinski, Crusell
Sharon Kam presents three clarinet concertos of the early Romantic era. Among them a new interpretation of Weber’s concerto, more “Rossini-like”. The Weber and the Crusell concerto were both composed in 1811. [more...]
top February 2020
ORFEO 2 CD C 990 202
Amir Katz: Hommage à Liszt
Following Chopin’s Études and Schubert’s 8 Impromptus, Amir Katz now presents an all-Liszt programme on his fifth album for ORFEO. The booklet is written by Amir Katz and contains transcriptions of testimonies of Liszt’s students. [more...]
top February 2020
ORFEO 1 CD C 989 201
Leoš Janáček, The Diary of One Who Disappeared
Having explored songs by Mozart and Schubert on previous acclaimed albums, Slovak tenor Pavol Breslik now presents works by Czech composer Leoš Janáček in his fourth album for ORFEO. [more...]
top January 2020
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1903
Beethoven • Reicha: Egmont • Lenore
2020: 250th Anniversary of both Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized Dec 17) and Antonín Reicha (26 Feb). Beethoven is said greatly to have admired Reicha’s Lenore. While Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio remains at home
timelessly on all the major stages, concert audiences are usually only aware
of the relevant overtures of the other stage music by the great composer. [more...]
top January 2020
ORFEO 2 CD C 986 192
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Cheval de Bronze=Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Cheval de Bronze
Daniel François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was the most amiable French
composer of the 19th century. His sparkling and beautiful overtures were
once universally as famous as those of Rossini and Suppé. Historical recording from 1953, sung in German. [more...]
top November 2019
ORFEO 9 CD C 987 199
Andris Nelsons
Andris Nelsons, currently principal conductor of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, was discovered by Orfeo as someone to be promoted on album. Orfeo had engaged him to conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in recordings of Shostakovich’s two violin concertos with soloist Arabella Steinbacher. It quickly became apparent that, in him, they had one of the great conductors of his generation in the making, a development that took place at breathtaking speed. [more...]
top November 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 985 191
Auber: Le Maçon
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871) was long considered as one of the most typically French and most successful opera composers of the 19th century. His overtures were once favourites of the light Classical repertoire. [more...]
top November 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 984 191
#CelloUnlimited - Daniel Müller-Schott
After J. S. Bach’s solo cello suites in the early 18th century, the genre experienced a fallow period until Zoltán Kodály set the pace with a monumental sonata for solo cello in 1915. [more...]
top October 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 934 191
Schubert - Winterreise
With his 3rd Lieder album for Orfeo, Pavol Breslik sets foot on the Mount Olympus of German song with Schubert’s Winterreise. His recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (C737151) was internationally acclaimed, telling us that he has further depth of thought about the masterwork on this recording. [more...]
top September 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 983 191
Contrasts - Mozart Schumann Brahms Bartók Rechtman
‘Sharon Kam is a clarinetist with an exceptionally wide expressive range.’ – Edward Greenfield [more...]
top September 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 950 191
Baiba Skride - Béla Bartók
For her eighth album on Orfeo, Baiba Skride presents a programme of works by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. In addition to his own instrument, the piano, the violin remained the most important instrument for Bartók throughout his life. [more...]
top July 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 968 191
Daniel Müller-Schott: Richard Strauss
During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those cello works are critical to the composer’s development. [more...]
top June 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP1901
Louis Spohr: The Clarinet Concertos
In the 1830s, Louis Spohr was commonly considered undisputedly the greatest living composer. He was inspired to write his four clarinet concertos, which have always ranked among Spohr’s most popular works, by his acquaintance with the Thuringian clarinetist Johann Simon Hermstedt. [more...]
top June 2019
ORFEO 22 CD C980120
150 Years Wiener Staatsoper - The Anniversary Edition
The opera house on the Ring opened on 25 May 1869 with a festive performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It was an event that not only generated great excitement in Vienna, but also attracted considerable attention beyond the borders of the Hapsburg empire. [more...]
top May 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 982 191
Francesco Piemontesi
If the legend of the ‘sermon to the birds’ constitutes a magnificent example of narrative art on the piano, for this way of expressing extra-musical ideas solely with notes the three series of Années de Pèlerinage would seem to be a salient cycle in Liszt’s oeuvre. These ‘years of pilgrimage’ contain a total of 26 character pieces, forming a kind of musical diary for Liszt’s years of travelling. [more...]
top May 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP1902
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Orchestral Songs
Hardly any other singer was more associated with and devoted to the nigh 300 songs by the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Utterly convinced by the richness of Wolf’s oeuvre, Fischer-Dieskau took Wolf’s previously hardly heeded songs to many stages throughout the world. Reger was frowned upon as an ‘awkward traditionalist’ and ‘piece worker’, but Reger’s songs show a completely different, moving and profound side of the composer. [more...]
top May 2019
ORFEO 15 CD C 981 115
Raphael Kubelik, The Munich Symphonic Recordings
Von 1961–79 wirkte Kubelík als Chefdirigent des Symphonieorchesters des Bayerischen Rundfunks in München. Dort hatte er seine neue musikalische Heimat gefunden. Er führte das Orchester zu neuen Höhen und entwickelte eine einzigartige Klang- und Musizierkultur in der vollkommenen Vielfalt des Repertoires, von der Barockmusik über den freitonalen Expressionismus bis hin zu Karl Amadeus Hartmann und Benjamin Britten. [more...]
top April 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1806
Johan Baptist Vanhal: Missa solemnis, Stabat Mater
Like so many Bohemian composers, the eastern Bohemian Vanhal had moved to Vienna early in his career and can thus be viewed as a member of the select core of composers consisting of Haydn, Salieri, Mozart and Beethoven, to whom we owe Viennese classicism. [more...]
top April 2019
ORFEO 2 CD C 967 192
Johan Botha: Italian Opera Arias
In total 222 times Johan Botha was to be heard at the Vienna Staatsoper before his untimely death. His powerful, truly great voice shone like a beacon across the world of the opera. [more...]
top March 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP1804
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, Missa solemnis
Rafael Kubelik’s proverbial modesty and his creed of absolute faithfulness to the original work earned him many admirers, especially during his years in Munich as principal conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio (1961–79). It was less the person Kubelik that was venerated, but his interpretation of music [more...]
top February 2019
ORFEO 1 CD C 946 191
Skride Piano Quartet
The Skride Quartet was formed for a concert at Schubertiade Festival in 2016. Whilst maintaining their own high profile solo careers, their passion for chamber music unites the four of them. Within a short period of time they have grown into a close-knit chamber ensemble in great demand internationally. [more...]
top February 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1805
Masters of the Mozart Era
There are composers whose oeuvres shine so radiantly that other stars almost pale next to their splendour. This fate befell a whole epoch of composers, i.e. the ‘maestros of the Mozart period’. But, beside Mozart’s ‘sun’ there is so much to discover. [more...]
top January 2019
ORFEO 5 CD C 977 195
Alexander Glazunov: The Symphonies
Glazunov’s symphonies are a significant cycle within the Russian symphony, to which similar status should be accorded as the today considerably better-known symphonic cycles by his successors Prokofiev, Myaskovsky or Shostakovich. [more...]
top January 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1803
Béla Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3
Some of Bartók’s best-known works are collected on this album. All of them have written music history and decisively influenced classical Modernism. The composition of these works extends from 1927 (String Quartet No. 3) to 1945 (Piano Concerto No. 3). [more...]
top January 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1802
Bohemian Classicism
During the early Classical period, the focus of the European music world shifted. Whereas during the Baroque era Italy, France and Germany – the core areas of the courts of absolutistic rulers – had dictated the rhythm, the strengthening of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a new music aesthetics that departed from pompous Baroque ideas. Even at Mozart’s time, Prague was considered one of the most important ‘music cities’ in the world. The composers on this album also had a share in this development. [more...]
top January 2019
ORFEO 2 CD MP 1801
Johann Sebastian Bach: Solo Piano Music
Today, there is no doubt that Johann Sebastian Bach took Baroque music to its sublime zenith. Four pianists perform Bach on this album. They stand for different periods in interpretational history. [more...]
top November 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 952 182 I
Joseph Haydn: Il ritorno di Tobia
This unique performance of Haydnʼs biblical oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia, which is so rarely to be heard, is thanks to an unusual gift: the orchestra La Scintilla, which was founded as an “original sound” ensemble comprising musicians from the Zurich opera orchestra, had awarded Nikolaus Harnoncourt honorary membership. [more...]
top November 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 956 181 A
Schumann • Schubert • Reiter: Lieder
The Schwarzenberg Schubertiade can look back on more than forty years of music-making history, making it one of the oldest music festivals for the Lieder genre. In the true spirit of its co-founders Hermann Prey and Gerd Nachbauer, the music of Franz Schubert is the central focus of interest. [more...]
