Latest News: Classical, Mariinsky (label)
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Recording of the Week,
Wagner from Jonas Kaufmann and others 11th February 2013
Gergiev conducts an electrifying Walküre starring René Pape as Wotan, Nina Stemme as his rebel daughter, and Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Kampe as the Walsung Twins; Kaufmann’s solo album of opera scenes and the Wesendock-Lieder, meanwhile, is the best thing he’s ever done.
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Recording of the Week,
Jules Massenet - Werther & Don Quichotte 12th March 2012
Rolando Villazón brings apposite wildness and fragility to Goethe’s tortured poet, with Antonio Pappano presiding over a visceral, near-Italianate performance from the Covent Garden orchestra, whilst Ferruccio Furlanetto is heart-breaking as the ‘knight of the doleful countenance’ from the Mariinsky.
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Recording of the Week,
Lucia from the Mariinsky 1st August 2011
Natalie Dessay brings fragility and neurosis to the title-role, contrasting powerfully with Gergiev’s red-blooded Donizetti à la Verdi, Piotr Beczała’s ardent, ringing Edgardo and Vladislav Sulimsky’s black-voiced Enrico.
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Recording of the Week,
Wagner's Parsifal from the Mariinsky and Gergiev 20th September 2010
Taken from live performances in St Petersburg last June, Gergiev’s vividly theatrical reading of Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel stars Gary Lehman as the titular ‘holy fool’, Violeta Urmana as Kundry, and René Pape as Gurnemanz.
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Recording of the Week,
Tchaikovsky's Moscow Cantata 12th October 2009
Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky orchestra in a punchy, exciting account of the 1883 work written in honour of the coronation of Tsar Alexander III, plus the 1812 Overture, and the ‘Danish Overture’, composed for Alexander’s marriage.
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Recording of the Week,
Gergiev at the Mariinsky 1st June 2009
The Russian conductor presides over a ‘thoroughly worthwhile’ recording of Shostakovich’s surreal first opera The Nose, composed between 1927 and 1928 and based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol.
