Introducing an ambitious debut release, Warner Classics brings you a teriffic album with Baritone Huw Montague Wendell who flexes his extensive variety of talent and style! 'Contempation' stretches across three centuries, a journey into the transformation of musical dramas of opera, operetta, lied and Broadway musicals. Joining the stage is Canadian soprano Elisabeth Boudreault in which she and Huw perform a duet from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Welcome to the world of hidden treasures and symphonic jewels in "Raiders of the Symphony" with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Danish National Concert Choir. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra is in an adventure spirit, and the iconic music from the Indiana Jones films becomes the highlight of the evening.

This massive new reissue from Eugene Ormandy’s stereo discography collects all the Columbia Masterworks recordings he made in Philadelphia between the early 1960s and early 1980s. Sony Classical’s new 94-CD box set once again demonstrates what noted critic Jed Distler, reviewing the previous instalment of this ambitious project “The Columbia Stereo Collection 1958–1963” in Gramophone’s December 2023 issue, characterized as “the Philadelphia Orchestra’s brilliance and versatility as well as Ormandy’s unflappable consistency and habitually underestimated interpretative gifts”.

Praised for his “smooth, rich and sweet sound and impeccable virtuosity”, guitarist Thibaut Garcia releases his second album on Erato, a recital of works composed and inspired by Johann Sebastian S Bach.
“Bach has been part of my life as a musician since the very start,” he says. Taking Bach’s mighty Chaconne as his centrepiece, he ranges wide: from Gounod’s much-loved ‘Ave Maria’ and Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 to music by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Alexandre Tansman and the contemporary Serbian-American composer Dušan Bogdanović.

Following his Rossini recital (Alpha 791), Florian Sempey shares another of his passions: his enthusiasm for the world of knights and medieval narrative. For him, “a mysterious force emanates from castles and other antique buildings; their ancient stones have always fascinated me.” Ferrum Splendidum (the Latin for ‘Resplendent Metal’) recalls the singer’s ancestors, who were blacksmiths in the Périgord region. Though not following in that family tradition, Sempey concentrated instead on forging and moulding the metal of his brilliant baritone voice.

Having dazzled us with her coloratura ability in arias by Mozart, Gluck, and her fellow Czech, Myslivecek, this luscious young mezzo-soprano now offers us a generous program of French arias–15 of them, widely varied in tone, weight, dramatic intent, and style–and conquers and convinces in them all. Beginning again in coloratura territory, an aria from Auber's rare Le domino noir catches our attention with the heroine's opening words, "Je suis sauvée enfin!" ("I am safe at last!"), in which she paints the picture of our out-of-breath heroine immediately.

If your ideal vocal recording places the performer next to your seat and your ideal vocal performance has the performer singing directly into your ear, this disc by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená will be just about ideal. No matter what the repertoire – and Kozená performs everything from Bach to Gounod to Shostakovich – and no matter what the context – and Kozená takes on everything from song to opera to oratorio – Kozená is right next to the listener, singing straight into his/her ear. Given her exceedingly warm tone, her extremely rich delivery, and her extraordinarily sibilant pronunciation, Kozená's intimate delivery may be too much for those with heart conditions or those all too easily affected by singers. But for those made of sterner stuff, Kozená's performances here will be the stuff dreams are made of.

French Touch is soprano Petibon's 2003 release which features the works of such French composers for example Delibes, Massenet and Offenbach to mention a few. Petibon sings with much enthusiasm and joy which makes it a very enjoyable recording. Yves Abel leads the national orchestra and choir of Lyon. On track she sings duet with mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes.

This is a beautiful anthology of sacred liturgical music. Chung coordinates his forces in larger choral pieces with power and vertical balance. Contributions by Cecilia Bartoli find the mezzo in top form, and Bryn Terfel brings charismatic presence to “Pie Jesu” from the Fauré Requiem. Also included are the interminable "Song for Athene" by John Taverner and a great performance by Andrea Bocelli in Eric Levi's hymn for the world, "I Believe".

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha Classics now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

After Polyeucte (1878), Gounod tackled the operatic genre for the last time in 1881 with what is probably his most ambitious work, Le Tribut de Zamora. The action takes place in ninth-century Spain – from Act Two onwards, on ‘a picturesque site on the banks of the Guadalquivir before Córdoba’. Here Gounod – finally noted more for his neoclassical pastiches (Le Médecin malgré lui and Cinq-Mars) and his ardent Romanticism (Faust and Roméo et Juliette) – was given an opportunity to display his talents as an orchestrator and colourist in an exotic setting. He produced an epic in the tradition of French grand opéra, with numerous ensembles and showpiece airs.

Das Sommernachtskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker ist jedes Jahr eines der meistbesuchten Klassikkonzerte überhaupt, denn es findet im festlich illuminierten Schlosspark von Schloss Schönbrunn in Wien vor 100.000 Besuchern statt.

The masterpiece of French opera – Gounod’s ‘Faust‘ – still has surprises in store for us. Originally conceived in the spirit of opéra-comique, the 1859 score alternated between spoken dialogue and music, intermingling witty comedy and Romantic pathos. It is that ‘first Faust’ that the Palazzetto Bru Zane reveals in this recording, and particularly the many numbers that were subsequently deleted or altered.

Hans-Ola Ericsson was born in Stockholm in 1958. He is a renowned organist with hundreds of recitals and concerts behind him, as well as an esteemed pedagogue at several institutions and a bold composer of contemporary music.
Known for his renditions of music as diverse as Olivier Messiaen and John Cage, his interpretory range stretches between György Ligety and the ubiquitous Johann Sebastian Bach as well as many more. Among the crown jewels of the repertoire is the collected works of Messiaen and a recently finished series of Bach in chamber and organ settings.

Angela Gheorghiu stars as Marguerite alongside a divine cast of operatic superstars, including Roberto Alagna, Bryn Terfel, Simon Keenlyside and Sophie Koch, in David McVicar's spectacular 2004 production of Gounod's best known opera, Faust, for the Royal Opera House in London. This production was the Royal Opera Company's first performance of Gounod's Faust in 18 years. Gounod's Faust is the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly indulgences. McVicar's innovative production sets this story around the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) in the gothic, seamy underbelly of Paris. He characterizes Faust, performed by Roberto Alagna, as a man both torn between the theater and religion, and grappling with his own sexuality.