top October 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 953 181 B
Liederabend - Schumann, Brahms
The year 1974 saw some of the best artists of their time join forces at the Salzburg Festival to revive a repertoire that had long been neglected. The works in question were Robert Schumann’s “Spanisches Liederspiel” Op. 74 and Johannes Brahms’s “Liebeslieder Waltzes” Op. 52. [more...]
top October 2018
ORFEO 3 CD C 866 183 D
Georges Bizet: Carmen
When an event of such worldwide significance as the Salzburg Festival features a box-office success like Bizet’s “Carmen”, it is always newsworthy. But back in 1967, we should recall, “Carmen” was being put on at the Salzburg Festival for the very first time. The expectations were vast, and so no expense was spared. [more...]
top October 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 933 181 A
Trip to Russia
Perhaps the relatively small size of a repertoire is an advantage after all. The vast realm occupied by the leading genres – as in Verdi’s operatic oeuvre, Bach’s cantatas, Schubert’s Lieder or Haydn’s symphonies – seems so extensive as to make one despair of embracing it in its entirety. The cello repertoire cannot boast such wide expanses, and Daniel Müller-Schott seems to take real pleasure in making a virtue of necessity, in introducing us to great works of the literature and casting fresh light on each of them. [more...]
top September 2018
ORFEO 8 CD C 957 188 L
Wolfgang Sawallisch
Wolfgang Sawallisch, who was born on August 26, 1923 in Munich and died on February 22, 2013 in Grainau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, is known throughout the world and especially in his birthplace as a paragon among his generation of conductors and musicians, exemplifying a former world of music. After a thorough music education and a firm grounding in the art of conducting operas he soon began to assume more elevated positions on the music scene. [more...]
top August 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 966 181 B
Dmitri Hvorostovsky: Bellini | Rossini | Tchaikovsky | Verdi
Born in Krasnoyarsk in 1962, Dmitri Hvorostovsky is known to us only with snow-white hair. That – along with his precociously mature and sonorously dark baritone – made him almost ageless, as in his Eugene Onegin under Kirill Petrenko (2010) , who writes Tatyana a letter taking her to task for her passionate declaration of love and declining it, or his Prince Yeletsky a year earlier in The Queen of Spades, when he declares in vain his love for Lisa. [more...]
top August 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 932 182 I
Baiba Skride - American Concertos
“America, you are better off” – wrote Goethe in 1827, weary of German Romanticism and the “fruitless wrangling” of sterile debates. A century later, the New World experienced an unprecedented wave of migration consisting of leading figures, largely Jewish, from the cultural and intellectual spheres of German and Austrian life. [more...]
top July 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 936 182 I
Richard Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
Although Wagner himself made it quite clear to King Ludwig II of Bavaria that the Flying Dutchman was among those works of his deemed fit to be performed in Bayreuth, the “Romantic Opera in three Acts” was not staged there till 1901, as the last of those ten. 1959 was a special year in “New Bayreuth”: by producing the earliest, Wieland Wagner had now presented all ten works under his own direction, in the first “Ring-free” year since the 1951 reopening. [more...]
top June 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 931 182 I
Gaetano Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
The global careers of not one but two Slovakian singers were launched on March 23, 1978 in Vienna’s State Opera: that of then-27-year-old tenor Peter Dvorský, and above all that of 31-year-old Edita Gruberova, hers a career which has endured to this day. Despite her success there in the role of Zerbinetta just eighteen months earlier, she was then still an insider tip for such a large bel canto role. [more...]
top May 2018
ORFEO 3 CD C 951 183 D
Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
There are few artists who have dominated a particular vocal field of highly challenging roles unrivalled for so many years as the Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson in her highly dramatic roles in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. That dominance has continued to resonate in the decades since her retirement in 1984 and the years since her death in 2005. [more...]
top May 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 915 181 B
Bruckner, Symphony No. 7
Before the great wave of Bruckner conducting that has taken place since the 1970s, it was Hans Knappertsbusch (1888–1966) who stood out as unquestionably one of the most important Bruckner exponents, and Bruckner was part of his core repertoire. [more...]
top April 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 944 182 I
Franz Liszt, Années de pèlerinage
Francesco Piemontesi i s a pianist of exceptional refinement of expression, which is allied to a consummate technical skill. Widely renowned for his interpretation of Mozart and the early Romantic repertoire, Piemontesi’s pianism and sensibility has a close affinity too with the later 19th century and 20th century repertoire of Brahms, Liszt, Dvořák, Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and beyond. Of one of his great teachers and mentors, Alfred Brendel, Piemontesi says that Brendel taught him “to love the detail of things”. [more...]
top March 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 945 181 A
Widmann • Mendelssohn
Seldom has one heard one of the best known works of Mendelssohn, the brilliant Hebrides Overture, so wild, gruff and raw, so fissured even, as in this concluding instalment of Mendelssohn symphonies with Jörg Widmann. This is without question a thoroughly contemporary interpretation; we get the now universal sense of hearing anew that comes with period instruments, even though none are being played here. [more...]
top February 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 930 182 I
Gottfried von Einem: Der Besuch der alten Dame
The premiere at the Vienna State Opera in 1971 was an unprecedented success that, according to the reviews, by far outshone popular repertoire opera premieres of previous years, and the production staged by Otto Schenk enjoyed a run of 39 performances. [more...]
top January 2018
ORFEO 2 CD C 918 182 I
Mozart, Così fan tutte
Even in its opera-buffa manifestation, the utterly disastrous wife-swapping experiment in “Cosi fan tutte” so scandalized the entire 19th century, from Beethoven to Wagner, that desperate attempts were constantly made to conceal the work’s frivolity under any number of respectable rewrites. It was Hermann Levi and Richard Strauss who recreated the original work for Munich with through-composed recitatives instead of spoken dialogues. [more...]
top January 2018
ORFEO 1 CD C 929 181 A
von Einem, Philadelphia Symphony
The longer the modern era lasts, the older “New Music” grows, and the more versatile it becomes. Upon closer listening, one quickly becomes aware of the many byways and backroads of the genre, in addition to the principal trends, and one composer who trod his own path decisively, with great success, is Gottfried von Einem. Since his breakthrough with the premiere of his opera Dantons Tod (the death of Danton) at the Salzburg Festival in 1947, through to the composer’s death in 1996, many of his works have been performed on the international music stage, as witness recordings featuring the likes of Böhm, Karajan and George Szell on this label. [more...]
top November 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 937 171 B
Nina Stemme - Wagner
In the erratic and often short-lived field of vocal arts and opera within the already uncertain music business it is still occasionally possible and so heart-warming to experience an exceptional artist with a more permanent and positive future: the Swedish-born singer Nina Stemme is just such an artist. For the past fifteen years or so she has been enhancing the great music venues around the world with impressive continuity while growing in artistic maturity in the challenging, great, dramatic soprano roles. [more...]
top October 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 920 171 A
#CELLOREIMAGINED
On his new recording, the musician, who always demonstrates a verve and lively curiosity in his programme works, brings together three composers for his instrument to form a musical triangular relationship that is fascinating to experience and only possibly thanks to some nifty cross-fertilisation. The consequent easy accessibility and good audibility form a charming contrast to the works’ all but easy playability. [more...]
top October 2017
ORFEO 3 CD C 850 113 D
Richard Wagner - Lohengrin
In the year of the premiere of Wolfgang Wagner’s second Lohengrin the eponymous hero found himself in a tight spot. At the end of the 1950s Sandor Kónya had taken the scepter in Bayreuth from Wolfgang Windgassen as the principal Knight of the Swan; at the height of his career in 1959, Kónya featured on a recording opposite Elisabeth Grümmer as Elsa (Orfeo C 691063). [more...]
top September 2017
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2017
The more time passes, the longer becomes the period for which music recordings exist. The Salzburg Festival, established in 1920, was quick to exploit the new medium of radio – ‘the history of the Festival is the history of radio’ as the music journalist Gottfried Kraus wrote. [more...]
top August 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 935 171 B
Bayreuther Festspiele 1963
The well-known “classical” exception to the canon of ten Wagner works that can be performed on the Green Hill goes back to the master himself: it is of course Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. [more...]
top July 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 904 171 A
Wagner • Michael Volle
The roles featured on this CD are, in more ways than one, truly great ones – and the vocal and interpretational demands on the artist are of an equally high calibre. The fact, as J. M. Fischer writes in the booklet text, that the term “heroic baritone” has established itself in connection with these roles is recognition of the highly technical challenges – and simultaneously an understatement. [more...]
top June 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 919 171 A
Igor Stravinsky - Le Rossignol
Igor Stravinsky’s later stage works Mavra (1922), Oedipus Rex (1927/28) or The Rake’s Progress (1951) are more than matched by his early “lyrical fairy tale in three acts” Le Rossignol, which occupies a special place – due to its brevity at scarcely 45 minutes. It is also unusual for the fairy-tale subject matter, based on a story called The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen; for its language – the original was Danish, this recording features the Russian version, yet it was premiered in French in Paris in 1914. [more...]
