This article appears in slightly different form in Sunday's USItalia. (The website is usually not updated until mid-week following the Sunday of publication.) This online version includes links to Barnes & Noble for your shopping convenience. Enjoy!
A fragrant panettone, a frothy spumante, and glorious music are three essential ingredients for an Italian Christmas feast. USItalia Weekly is pleased to recommend the following recent CD's for your gift list. All have a holiday theme or an Italian connection and are sure to bring joy to year-end festivities. And take note, harried shoppers: All are available at Barnes & Noble.com, which offers free shipping and same-day delivery on eligible orders.
Christmas with Leontyne Price (Decca), recorded in 1961, captures the soprano in sumptuous form, accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan. Price brings awesomely beautiful tone and the fervor of true faith to classic hymns and carols.
Karajan leads a sparkling program of Strauss Family Waltzes and Polkas (EMI). While audiophiles might sniff at the tubby re-mastering of these 1940s recordings, the Vienna Philharmonic plays the "Music of the Spheres Waltz" and other favorites with unrivaled suavity and panache. [NB: As of this posting, I can't find this at B&N.]
The magical New Year's Concert 2004 (DG) by the Vienna Philharmonic under Riccardo Muti is in state-of-the-art sound. Listen and weep for the thugs at La Scala who drove away this patrician artist.
Renata Tebaldi: Christmas Festival (Decca), first issued in 1971, includes the soprano's tender renditions of "Tu scendi dalle stelle" and "Mille cherubini in coro."
Noël: Carols and Chants for Christmas (Harmonia Mundi), a boxed set by New York vocal quartet Anonymous 4, encompasses plainchant, Celtic carols, hymns celebrating Saint Nicholas, and mediaeval Hungarian music. Whether gliding in seamless unison or blossoming into iridescent polyphony, Anonymous 4's ethereal tones light up these songs of hope and devotion.
Norway's mellifluous Trio Mediaeval, another a cappella group, offers Stella maris (ECM), a program centering on praise of the Virgin Mary. Motets from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dance with modest joy or unfold in quiet rapture, glowing like the light of a winter morning through a rose window. Sungji Hong's mass "Lumen de Lumine" showcases the piercing heights and soulful depths of the trio's art.
Maestro Nikolaus Harnoncourt's period-instruments set of Handel's Messiah (DHM) brims with telling detail. When the sweet drone of the pifa gives way to the angel's glad news of Christ's birth, you can feel the icy thrill of the night air. The bass-baritone Gerald Finley is magnificent throughout, particularly in the awestruck recitative preceding "The Trumpet Shall Sound," an aria he sculpts in mahogany-rich tone.
The past year also brought Harnoncourt's set of Verdi's Messa da Requiem (RCA), based on David Rosen's critical edition of the score. Harnoncourt favors spacious tempos and scrupulous attention to Verdi's dynamic markings. His soloists include the imposing bass Ildebrando d'Arcangelo.
The violinist and conductor Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante, Italy's premier period-instruments band, continue their sizzling traversal of the prete rosso's works with Vivaldi: Concerti con molti strumenti, Vol. 2 and the opera Bajazet (Virgin), starring a gaggle of jaw-dropping virtuosos: d'Arcangelo, Patrizia Ciofi, Vivica Genaux, and David Daniels.
In his program of Veracini Sonatas (ECM), the violinist John Holloway twirls and gambols on the fine line dividing genius from madness, reminding us that the eighteenth-century Florentine was also known as "capo pazzo." The soprano Dawn Upshaw's Ayre (DG) takes its name from Osvaldo Golijov's breathtaking song cycle and also features Luciano Berio's "Folk Songs," evocative settings of traditional melodies from Sicily, Sardinia, and elsewhere.
Though no CD can match the life-affirming joy of seeing and hearing Cecilia Bartoli in the flesh, Opera proibita (Decca) is a precious reminder of her recent North American tour and her fierce, probing musical imagination.
Savvy shoppers will pounce on treasures from the current slew of choice opera reissues: Mirella Freni and Renata Scotto in Duet (Decca), including a for-the-ages scene from Bellini's Norma; and Mstislav Rostropovich's seething Tosca (DG), which may top even the legendary Callas/de Sabata and Price/Karajan sets of Puccini's opera.
Lovers of jazzy, romantic sounds can groove to Extra-muros and Montgolfières (Le Chant du Monde) by Gianmaria Testa, Italy's most haunting singer-songwriter. Paolo Conte's Elegia (WEA International) is a masterpiece ripe with a lifetime's wisdom and sensuality.
Quartetto Gelato's Favourite Flavours (Koch) serves up ravishing chamber arrangements of "Al di là," "Nessun dorma," and other dreamy numbers. An opulent CD-book assembling movie stills and some of the maestro's most cherished music, Nino Rota: La strada, Il gattopardo, Concerto Soirée (Harmonia Mundi) will delight both film buffs and melòmani.
Finally, rockers The East Village Opera Company (Decca) offer loving, down-and-dirty takes on "La donna è mobile" and other classic arias in the venerable tradition of opera by and for the people.
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