January: Featured Classical Music CDs

Vanessa (Barber)
OP1345. Live Performance, 16 Aug., 1958, Salzburg, w.Mitropoulos Cond. Vienna Staatsoper Ensemble; Eleanor Steber, Rosalind Elias, Ira Malaniuk, Nicolai Gedda, Giorgio Tozzi, etc.; Interview with Samuel Barber. (Austria) 2-Orfeo C 653 621. $35.90, the Set.

“[Given] the stimulus of an audience…and especially the frisson between Dimitri Mitropoulos and the Vienna Philharmonic players, [this] results in a very exciting performance….Sailing through it all is Eleanor Steber in the title-role, a great singer whose name is now too little known among opera lovers.”

- Patrick O’Connor, GRAMOPHONE, Dec., 2006

Salomea Kruszelnicka
V1114. The Complete Salomea Kruszelnicka, 1902-28, incl. Songs by Tosti, Quaranta, Oddone, Hahn, Paderewski, Mlynarski, etc.; Arias from Hrabina, Adriana Lecouvreur, Forza, La Wally, Loreley, Madama Butterfly, Mefistofele, Halka, Peer Gynt, Tosca, L’Africaine & Die Walküre; ELENA RUSZKOWSKA: Elena Ruszkowska – Selected Recordings, 1909-21, incl. Nocturne, Op.9, #2 (Chopin, arr. Theresa Tosti); Arias from Stabat Mater, Forza, Ernani, Aïda, La Gioconda,
Tosca & Halka. 2-Marston 52052. Transfers by H. Ward Marston. $35.90, the Set.

“Salomea Kruszelnicka simply has one of the most beautiful dramatic soprano voices on record. The voice has strength and a dusky tone coupled with a mastery of phrasing. She had a remarkable career.”

- Ward Marston, Program Notes

“In all the wide range of recordings of [Tosca’s] music, it seems to me that only Muzio and Callas [and perhaps Lotte Lehmann) have rivaled Ruszkowska’s extraordinarily detailed and beautifully sung performance – like Maria Callas in 1964, she sings the music as though it were by Bellini. Her diction is so crisp and clear in that which one might call the ‘recitative’ sections as to put many of her Italian colleagues to shame….[FORZA’s] ‘La vergine degli angeli’, probably
Ruszkowska’s best-known record, contains an interpolated high note, a radiant B natural at the conclusion. This is another lovely piece of inspired singing, the voice floating on the breath and the light vibrato perfectly even and under control.”

- Michael Aspinall, Program Notes

Discography of Judaica Recordings
B0108. By Rainer E. Lotz. An annotated 78rpm discography of all sound documents relating to Jewish life in Germany, or in German language, or recorded in Germany, covering Jewish life, humour, music and religion, Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. Bonn, Birgit Lotz Verlag, 2006. 592pp. Hardbound. (in German). Artist index; Brief biographies; Monumental Volume. Newly Published. Edition Limited to 150 copies! $135.00

Stefan Askenase
P0364. The Complete 1950s Chopin Recordings, plus Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert & Smetana. (E.U.) 7-DG 477 5742, recorded 1950s. $69.90, the Set.

“DG’s seven-CD tribute to Stefan Askenase is a reminder and a remembrance. You will not find his name among the glitterati who crowd the pages about pianists….Askenase…was one of those rare artists whose playing exuded a unique flavour, something ‘low in tone’ but at its finest marked by an inner warmth and vivacity that’s the opposite of flamboyant or sensational….his Chopin taken essentially by stealth rather than storm….Here is Chopin for connoisseurs and a conversational brio that suggests his kinship with the aristocratic world. Nothing is unduly pressured, and if others are more volatile, Askenase’s way is the epitome of civility….all these performances are refreshingly free from the egotism and brittleness that can so easily affect even the finest Chopin players….How is it possible to stand Chopin’s youthful poetry on its head, transforming it without a hint of narcissism or self-consciousness into something so wistful and elegiac….Allusive and elliptical, his controlled yet nonchalant and patrician artistry lives on long after other more earnest and strenuous playing is eclipsed.”

- Bryce Morrison, GRAMOPHONE, June, 2006