top May 2017
ORFEO 2 CD C 916 172 A
Hans Knappertsbusch
Following on from the last Knappertsbusch release of a programme of pure Beethoven featuring Backhaus and the Vienna Philharmonic dating from 1954, Orfeo’s new double CD offers a recording of an entire concert performed in 1962. This recording features Géza Anda and the Cologne Radio Orchestra. [more...]
top April 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 922 171 A
Frédéric Chopin: Études - Amir Katz
“Oh, they are all dreadful.” Vladimir Horowitz’s admissions about the twelve Etudes op. 10 and the twelve of op. 25 by Frédéric Chopin, all of which he found dreadful, or to be precise, dreadfully difficult, are both revealing and disarmingly frank. [more...]
top March 2017
Mozart | Widmann | Mendelssohn
The second instalment of Jörg Widmann’s involvement with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and their recordings of Felix Mendelssohn’s symphonies is devoted to what is known as the composer’s Fifth, in keeping with the upcoming celebrations to mark 500 years since the Reformation. In fact, from a chronological point of view, this is Mendelssohn’s second symphony. Conceived originall, to mark the celebrations of 300 years since the Reformation’s “Augsburg Confession” of 1530, to play the work and the premiere never took place. [more...]
top February 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 906 171 B
Johan Botha
Johan Botha’s unfailingly radiant and yet powerfully carrying voice – notably in the middle register – established him over many years as a Strauss and Wagner singer par excellence, but most of all as a youthful hero, and not as a weighty heroic tenor. In fact Tannhäuser was something of a marginal role for him, but what a role! [more...]
top January 2017
ORFEO 1 CD C 899 171 A
Verismo • Krassimira Stoyanova
After her debut CD I palpiti d’amour (2008), followed by Slavic Opera Arias (2011) and a Verdi album (2014), the Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova now turns her attention to verismo. [more...]
top December 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 925 161 B
Mahler-Szenen 1
The fact that this rare gem was considered lost and was only brought back into the repertory in 1993 thanks to a great deal of effort is astounding (even more so considering the relative success it has enjoyed since that time): a chamber-music version of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony by the Schoenberg pupil Erwin Stein for his “society for private performances of music”. The work was reconstructed from Erwin Stein’s notes in his score of the original symphony and his correspondence with Schoenberg. [more...]
top November 2016
ORFEO 2 CD C 905 162 A
Konstantin Lifschitz – Daphnis et Chloé
As with his previous CD releases, in choosing his programme Konstantin Lifschitz is concerned not just to find an interesting idea linking the works, but also to bring out the impact of new aural versions. The title “Saisons russes” refers to the pioneering aesthetic and musical developments initiated by the famous impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the legendary performances given by his Ballets Russes company in Paris from 1910 onwards. [more...]
top October 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 903 161 A
Anett Fritsch - Mozart-Arias
It is not often that a young vocal artist releases a debut CD that is so “complete” or so convincingly conceived and finished to such a high polish as is the case with Anett Fritsch. What makes it all the more astounding is that she achieves this by singing arias from the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy of Figaro / Don Giovanni / Così, masterworks by a composer regarded and feared in equal measure for the complexity of his writing. [more...]
top September 2016
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2016
“Happiness is otherwise” – valuable new festival rarities
In a world obsessed with short-term gain and moving at an ever faster pace, the classical music scene cannot fail to be even more keenly aware of its special status – and recognize it as a great advantage that must be cherished and nurtured. The epitome and essence of such awareness may be found in festivals in which works well worth hearing are celebrated in performances of the finest quality, compiled into thematic programmes. [more...]
top August 2016
ORFEO 13 CD C 928 613 Y
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen • Rudolf Kempe
A Festival of Voices in a New Light
Richard Wagner’s Ring had been performed in the highly reduced version by Wieland Wagner at the eight Bayreuth festivals since the re-opening of the theatre in 1951, it seemed in 1960 that the time had come for a new production, a task placed in the hands of Wieland’s brother Wolfgang. Although his version – still sparing in comparison with today’s staging concepts – depended on its use of lighting and special effects, he took the opportunity to bring in a complete musical overhaul: direction of the production was given to the 48-year-old conductor Rudolf Kempe. [more...]
top August 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 902 161 A
Duo Sessions
Duets for violin and cello are what might be called the lowest common denominator of sophisticated solo literature and chamber music. Much as each member of the present duo intensively cultivates the chamber music repertoire, they are both first and foremost soloists – and are bound to remain so in the extraordinary technical and musical challenges of this intermediate category. [more...]
top June 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 889 161 A
Pavol Breslik • Mozart
When such an internationally celebrated singer as Pavol Breslik, an artist progressively adding to his repertoire, nevertheless keeps returning to Mozart, he is warmly praised by the critics and more than that, he has no qualms about his decision: “When I go back to Mozart after excursions into other repertoire – like Lensky or bel canto –and feel at home with Tamino, I know I have done the right thing.” [more...]
top May 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 913 161 A
Violin Sonatas & Pieces
On their new CD the Latvian Skride sisters present yet more composers from their extended Baltic homeland region. The uniting thread of the works on this CD is “finding one’s own sound”, something which each of the featured composers first had to find, and an element that the sisters effortlessly achieve as performers. All four composers on this recording share a close link with the violin, and all four had an ambivalent relationship with the German tradition. [more...]
top April 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 914 161 A
Mendelssohn Symphonies 1 & 4
Today there is an unbroken fascination with complete recordings, especially of symphonic cycles. So the quality of Mendelssohn’s symphonies, combined with their astonishing obscurity, makes them an extremely appealing project. [more...]
top March 2016
ORFEO 2 CD C 901 162 B
Knappertsbusch: Beethoven
Hans Knappertsbusch (born 1888 in Elberfeld) first encountered the orchestra in 1929 in Salzburg, but by the time of his death in 1964 they had together given no less than 210 concerts – not to mention innumerable performances at the Vienna State Opera. [more...]
top February 2016
ORFEO 2 CD C 907 162 I
Giuseppe Verdi: Un ballo in maschera
Luciano Pavarotti’s repertoire comprised only a few roles, but his performances and recordings of them wrote and rewrote history. [more...]
top January 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 898 151 A
Franz Schubert • 8 Impromptus • Amir Katz
When the pianist «HTML:
C 898 151 A»Amir Katz engages with what is probably the most popular group of piano works by Franz Schubert, he can draw on a considerable wealth of experience with the composer’s music. [more...]
top January 2016
ORFEO 1 CD C 897 151 A
Clarinet Concertos • Jörg Widman
When the clarinettist Jörg Widmann releases his first-ever recording of Mozart’s concerto, it is a special occasion in a different sense from what one might expect, given that this exceptional work is played and recorded so often. ORFEO is proud to be able to present Widmann’s first CD recording of this work, which is also the prelude to a series of further projects with him. [more...]
top October 2015
ORFEO 3 CD C 900 153 D
Richard Wagner - Lohengrin
This is the kind of lucky find of which collectors and producers dream. It’s not just a new find of a hitherto unknown or unpublished performance of the nth recording of a work by a sought-after interpreter, but the first release of the first-ever recording of a work by such an artist. [more...]
top September 2015
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2015
In a time when we have grown accustomed to the continual emergence of ever more, newly acclaimed wonder violinists, both male and female, it is all the more striking to hear recordings of the great violinists from just a few decades ago. Unlike today, they possessed much individuality of character, and were recognizably different in their style, technique, tone and musical approach. One of the most distinctive representatives of a violin “school” – of a kind that no longer exists today – was the great Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux. [more...]
top August 2015
ORFEO 4 CD C 917 154 L
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Hans Knappertsbusch is regarded today as one of the great Wagner conductors of the past. But we should note that this great Wagnerian, born in Elberfeld in 1888, the embodiment of the old German orchestral tradition, did not enjoy success at Bayreuth until after the Second World War – in fact, it was only after the War that he made his debut there. The paths of history can be tortuous indeed. [more...]
top July 2015
ORFEO 2 CD C 896 152 A
Nielsen • Sibelus - Violin Concertos • 2 Serenades
When Richard Strauss gave the world première of the heavily revised version of the Violin Concerto by his composer colleague Jean Sibelius in 1905, with Kárel Haliř as soloist, this marked the birth of a masterpiece at the second attempt, as it were. [more...]
top June 2015
ORFEO 1 CD C 831 151 A
Georg Friedrich Händel - Concerti grossi op.6
Michael Hofstetter has long been one of the most sought-after conductors in the world. He has a broad repertoire stretching over several different epochs, and in 2015 his invitations range from the Styriarte Graz to the Houston Grand Opera. The Baroque is undoubtedly one of Hofstetter’s main areas of expertise. [more...]
top May 2015
ORFEO 1 CD C 895 151 A
Tchaikovsky
When considering the symphonic output of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Manfred Symphony in b minor, Op. 58 (1885), composed between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, has all too often been overlooked. The latter two symphonies exist already in award-winning recordings from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Andris Nelsons. [more...]
