CD-Charts Position 101
Average Rating:

Obrigado Brazil

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Yo-Yo Ma

Release Date July 29, 2003
I was excited to get this as a gift. Then I played it. I expected some fun and Sambas. Pretty dull, very little cello, not even pleasant as background music. I put my copy in the pile for Good Will.

CD-Charts Position 102
Average Rating:

Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle [DVD Video]

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Decca

Release Date May 13, 2008
I believe this is the first DVD of this 20th century masterpiece. The two singers are excellent vocally, but the bass is no actor. The orchestra, which is really the main story teller, is outstanding. The scenery is o.k.

CD-Charts Position 103
Average Rating:

Tchaikovsky: Symphonies no 4, 5, & 6 / Karajan, Berlin PO

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Deutsche Grammophon

Release Date July 15, 1997
I have symphonies 1 to 3 on vinyl and I bought from Amazon symphonies 4 to 6 about 4 or 5 months ago. These date from the mid 70s and I just viewed symphonies 4 to 6 on DVD via NETFLIX.

My very first classical lp was Ormandy & the Mormon Tab choir doing the 1812 overture with "Russian Church Bells" and canon. I have always loved Tchaikovsky. I have recently gotten into his solo piano music and if you have never you are really missing out--Chopin esque to say the least.

I love Beethoven for the thunder and the beauty, often at the same time. Tchaikovsky comes just about as close as anyone I have heard to matching Beethoven, though not as often. These cds are a royal trip. I went for about an hour walk the other day ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 104
Average Rating:

The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: EMI Classics

Release Date May 10, 2005
I received this CD as a gift from a friend in the UK. He was spot on as to the musical intregrity of this mass. I was moved by the beauty and power of Jenkin's 21st century lyrical move from the Muslim call to prayer, to the amassing of troops, to the battle, and then the end of the fighting. This is a must hear as it is thought provoking: one moves through the emotion and sentiments of war via the music. Honestly, Agnes Dei brought images of Angels coming to claim the souls of those who lost the valient fight. The beauty of Benedictus moved me to tears!

CD-Charts Position 105
Average Rating:

Fire & Ice

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Sarah Chang, Placido Domingo

Release Date January 08, 2002
If you love Sarah Chang, you can't go wrong with this one. Ditto if you love Carmen, Meditation from Thais, etc. There's that one track, Ravel's Tzigane, I can't develop a taste for no matter who plays it (except possibly David Oistrakh on You Tube, watching his chubby cheeks hit both sides of his face). And guess what? Placido Domingo didn't sing a note. (LOL)

CD-Charts Position 106
Average Rating:

Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Sony

Release Date October 25, 1990
Yet another great recording from Murray Perahia and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields! This recording has really helped me in preparing to perform one of the Mendelssohn concertos myself; great sound quality on the actual recording as well as the superb technique exhibited makes this album one of my favorites!

CD-Charts Position 107
Average Rating:

The Most Relaxing Classical Album In the World Ever, Volume II

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
by: Gabriel Faure, Frederic Chopin, Antonio Vivaldi, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Sir Neville Marriner, Maris Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Sir Adrian Boult, Miklos Rozsa, Riccardo Muti, Stephen Cleobury, Sir John Barbirolli, New Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Berlin Philharmonic

Release Date March 11, 2003
Beautifully done, arranged, and selected. All are very good performances, and there are many lesser known but wonderful pieces such as the movement from Shostakovich's second piano concerto.

CD-Charts Position 108
Average Rating:

Beethoven: The 5 Piano Concertos/Mozart: Concerto No.25

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Sony

Release Date October 25, 1990

All those famous pianists nowadays must listen to these incredibly sublime recordings of Beethoven concetos played by Leon Fleisher, and better re-think what it means to play music.

The lavinshing richness of the tones he produces is beyond description not to mention the technical brilliance. The slow movement of Emperor Concerto, for example, has almost other-worldly beauty, and you forget everything else. Since I came to know this pianist through the stunning Brahms Concerti recording, I've been struck again and again by his amazing ability to breathe life into music. With these Beethoven recordings, one gets a feeling that pianist is completely lost in the music. In that sense Fleisher is a truly self-effacing musician. (Sviatoslav Richter would have admired ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 109
Average Rating:

Bach: Cello Suites

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: EMI Classics

Release Date October 07, 2003
For Mr. Get Real[your nom-de-plume and your review is an oxymoron!] - what a lot of pretentious, overblown nonsense. I bet you were bullied at school! It's about the music, the interpretation, the feeling - not +/- decibels etc etc. Your review did nothing for casual classical music listeners.
To anyone else with ears either side of their head - listen to the cd and enjoy it for what it is!

CD-Charts Position 110
Average Rating:

Antonín Dvorák: Complete Piano Trios

CD-Charts > Music > Featured Performers- A-Z
from: Philips

Release Date September 17, 1996
Dvorak is famous for the cheerful Czech rhythms that abound so persuasively in his Slavonic Dances of the 1870s. Yet most of these trios temper that cheerful side with a dramatic eloquence that borders on the mournful. Dvorak wrote his G minor trio shortly after the death of his newborn daughter, Josefina, and you can almost feel as if the desperate and frenetic energy in the Scherzo is Dvorak's attempt to bury his grief in the healing salve of his music.

This is not to say that these recordings are outwardly depressing - simply more pensive and meditative than some of his other works. The Dumky is a perfect example. The term Dumky comes from a Czech word roughly translated as "to ponder or brood", and the Dumky ably embodies that mood. The cello often leads with somber rumination before ... Read More: