This year’s top 10 classical boxed sets make up an exceptionally varied assortment, including recent and historical reissues, standard symphonic works and fringe repertory. The most encouraging sign of new life in an industry the doomsayers had marked for extinction was the appearance of so many outstanding opera recordings. Read on to find out which ones intrigued and satisfied me the most in 2006.
Murray Perahia, Mozart: Complete Piano Concertos (Sony Classical)
Of all the pianists (including Daniel Barenboim and Geza Anda) who have undertaken integral recordings of these masterpieces over the years, none has done so with greater musical integrity than Perahia. The artist’s singing touch, the crisp authority of his playing, the freshness and spontaneity with which he and the English Chamber Orchestra listen and respond to one another make these recordings from the 1970s and ’80s something to treasure. In observance of the Mozart anniversary, Sony has reissued them in a 12-disc box that includes the two concertos for multiple keyboards played by Perahia and Radu Lupu.
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus, Joseph Keilberth conducting, Wagner: “Die Walkure” (Testament, four CDs)
Rescued from its long slumber in the Decca vaults and issued for the first time in amazingly good stereo sound, this live performance from the 1955 Bayreuth Festival captures what must have been the high point of that summer’s “Ring” cycle. The cast and conducting haven’t been surpassed. Hans Hotter never sang a more eloquent or finely characterized Wotan. High praise also is due Astrid Varnay’s gleaming, dramatically vivid Brunnhilde. Two installments of this historic “Ring” are due by the end of the year.
Galicia Symphony Orchestra and Prague Chamber Choir, Riccardo Frizza conducting, Rossini: “Matilde di Shabran” (Decca, three CDs)
Just when you thought every significant Rossini opera has made it onto recordings, along comes this comic-heroic “melodramma giocoso,” taken from live performances at the 2004 Pesaro Festival in Italy. The long opera is worth paying attention to not for its convoluted plot, which concerns the taming of a misogynistic tyrant by the eponymous heroine, but for its often inspired music, much of it gloriously sung by the Peruvian heartthrob tenor Juan Diego Florez and soprano Annick Massis in the title role.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Glyndebourne Chorus, William Christie conducting, Handel: “Giulio Cesare” (Opus Arte, DVD)
If rumors are to be believed, David McVicar’s brilliant Glyndebourne Festival production, from 2005, is headed for Lyric Opera next season. It’s a most enjoyable show, made more so by the entrancing soprano Danielle de Niese as a vocally and physically seductive Cleopatra. It finds conductor William Christie and his fine period orchestra in top form, while an athletic cast headed by Sarah Connolly as Julius Caesar, Patricia Bardon as Cornelia, Angelika Kirschschlager as Sesto and Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo glories in Handel’s virtuosic vocal writing. The technical production is superb. A bonus feature on De Niese is included, as are subtitles.
London Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink conducting, Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (LSO Live, six CDs)
Chicagoans will have to wait until May to hear principal conductor Haitink leading his next series of concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Until then, give yourself a gift of his most recent Beethoven symphony cycle, in forceful yet refined performances taped at concerts the Dutch maestro conducted in London in 2005 and 2006. Haitink has his players thinking this familiar music afresh, and that’s how it comes across.
Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart: “A Musical Tribute” (DG, five CDs)
This set, part of DG’s “Original Masters” reissue series, was released only a month before the great American baritone Stewart died of a heart attack in September. Thus it becomes a touching memorial as well as a reminder of how potent was the partnership of Stewart and his wife and frequent recital partner, soprano Lear. Scenes from Wagner operas take pride of place here, along with duets, lieder by Hugo Wolf and Richard Strauss, and such esoterica as Otto Nicolai’s “Te Deum.” Not even Marilyn Horne could sing “Beautiful Dreamer” more beautifully than the Stewarts do here.
Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, John Mauceri conducting, Gershwin: “Porgy and Bess” (Decca, two CDs)
Having released a more-than-complete recording of George and Ira Gershwin’s American classic under Lorin Maazel back in the 1970s, Decca now goes in the opposite direction. What we have here is a streamlined reconstruction of “Porgy and Bess” as it was heard in the opera’s first performance in New York in 1935, with the cuts made by the creative team during rehearsals to reduce the running time. Overall, the excisions work to the benefit of an opera I’ve always found musically uneven and structurally problematic. Mauceri’s conducting is fine even if his singers are rather ordinary, except for Marquita Lister as Bess, Nicole Cabell as Clara and Robert Mack as Sportin’ Life.
Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Opera, Paul Daniel conducting, Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” (Chandos, two CDs)
Francis Poulenc’s 1956 opera, about a young nun’s spiritual awakening and martyrdom during the French Revolution, will receive its belated Lyric Opera premiere in February, sung in French. The British label Chandos has issued the first English-language recording of this gripping music drama, performed by English National Opera forces including Felicity Palmer as the old prioress, Mme. De Croissy, a role she will re-create in Lyric’s production.
Soloists and Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, Haydn: “Orlando Paladino” (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, two CDs)
Via recording is the best way to experience the Haydn operas, which contain top-drawer vocal and orchestral writing but which defy the most valiant attempts to zap dramatic life into them onstage. Fortunately everything that is good about “Orlando Paladino” and very little that is bad finds its way into this live recording, taped at performances in Graz, Austria, in 2005. Harnoncourt’s fiery conducting makes it a rarity worth investigating.
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and RIAS Chamber Choir, Rene Jacobs conducting, Mozart: “La Clemenza di Tito” (Harmonia Mundi, two CDs)
Mozart’s opera seria, written in his final year for a coronation in Prague, came in for renewed attention by the record companies during the composer’s anniversary year. A new DG set played on modern instruments under Charles Mackerras offers strong singing by artists such as Magdalena Kozena. But Jacobs’ period-band version is more exciting and indeed provocative, with its wind-based sonorities, brisk tempos and highly charged rhythms. Jacobs’ cast, headed by Bernarda Fink’s opulent Sesto and Alexandrina Pendatchanska’s fiery Vitellia, cedes little to Mackerras’ in vocal or dramatic authority.
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