top March 2015
ORFEO 1 CD C 872 151 A
Britten • Prokofiev • Shostakovich - The Cello Sonatas
This new CD by Daniel Müller-Schott and Francesco Piemontesi offers three sonatas for cello and piano. Their compelling, emotional performances sum up several chapters of 20th-century history that go far beyond the merely musical. [more...]
top March 2015
ORFEO 1 CD C 737 151 A
Franz Schubert - Die schöne Müllerin
Pavol Breslik has for a long time now been one of the most in-demand lyrical tenors on the world’s operatic stages – but nor has he neglected the concert scene or the Liederabend. His youthful yet masculine timbre, possessing clarity of tone and a timbre neither dark and baritonal nor overly bright, seems almost predestined for the world of Franz Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, his song cycle to texts by Wilhelm Müller. Breslik is captivating in this new studio recording. [more...]
top February 2015
ORFEO 1 CD C 864 141 A
Johann Sebastian Bach - Goldberg-Variationen
This live recording is being released 20 years after Konstantin Lifschitz’s final concert at the Gnessin School. He played the Goldberg Variations there as part of his school-leaving exams at the age of 17, and performed it otherwise several times in concert at the time. [more...]
top January 2015
ORFEO 3 CD C 846 153 D
Mozart: Don Giovanni - Wolfgang Sawallisch
Even at the big opera houses it’s a real stroke of luck if a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni doesn’t just have a charismatic Don, but a whole ensemble that’s able to exert its magnetism over the assembled audience.This rare constellation in fact came about in 1973 at the Munich Opera Festival [more...]
top November 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 887 141 B
Ferruccio Furlanetto
In the world of opera there are certain roles for every type of voice that can crown a singer’s stage career. For the basso profondo, these are clearly – and suitably – the majestic roles of King Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlos and Tsar Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky’s opera of the same name. Those who have sung these two roles on the great stages of the world are a handpicked group, and among their number is the Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto. [more...]
top October 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 873 141 A
Karol Szymanowski - Violin Concertos, Myths
Baiba Skride is almost unparalleled in her virtuosic, idiomatic mastery of the standard solo violin repertoire. But that is not all, for her concert calendar and her discography also repeatedly feature works by lesser-known composers. In September 2013 she played Karol Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto at the Proms in London, accompanied by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vasily Petrenko. [more...]
top September 2014
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2014
As every year, Orfeo’s Salzburg “Festival Documents” this year recall seminal artists from the history of the Festival. First and foremost here we must mention Claudio Abbado, who died in January 2014. He conducted many concerts and operas in Salzburg, and not just with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. He also led international youth orchestras to major successes at the Festival. [more...]
top August 2014
ORFEO 3 CD C 888 143 D
Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser
As so often in a cast that was assembled in large part by Wieland Wagner, we can here discern a balance between lyrical voices and a subtle, psychologically precise art of characterisation – which is particularly the case with Victoria de los Angeles, who sings the role of Elisabeth in a songlike manner, without any undue intensification towards a youthful-dramatic vocal interpretation of the role. [more...]
top June 2014
ORFEO 3 CD C 726 143 D
Raphael Kubelík
Rafael Kubelík’s reputation as one of the most significant conductors of the 20th century rests not just on his work with the great orchestras of Berlin, Chicago or Munich. Besides the recordings he made within the context of his duties as chief conductor, a series of interesting recordings also exists from the early 1960s with Kubelík conducting the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra. [more...]
top June 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 762 141 A
Johann Nepomuk Hummel - Septets
For several decades now, the Consortium Classicum has been recognized as one of the outstanding chamber ensembles with a variable formation. This is proven once again by the present recording of piano septets by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), in which the founder of the Consortium Classicum, Dieter Klöcker, participated before his death in 2011. [more...]
top May 2014
ORFEO 2 CD C 886 142 I
Richard Strauss - Elektra
Following on from the success of the scandalous Salome, it was with Elektra in 1909 – his first collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal – that Richard Strauss finally cemented his position as the leading German opera composer of his generation. Even today, the radical expressive violence of Elektra is regarded as paradigmatic of musical Modernism. The immense vocal and orchestral demands it makes remain undiminished, too. The number of singers who have really been able to meet the murderous challenge of singing the title role have been few and far between. [more...]
top April 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 855 141 A
Dvořák - The Cello Works
Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor is one of the absolute masterpieces of the genre, and every world-class cellist has naturally been keen to take it into his repertoire. This is also true of Daniel Müller-Schott, who in 2014 will be performing it in the great concert halls of Europe and in the Lincoln Center in New York. [more...]
top March 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 878 141 A
Andris Nelsons - Richard Strauss
In this year of Richard Strauss’s 150th birthday, it seems natural that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons should add another candle to the birthday cake, as it were, given that their recordings of Ein Heldenleben (Orfeo C 803 091) and An Alpine Symphony (C 833 111) were among the most successful, prize-winning recordings of recent years. This time, the CBSO and its music director Nelsons offer us a selection of the early tone poems: Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche and Also sprach Zarathustra. [more...]
top February 2014
ORFEO 1 CD C 885 141 A
Krassimira Stoyanova - Giuseppe Verdi
The year of Giuseppe Verdi’s 200th birthday might have come to a close, but his presence on opera house programmes has as little to do with such commemorations as does his general popularity. One of the most renowned Verdi sopranos today is Krassimira Stoyanova, who now presents her newest solo CD with arias by the composer. [more...]
top January 2014
ORFEO 3 CD C 876 133 D
Verdi: Don Carlo
Verdi’s Don Carlo was one of the few operas that Herbert von Karajan conducted time and again over several decades – in the 1950s, ’70s and ’80s at the Salzburg Festival, and in 1979/80 in Vienna in his own production, “imported” from Salzburg. In this live recording of May 1979 from the Vienna State Opera we can now hear Karajan’s Don Carlo with an absolute dream team. [more...]
top November 2013
ORFEO 2 CD C 861 132 I
Verdi - Ernani
Of all Giuseppe Verdi’s early operas, Ernani stands out. As later in Rigoletto, the composer here takes a play by Victor Hugo as his starting point, a play that despite its overwound plot (or perhaps because of it) inspired him to the most exciting, spirited music. To be sure, given the immense vocal demands it makes, a successful performance of Ernani needs an exceptional quartet of singers and a brilliant conductor. [more...]
top October 2013
ORFEO 4 CD C 877 134 I
Irmgard Seefried - Recordings 1944-67
Although we shall already be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Irmgard Seefried on 23 November 2013, this soprano’s magnificent artistry as demonstrated on the operatic stage, in the concert hall and in the genre of the lied is still remembered well by music-lovers today. [more...]
top September 2013
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2013
The requirements of running a festival must at times seem paradoxical: exceptional artists are gladly engaged time and again, but at the same time the uniqueness of their achievements is devalued by this repetition. [more...]
top August 2013
ORFEO 2 CD C 879 132 I
Richard Wagner
How time flies: it’s already thirteen years since Christian Thielemann made his celebrated debut on the Green Hill of Bayreuth with The Mastersingers in the year 2000. The notion that this work – which Wagner had not conceived for the acoustic of Bayreuth – could in all its counterpoint be made to sound so transparent in the Festspielhaus was an experience that was astonishing and enthralling to audiences and press alike. [more...]
top August 2013
ORFEO 1 DVD-Video D 874 131 V
Andris Nelsons - Genius On Fire
Andris Nelsons has never known indifference: as a child he practised the trumpet until his lips were bloody; as a youth he studied singing and learnt taekwondo; then he became an orchestral trumpet player and at 24 was appointed the General Music Director of the Latvian National Opera in Riga. Seven years later he was elected Chief Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. [more...]
top July 2013
ORFEO 1 CD C 854 131 A
Robert Schumann - Violin Concertos • Phantasy
When listening to this new CD with Baiba Skride, it is difficult to comprehend why the music world for so long had a negative opinion of Robert Schumann’s works for violin and orchestra. [more...]
top May 2013
ORFEO 1 CD C 875 131 B
Wagner - Die Walküre 1. Aufzug
In Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, the first act of the Valkyrie takes up a special place. [more...]
top April 2013
ORFEO 3 CD C 862 133 D
Richard Wager - Lohengrin
For a performance of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin to be completely successful, it depends largely on the “evil” couple who stand opposed to the Swan Knight and the girl he protects, Elsa. The 1965 production at the Vienna State Opera was acclaimed for its musical aspects, and on its opening night Christa Ludwig as Ortrud made evident why Wagner himself described this character as “terribly magnificent”. [more...]
top March 2013
ORFEO 1 CD C 865 131 A
Verdi - Piotr Beczala
The internationally renowned tenor Piotr Beczala celebrates the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi's birth with a collection of highlights that include the roles in which he has for years been acclaimed on the world's great operatic stages. [more...]
top February 2013
ORFEO 18 CD C 834 118 Y
Wilhelm Furtwängler - Wiener Philharmoniker - Wiener Konzerte 1944 - 1954
After Berlin, Vienna was the music centre to which the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler had the closest artistic connections. Under his direction the Vienna Philharmonic made a whole series of radio recordings that have now, for the first time, been carefully edited under the auspices of the Furtwängler specialist Gottfried Kraus and released by Orfeo on 18 CDs. [more...]
top January 2013
ORFEO 1 CD C 851 121 B
Bayreuther Festspiele 1954
Beethoven's 9th Symphony remains to this day the only work that does not belong to the Bayreuth canon - “Wagner's Ten”, so to speak - and yet has nevertheless been performed on the Green Hill along with them. [more...]
top January 2013
ORFEO 2 CD C 788 122 B
Sergiu Celibidache zählt zu den herausragenden und eigenwilligsten Dirigenten des 20. Jahrhunderts. [more...]
top November 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 852 121 A
[more...]
top November 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 847 121 A
[more...]
top October 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 859 121 A
Piano Duets - Christina & Michelle Naughton
Since their début as a piano duo in 2008, the twins Christina and Michelle Naughton have proved little short of sensational in concert halls all round the world. [more...]
top September 2012
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2012
However spectacular the Salzburg Festival may be, and however indebted to international stars, it is also remarkable for the sense of continuity it has shown over the years. [more...]
top August 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 848 121 A
Puccini’s Suor Angelica is one of the composer’s „problem children“. As the central work of Il Trittico, it is sandwiched between two dramatically more effective pieces. [more...]
top July 2012
ORFEO 2 CD C 845 122 I
Even as recently as the 1970s it was by no means certain that the biggest German opera houses would perform the works in their repertory in their original language. [more...]
top July 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 858 121 A
Soon after their first performance in 1950, within months of the composer's death, Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs became one of his most enduringly popular works. A setting of poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff, they afford the ultimate proof of Strauss's unique ability to write soaring melodic lines for the soprano voice. [more...]
top May 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 849 121 A
For her previous CD on the Orfeo label, Baiba Skride recorded two highly Romantic violin works by Brahms and has now turned her attention to two 20th-century violin concertos whose composers struck out in extremely individual directions while drawing on traditional formal models. [more...]
top April 2012
ORFEO 3 CD C 856 123 D
Herbert von Karajan famously resigned as director of the Vienna State Opera in 1964, but in May 1977 he was persuaded to return for a handful of performances with the company. His restudied production of Verdi’s Il trovatore opened on 8 May and was followed only two days later by Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in a staging previously seen at the Salzburg Festival, where it had been a resounding success. [more...]
top March 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 853 121 A
Dans la Nuit
Nicola Jürgensen goes “into the night” in her present programme, Dans la nuit, which takes its title from a song by Reynaldo Hahn. The clarinettist, who has appeared as a soloist with many leading European orchestras, while also making a name for herself as a chamber recitalist at international music festivals, has adapted these 19th- and early 20th-century French works for her instrument and recorded them with the pianist Matthias Kirschnereit. [more...]
top March 2012
ORFEO 2 CD C 836 112 B
Bedrich Smetana - Má Vlast
Although he was never one of the 20th century's most prominent conductors in terms of his festival appearances and recording contracts, Lovro von Matacic (1899–1985) was in many ways comparable to today's top conductors. [more...]
top February 2012
ORFEO 1 CD C 815 121 A
Miroslav Kultyshev - Edvard Grieg
It makes good sense for the young Russian piano virtuoso Miroslav Kultyshev to follow up his Orfeo recording of Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante with Grieg’s A minor Piano Concerto op. 16. [more...]
top January 2012
ORFEO 2 CD C 857 122 I
Edita Gruberova
If opera enthusiasts had to choose a singer as the quintessential coloratura soprano, the name of Edita Gruberova would be bound to come up. [more...]
top November 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 828 112 A
Johann Sebastian Bach - Klavierkonzerte BWV 1052-1058
Konstantin Lifschitz has long since established himself as an outstanding exponent of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has already recorded the Musical Offering BWV 1079 and the Art of Fugue BWV 1080 for Orfeo and has now turned his attention to the composer’s seven keyboard concertos BWV 1052–8. [more...]
top November 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 817 112 I
Richard Straus: Ariadne auf Naxos
Many productions at the Vienna State Opera can claim to be model interpretations of the works in question, and this is certainly true of the new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos that opened well over a quarter of a century ago in November 1976. [more...]
top October 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 816 112 I
Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata
Artistic risks facing a leading company like the Vienna State Opera are new productions of the core repertory. By 1971, when a new production of Verdi’s La traviata was staged under the musical direction of Josef Krips, the house could already look back on more than two hundred performances of the work since the end of the Second World War. [more...]
top October 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 860 111 A
Andris Nelsons - Tschaikowsky
A recent recipient of ECHO Klassik's award as “Conductor of the Year”, Andris Nelsons is now continuing his series of highly acclaimed recordings with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. More especially, he is continuing his exploration of Tchaikovsky's symphonies. [more...]
top August 2011
ORFEO 3 CD C 792 113 D
Antonín Dvorák: Rusalka - Franz Welser-Möst
The 2008 Salzburg Festival production of Dvorák’s opera Rusalka was outstanding even by the Festival’s high artistic standards. [more...]
top August 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 797 111 B
Press Conference CD Presentation David Afkham 27th of July 2011
Among the new generation of young conductors who have proved an international sensation, the German maestro David Afkham stands out for several different reasons. [more...]
top July 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 830 111 A
Slavic Opera Arias - Krassimira Stoyanova
Although she came to international prominence in leading soprano roles in Italian and French operas, Krassimira Stoyanova is equally at home in the Slav repertory [more...]
top May 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 829 112 A
Baiba Skride
Baiba Skride is not just one of the most sought-after artists when it comes to finding a soloist for one of the great violin concertos. She is also much in demand for chamber music. This makes her ideal for her new recording, her first on the ORFEO label, devoted to the work of Johannes Brahms. [more...]
top May 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 835 111 A
Britten - The Cello Suites
To be the dedicatee of a work by Benjamin Britten was a much coveted honour among 20th-century classical musicians. And for an artist to be the dedicatee of a whole series of works, then the musician in question must have felt exceptionally blessed. [more...]
top April 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 812 112 I
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
It took a long time for the Vienna State Opera to get round to mounting a production of the first version of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. One of the key works of the 20th century, the opera finally entered the Vienna State Opera repertory in 2009 in its original language [more...]
top April 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 738 111 A
Antonio Salieri - Harmoniemusiken
After having suffered from numerous legends that were negative to the point of defamation, Antonio Salieri has long been rehabilitated. He in fact shares many traits with his supposed competitor Mozart, if one takes a closer look at their dramatic oeuvre. [more...]
top March 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 811 112 I
Tchaikovsky: Pique Dame
In contrast to Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s other operas have led something of a shadowy existence in the repertoire. Only his penultimate music drama The Queen of Spades (also after Alexander Pushkin) can claim to look back on a continuous performing tradition in recent decades. [more...]
top February 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 833 111 A
Andris Nelsons: Richard Strauss
With his Alpine Symphony, Richard Strauss all but invited us to see it as a veritable “summit” in the genre of programme music. [more...]
top February 2011
ORFEO 1 CD C 752 111 A
Arabella Steinbacher
The Violin Concerto in D Major op. 77 by Johannes Brahms is for performers and audience alike one of the loveliest, most challenging examples of the genre. It was with this work that Arabella Steinbacher gave her debut in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein in December 2007, the same hall where the composer himself had conducted on occasion. [more...]
top January 2011
ORFEO 2 CD C 683 102 I
Anton Dermota
Is there anyone like him left today? And if so, where? The Slovenian tenor Anton Dermota was not just a member of the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera for over half a century. He was also a master of the stage and concert hall, celebrated all over the world. [more...]
top November 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 832 101 A
Tchaikovsky - Andriss Nelsons
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its music director Andris Nelsons here present their second Tchaikovsky CD for Orfeo. [more...]
top October 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 802 102 A
Johann Sebastian Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080
With such a “uniquely open” work such as the Art of Fugue, Konstantin Lifschitz cannot imagine there could ever be a single interpretation that would set the standard for all others. But whoever hears his new recording of this cycle cannot but reserve him a front-row seat. [more...]
top October 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 813 102 I
Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
Among the opera performances that deserve to be labelled “historic” is the opening night of the new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio unveiled at the Vienna State Opera on 5 November 1955. [more...]
top September 2010
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2010
The Salzburg Festival has always been diverse in its repertoire, and this is also reflected in the CD edition Salzburger Festspiel Dokumente in the year 2010. The series is this year dominated by birthday boys, among both the composers and the interpreters. [more...]
top August 2010
ORFEO 13 CD C 809 113 R
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Clemens Krauss’s appearances at the Bayreuth Festival were limited to a single season. The conductor of the world premières of four operas by Richard Strauss, he was – at the height of his career – in charge of the Bavarian and Vienna State Operas as well as the Salzburg Festival. [more...]
top July 2010
ORFEO 3 CD C 805 103 D
Charles Gounod: Faust
After its opening night in 2009 Gounod’s Faust became a real feast of singing. The conductor Bertrand de Billy was in the pit of the Vienna State Opera, and with his unerring mastery of style and idiom he enjoyed a triumphant success with the audience. [more...]
top July 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 814 101 A
Piotr Beczala: Slavic Opera Arias
In both the Italian and the French repertoires, Piotr Beczala has already enjoyed success among public and press alike at all the great opera houses of the world. [more...]
top June 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 789 101 B
Lucia Popp
Mirella Freni, who celebrated her 75th birthday a few weeks ago, is one of the utterly exceptional singers who have emerged from Italy, the home of opera. [more...]
top June 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 806 102 I
Mirella Freni
Mirella Freni, who celebrated her 75th birthday a few weeks ago, is one of the utterly exceptional singers who have emerged from Italy, the home of opera. [more...]
top June 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 810 102 A
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: Johannes Brahms
With an artist such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who has engaged successfully with the work of so many composers, it makes little sense to assign Johannes Brahms a special place in his repertoire. [more...]
top June 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 750 101 A
Felix Mendelssohn: Works for Cello and Piano
Chamber music is an intimate genre, that we know. But in the case of Felix Mendelssohn‘s cello works, it was also family-inspired. For his younger brother Paul was obviously a good cellist. [more...]
top May 2010
ORFEO 9 CD C 808 109 L
Friedrich Gulda - Beethoven
The appearance of a new, complete recording by Friedrich Gulda of the Beethoven sonatas – made before his two previously known cycles – can be regarded as a sensation. [more...]
top April 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 717 102 H
=Robert Schumann - The Symphonies
Robert Schumann the symphonist still stands in the shadow of Schumann the composer for piano and voice... [more...]
top April 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 787 102 I
Nicolai - Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor
Hans Knappertsbusch conducted a far broader spectrum of repertoire – at least in Munich – than his unique reputation for Bruckner, Wagner and Strauss might let us suppose. Knappertsbusch even left his mark on the Romantic comic opera The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai (after Shakespeare). He conducted it at the Prinzregententheater. [more...]
top March 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 804 101 A
Andris Nelsons - Igor Stravinsky
After their CD of Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky is the next great composer of the 20th century to feature in a recording of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under its music director Andris Nelsons. [more...]
top March 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 751 101 A
Peter von Winter
Posterity has not been kind to the composer Peter von Winter. He was a wunderkind in the Mannheim Court Orchestra who after its removal to Munich worked as its kapellmeister. But his music today is as good as forgotten. [more...]
top February 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 784 102 I
Verdi: Luisa Miller
It took a long time – more than 120 years – before Vienna’s opera fans were able to experience Verdi’s Luisa Miller in its original Italian. This first performance did not take place until January 1974... [more...]
top January 2010
ORFEO 1 CD C 764 091 A
Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996)
The criticism levelled at many composers of the 20th century, namely that they sacrificed personality to the requirements of their respective schools, cannot be made against Gottfried von Einem. Throughout his life he held fast to tonality [more...]
top January 2010
ORFEO 2 CD C 786 102 I
Albert Lortzing: Der Wildschütz
In comparison to French opéras comiques, German comic operas with spoken dialogue have always struggled to maintain a foothold in the repertory, a state of affairs that begs a number of questions. [more...]
top December 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 803 091 A
Andris Nelsons - Richard Strauss
For all its undoubted brilliance, Ein Heldenleben – especially at a first hearing – remains one of Strauss’s most problematical tone poems. [more...]
top November 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 598 091 B
Irmgard Seefried
Today she would probably be marketed as an all-rounder. After all, Irmgard Seefried was not only an acclaimed opera singer... [more...]
top November 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 785 092 I
=Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride
Vienna has played an important role in the performance history of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride ever since the work achieved its international breakthrough in the city at the time of the 1892 World Fair. [more...]
top October 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 760 091 A
Petra Maria Schnitzer • Peter Seiffert: Richard Wagner
To describe Petra Maria Schnitzer and Peter Seiffert as the dream couple of the Romantic world of Wagner’s operas and music dramas would be an otiose exercise indeed. [more...]
top October 2009
ORFEO 3 CD C 763 093 D
Felix Mendelssohn – The Complete String Symphonies
According to a well-known German proverb, no one is born a master, but this adage is hard to credit when the master in question reveals his genius at the tender age of ten. [more...]
top October 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 783 092 I
Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff
Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, the last opera of the Master from Busseto, is one of the most multi-facetted scores in opera history (and for that reason is perhaps one that needs several hearings in order to grasp it). [more...]
top October 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 781 091 A
Daniel Müller-Schott: Schumann - Strauss - Volkmann - Bruch
On his latest CD, Daniel Müller-Schott devotes himself to the cello’s Romantic and late-Romantic solo concerto repertoire. It is a voyage of exploration that offers things both known and worthy of (re)discovery. [more...]
top September 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 597 091 B
=Hilde Konetzni, Josef Kripfs: Songs
The recording conditions could hardly have been more dramatic. In the bleak mid-war winter of 1942-3, the lirico-spinto soprano Hilde Konetzni learnt a romantic song programme with Josef Krips as her accompanist and mentor. [more...]
top September 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 801 091 B
George London
It is not unique, but it will probably remain an occurrence as rare as it is welcome when the leading heroic baritone of his generation is also a master of the „small“, subtle form of the lied. [more...]
top August 2009
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2009
Ever since its launch in 1992, Orfeo’s Salzburger Festspieldokumente series has showcased particularly memorable performances from the Salzburg Festival, and 2009 is no exception. [more...]
top August 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 692 092 I
=Press Conference of ORFEO together with Bayreuther Festspiele on 8th of August 2009
Hans Knappertsbusch conducted Der fliegende Holländer at only a single Bayreuth Festival. Even in retrospect the opening night of the 1955 Festival seems altogether exceptional. [more...]
top July 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 642 091 A
On his visits to England between 1791 and 1795, Joseph Haydn not only enjoyed growing popularity, but also developed a taste for arranging folk songs from the British Isles. To celebrate the Haydn bicentenary this year, ORFEO presents a selection of Scottish songs performed by the soprano Julie Kaufmann. [more...]
top July 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 779 091 A
Adrianne Pieczonka
There’s no doubt about it. Adrianne Pieczonka’s diary for the next few months makes it clear that this soprano, long celebrated for her Wagner and Strauss roles across the world, is now also in international demand for the Italian repertoire. [more...]
top June 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 778 091 A
Arabella Steinbacher
It is rare indeed to encounter an artistic collaboration that is so harmonious and results in such fine music-making. In this recording a soloist and a conductor of the younger generation. [more...]
top June 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 780 091 A
[more...]
top May 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 761 092 A
Felix Mendelssohn - Early Concertos for Violin and Piano
Youth and maturity – that could be the motto of the first new ORFEO recording for the Mendelssohn year 2009, with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and its chief conductor Michael Hofstetter. [more...]
top May 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 782 091 A
Simona Saturová - Haydn Arias
Simona Saturová, with her crystal clear, supremely flexible soprano voice, has already long established herself in the world’s concert halls, working with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Neville Marriner, Jirí Belohlávek and Manfred Honeck. [more...]
top May 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 770 091 B
Waldemar Kmentt
In 1955, he was already singing Jaquino in the production of Beethoven’s Fidelio for the reopening of the Vienna State Opera, and performed internationally in roles such as Mirko Zeta in The Merry Widow until the turn of the century. [more...]
top April 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 777 082 H
Dvorák: Kate and the Devil
After our complete recording of Král a uhlír ("King and Charcoal Burner"), which won a MIDEM Classical Award, we now present a further instalment of our Dvorák opera cycle with the WDR Cologne Symphony Orchestra under Gerd Albrecht: Cert a Kaca ("Kate and the Devil"). [more...]
top March 2009
ORFEO 2 CD C 767 092 I
Puccini - Madama Butterfly
Even though Puccini’s Madama Butterfly flopped so spectacularly at its La Scala world premiere in 1904, the opera remains a hugely popular favourite [more...]
top March 2009
ORFEO 3 CD C 768 093 D
Puccini - Il Trittico
Puccini’s three one-act operas Il Trittico are rarely encountered as a whole on a single evening. The „satyr play“ of the three, Gianni Schicchi, is usually uncoupled and staged alongside other short operas. [more...]
top February 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 673 091 A
Baermann - Mendelssohn
Heinrich Baermann and his son Carl were two of the great clarinet virtuosos of the 19th century, their artistry celebrated the length and breadth of Europe. To their friendship with Felix Mendelssohn we owe the latter’s two Concert Pieces opp. 113 and 114... [more...]
top February 2009
ORFEO 5 CD C 725 085 R
Sergiu Celibidache
Even today Sergiu Celibidache (1912–96) continues to enjoy the reputation of a revolutionary genius, a conductor uniquely capable of realizing his interpretations without making the least concessions... [more...]
top January 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 685 091 B
Lisa Della Casa
No singer at the Vienna State Opera or elsewhere has been as closely associated with the title role in Strauss’s Arabella as Lisa Della Casa, who celebrates her 90th birthday on 2 February 2009, and yet we should be guilty of doing the Swiss soprano a grave disservice by reducing her repertory to this one role alone. [more...]
top January 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 759 081 A
Miroslav Kultyshev
The Russian pianist Miroslav Kultyshev was still a child when he discovered his altogether exceptional gifts as a musician. Not yet in his mid-twenties, he is now a regular visitor to all the world’s major concert halls. [more...]
top January 2009
ORFEO 1 CD C 735 091 B
Ingrid Bjoner
The Norwegian soprano Ingrid Bjoner, who died in 2006, is one of the few long-standing members of the Bavarian State Opera whose name was linked not only with the legendary period immediately after the Second World War when the company was temporarily housed at the Prinzregententheater but also with the Nationaltheater, which reopened its doors in 1963. [more...]
top November 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 766 082 I
Verdi's Macbeth
Masterpiece though Verdi’s Macbeth undoubtedly is, it was only at a relatively late date that it found a niche for itself in the repertory of the world’s major opera houses. Even today it is difficult to cast the two main roles satisfactorily. [more...]
top November 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 736 081 B
David Oistrach
In 1956 the Vienna Festival marked the bicentenary of Mozart’s birth by focussing largely, if not exclusively, on works by Salzburg’s most famous son. Among the leading European orchestras that appeared on this occasion was the Leningrad Philharmonic, which gave two concerts under its principal conductor, Evgeny Mravinsky. [more...]
top October 2008
ORFEO 3 CD C 581 083 D
Der Rosenkavalier
Carlos Kleiber has conducted Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier in the most famous opera houses all over the world: the Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Vienna State Opera, but nowhere as much as at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. [more...]
top August 2008
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
During his first year as artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, it was almost a conscious policy on Herbert von Karajan’s part to court comparison with famous predecessors and eminent models... [more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 4 CD C 773 084 L
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
1957 was Herbert von Karajan’s first year as artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, and he was determined to leave the world in no doubt about his versatility as a conductor... [more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 3 CD C 774 083 D
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
[more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 710 081 B
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
Among the countless concerts that Karl Böhm conducted with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival were not only a number of inevitable repeats of standard works from the mainstream symphonic repertory but also a number of surprises and genuine trouvailles... [more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 775 081 B
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
Little would be gained by describing yet again the exceptional standing of a pianist like Rudolf Buchbinder, who day in, day out has confirmed his command of his instrument over a period of several decades... [more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 711 081 B
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
Among the many artists who returned to Europe after the Second World War and chose the Salzburg Festival as the place to resume their European careers was the violinist Zino Francescatti... [more...]
top August 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 776 082 B
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2008
One of the most versatile representatives of the classical art of singing during the last twenty years has undoubtedly been the Slovenian mezzo-soprano Marjana Lipovek... [more...]
top July 2008
ORFEO 4 CD C 753 084 L
The 1968 Bayreuth Festival opened with a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg that seemed to be heading for disaster when the central role of Hans Sachs had to be recast after the final dress rehearsal... [more...]
top July 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 740 081 A
[more...]
top June 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 659 081 A
With his recording of Dmitri Shostakovich's two cello concertos, Daniel Müller-Schott has set out to explore the later works of a composer whose cryptic style represents a particular challenge for the performer, such were the political and personal circumstances of the composer's life of suffering. [more...]
top June 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 734 082 I
With its new production of Capriccio on 7 June 2008, the Vienna State Opera is reviving a long-standing tradition in a house where the onstage debate over the relative merits of the words or the music in opera has always been conducted between the finest representatives of their profession. [more...]
top June 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 739 081 A
French chamber music from the time of the Third Republic is remarkable for its tremendous stylistic variety, revealing, as it does, not only Neoclassical elements but also unexpected rhythms, the sort of local colour associated with folk music and, last but not least, typically French melodies typified by their elegance and songlike character. [more...]
top May 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 757 082 I
They made a distinctly odd couple onstage: she was the supreme hochdramatisch soprano of her generation, a singer able to maintain her tremendous vocal powers over a period of several decades, whereas he could captivate his listeners as a poetic and spirited lyric tenor so prodigal with his resources that within a little more than a decade he had burned himself out. [more...]
top April 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 765 082 I
If singers loved working with Joseph Keilberth, it was because he brought to all his opera performances a deep knowledge of the work in question, a stick technique that left them in no doubt as to his intentions and a highly considerate musical sensitivity. [more...]
top April 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 729 081 B
From the late 1940s onwards, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in D minor was one of the works with which Herbert von Karajan could impress international audiences before he succeeded to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s post as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1955. [more...]
top April 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 728 082 B
As the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde’s concert director “for life”, Herbert von Karajan was repeatedly able to programme large-scale vocal works in Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal during the early 1950s. [more...]
top March 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 715 081 A
Piotr Beczala – Salut
With Gounod’s Faust, Piotr Beczala says "Salut" to the international record-buying public. [more...]
top March 2008
ORFEO 1 CD C 674 081 A
The ability to prove oneself in large-scale musical forms does not necessarily mean that a composer is also able to handle small-scale forms, but one composer who was adept at both was Franz Danzi (1763–1826), who exerted a profound influence on the German musical scene at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. [more...]
top March 2008
ORFEO 3 CD C 758 083 D
Christa Ludwig
The wide-ranging repertory in which Christa Ludwig appeared at the Vienna State Opera, spoiling her audiences and often surprising them over a period of many years, is central to the present set of three CDs issued to mark her eightieth birthday. [more...]
top March 2008
ORFEO 2 CD C 733 082 I
It was the local première of Bizet’s Carmen in Vienna in 1875 that ushered in the work’s run of successes in opera houses all over the world. Since then it has been performed countless times at the Vienna State Opera, and yet the new production that opened in February 1966 remains one of the most outstanding ever seen in the house. [more...]
top December 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 755 071 B
Teresa Stich-Randall
The death of Teresa Stich-Randall on 17 July of this year makes us all too aware how close and yet how distant great personalities and their achievements may be to the average opera lover. [more...]
top November 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 749 071 A
It seems that no rung is too high on Diana Damrau‘s career ladder: after being made a Bavarian Kammersängerin during the summer of 2007, she is currently appearing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, alternating in the roles of Pamina and the Queen of Night. [more...]
top November 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 679 071 A
The reputation that Walter Braunfels enjoys today still falls far short of the high regard in which he was held during the 1920s, when he was seen as one of Germany‘s leading composers, his name frequently mentioned in the same breath as those of Richard Strauss and Franz Schreker. [more...]
top November 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 676 071 A
It was only after six years’ preparatory work, during which time he consulted every available edition of the piece, that Konstantin Lifschitz made this spectacular recording of Bach‘s Musical Offering, the first to be made on a modern concert grand. [more...]
top October 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 689 061 A
A Victorian Christmas
Charles Dickens notwithstanding, today’s readers will probably prefer not to have received their Christmas presents in England during the Industrial Revolution. [more...]
top October 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 724 071 B
Joseph Keilberth
Although there was a period following his death when Joseph Keilberth’s reputation suffered an eclipse, he is now once again numbered among those conductors of the second third of the 20th century whose work has finally received the attention that it deserves. [more...]
top October 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 723 071 B
Hans Knappertsbusch
So many anecdotes have grown up around the figure of Hans Knappertsbusch and so many remarks have been attributed to him, some of them amusing, others unrepeatably risqué, that it is all too easy to forget what a distinguished conductor he was. [more...]
top September 2007
ORFEO 2 CD C 732 072 I
Der Freischütz is part of the standard repertory of every opera house in the German-speaking world, and yet the production that opened at the Vienna State Opera in May 1972 was the first that had been staged in the house for a quarter of a century. [more...]
top September 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 731 071 B
In Mozart in particular she was admired above all for the clarity of her timbre and her consistently lean-toned intonation that was free of all impurities. But it would be wrong to forget that Gundula Janowitz’s needle-sharp accuracy never impeded her emotional and dramatic involvement in a role. [more...]
top August 2007
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2007
By way of an appendix to the Mozart celebrations of 2006, Orfeo is releasing Richard Strauss's version of Idomeneo on its Salzburg Festspieldokumente label. This version of Mozart's opera received two performances at the 2006 Salzburg Festival, uniquely complementing the "Mozart 22" project. [more...]
top August 2007
ORFEO 4 CD C 690 074 L
When Hans Knappertsbusch conjured up the sounds of the Prelude to Act One of Parsifal from the "mystic abyss" of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1964, few in the audience can have suspected that this would be the seventy-six-year-old conductor's final season on the Green Hill. [more...]
top July 2007
ORFEO 2 CD C 698 072 I
Plácido Domingo
Orfeo’s newly released complete recording of Otello documents a brilliant first night from 1987. Plácido Domingo is heard here at the very height of his powers in one of his most famous roles: supple, impulsive, volatile and moving in his expression. [more...]
top June 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 730 071 B
Julia Varady
It was not until 1993 – relatively late in her career – that Julia Varady made her Vienna State Opera début with a tempestuously acclaimed performance as Senta in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer that allowed her to show off her greatest strengths [more...]
top June 2007
ORFEO 3 CD C 699 073 D
There are almost certainly no superlatives left to describe Plácido Domingo and his standing in the international world of opera today. The fortieth anniversary of his Vienna Opera State début is a further milestone in a career that the tenor, conductor and opera house administrator continues to pursue with unflagging energy. [more...]
top June 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 693 071 A
Difficult though it may be to date Johann Sebastian Bach's Gamba Sonatas BWV 1027–9 and ascribe them to a particular period in their creator's career, these are none the less delightful works from the point of view of their performers. [more...]
top May 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 722 071 B
Eduard Erdmann
Two further pianistic trouvailles in the archives of West German Radio are Reger’s Piano Concerto in F minor and Schubert’s B flat major Sonata, both of which provide eloquent testimony to the mastery of Eduard Erdmann. [more...]
top May 2007
ORFEO 2 CD C 721 072 I
Wilhelm Kempff
The Broadcasting House in Cologne was also the venue for a series of recordings that Wilhelm Kempff made of some of the great showpieces in his vast repertory in 1956 and 1960. All attest to the clear and meticulous playing to which his listeners were accustomed. [more...]
top May 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 720 071 B
Shura Cherkassky
West German Radio’s reputation as one of the leading public media organizations with an active interest in classical music dates back at least to the early post-war period, when there was a constant stream of prominent instrumentalists and conductors keen to record in the old Broadcasting House in Cologne. [more...]
top May 2007
Salzburger Festspieldokumente 2006
For fifteen years our Festspieldokumente series has featured live recordings of highlights from eight decades of Salzburg Festival performances preserved in the archives of Austrian Radio. [more...]
top April 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 718 071 B
Rafael Kubelík was not only one of the leading interpreters of 19th- and early 20th-century concertos and symphonies, he was also well known for his keen advocacy of the music of important contemporaries whose works were relatively under-represented in international concert programmes. [more...]
top April 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 719 071 B
At the end of the concert enshrined in this latest release on the Orfeo label, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is as loudly and warmly acclaimed as its conductor, Rafael Kubelík. [more...]
top March 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 558 061 A
The latest CD in our series devoted to contemporary lieder features works by not one but three composers. The names of the two friends Luigi Dallapiccola and Karl Amadeus Hartmann are closely associated with the renaissance of the avant-garde in the wake of the Second World War. [more...]
top February 2007
ORFEO 2 CD C 696 072 I
Leonie Rysanek
She was a prima donna who in the course of a long and immensely eventful career repeatedly reinvented herself, starting with her early sensational successes when she was barely thirty. After a series of spectacular débuts at many of the world’s leading opera houses, she suffered a number of crises that she rapidly overcame, before finally going on to explore the fascinating world of character roles. [more...]
top February 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 639 061 A
Anthony Spiri
Sonatas and Fantasias by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
In the wake of his keen interest in the music of the whole of the Bach family, the pianist Anthony Spiri has long been eager to introduce works by Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–88) to a wider audience. Many of these pieces are barely known, not least because the music is not available in printed form but only in manuscript copies. [more...]
top January 2007
ORFEO 2 CD C 697 072 I
Così fan tutte
The name of Josef Krips is associated the world over with ensemble opera of the finest sort and with a timelessly valid approach to Mozart that remains exemplary in our responses to the composer. Both these qualities are evident in the Orfeo’s live recording of the Vienna State Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, a performance recorded on 22 September 1968. [more...]
top January 2007
ORFEO 1 CD C 006 061 A
Herbert Blendinger: Media in vita
It is not easy to pigeonhole Herbert Blendinger’s compositional style and place it within the existing categories of new music. In spite of his profession of faith in traditional values, Blendinger’s works are far from conventional. Quite the opposite. [more...]
top October 2006
ORFEO 2 CD C 684 062 I
Sena Jurinac
Although it is now twenty-four years since Sena Jurinac – an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera – bade farewell to the stage, memories of her great performances remain as fresh as ever. [more...]
top October 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 714 061 B
Inge Borkh
Inge Borkh made operatic history as Salome and Elektra, and she will continue to fascinate future generations of listeners with her recordings of these roles. The present portrait demonstrates that her artistic range was far greater than these two parts. [more...]
top September 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 193 061 A
Leopold Kozeluch – Mozart's Antipode?
Viele Komponisten ander Schwelle vom Rokoko zur Wiener Klassik, die sich durch eine große stilistische Bandbreite ausgezeichnet haben, werden an Worten und Taten, nicht aber an ihren Werken gemessen. [more...]
top September 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 687 061 A
Shostakovitch - Violin Concertos
A century after his birth, Dmitri Shostakovich is one of the most widely performed composers of the 20th century. He is not, however, particularly associated with the virtuoso concerto as a medium. [more...]
top September 2006
ORFEO 2 CD C 681 062 I
La forza del destino
Verdi’s own operas, by contrast, generally need little help in promoting them, although it is still a good thing if from time to time they are lifted out of the rut of operatic routine, as happened to La forza del destino in 1960 [more...]
top September 2006
ORFEO 2 CD C 680 062 I
Il giuramento – Pure Belcanto Pleasure
It is, of course, a commonplace that every evening in the theatre and every concert is a unique event that cannot be repeated, even though a great opera house like the Vienna State Opera may present a whole run of performances with an identical cast. [more...]
top July 2006
ORFEO 3 CD C 691 063 D
The success of any performance of Lohengrin depends in no small way on the protagonist’s ability to combine heroic radiance with the cultivated tone associated with the bel canto repertory. In this regard the Hungarian tenor Sándor Kónya has always been regarded by cognoscenti as unsurpassable. [more...]
top June 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 686 061 A
With her much-acclaimed recording of the violin concertos of Darius Milhaud, to which she brought both ethereal weightlessness and naturalness of expression, Arabella Steinbacher showed that virtuoso, playful miniatures are just as close to her heart as the great concertos for her instrument [more...]
top May 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 599 061 B
There are voices that overwhelm the listener like a force of nature. And there are others that are capable of affecting us on the deepest emotional level. It is very rare for a singer – especially a hochdramatisch soprano – to combine these qualities, but one such exception was Ursula Schröder-Feinen. [more...]
top May 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 702 061 B
Candour and artistic curiosity characterize the art of Diana Damrau. There are few other lyric coloratura sopranos of recent years who have enjoyed such meteoric careers and who continue to scale new peaks of achievement. [more...]
top April 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 677 061 A
Meisterschaft in harmonischer wie formaler Gestaltung
Johann Wenzeslaus Kalliwoda (1801–66) is only one of many composers whose works, long undervalued and rarely performed, have been revived in modern times thanks to recordings such as those of the Stuttgart Hofkapelle under its conductor Frieder Bernius. [more...]
top April 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 621 061 A
Daniel Müller-Schott
It is with tremendous pleasure that ORFEO International presents Daniel Müller-Schott’s new CD featuring the cello concertos of Edward Elgar and William Walton. [more...]
top April 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 645 061 A
By the Romantic period at the latest Shakespeare’s works were the yardstick and inspiration for many new works throughout Europe. [more...]
top March 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 665 061 A
Adrianne Pieczonka
Ever since her sensational appearances as Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Vienna State Opera in 1997 the Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka has been in constant demand in all the world’s major opera houses. [more...]
top February 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 663 061 A
What are the necessary conditions, what gifts, what stubbornness and even what element of chance are required for a man like Aribert Reimann to realize his greatest potential? In the light of his life’s work as a composer, this question far from unjustified. [more...]
top January 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 644 061 A
Whether serenade, quartet or sacred aria, Mozart inspired numerous transcriptions and arrangements during his lifetime. Dieter Klöcker and the Mannheim String Quartet reveal how virtuosic and varied Mozart’s music can sound in transcriptions for the same forces as those found in one of his most popular works: clarinet quintet. [more...]
top January 2006
ORFEO 1 CD C 664 061 A
The string quartet as an alternative to the hybrid genre of drama giocoso: champagne and seduction may not be handed out by singers, but thanks to the sophisticated compositional technique of a skilful arranger and the Artist Quartet’s audible pleasure in their playing, the result is far more than mere background music designed to be played at supper. [more...]
top January 2006
ORFEO 2 CD C 675 062 H
„Schmankerl“ for Mozart-Connaisseurs
Rainer Honeck and the Vienna Classical Players
Rainer Honeck, first violinist of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and leader of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra since 1984 and of the Vienna Philharmonic since 1992 often performs as soloist at leading centres in Europe, Japan and America. [more...]
top December 2005
ORFEO 1 CD/SACD C 700 051 B
The places where a person’s life unfolds – especially the life of a musician like Carlos Kleiber – are not random but leave their mark on every facet of his personality. [more...]
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