Magda Spiegel News
German operatic contralto (1887-1944)
Commemorations 2024 (Death: Magda Spiegel)
- contralto
- German Reich
- opera singer
Last update
2024-04-24
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2023-10-23 03:30:00
Recent Releases No. 62 (CD Reviews)
[…] is plenty to like about this production. There are plenty of excellent Mozart sonata recordings out there, several of which I have reviewed in the past, but I’ve never heard better than this one, which of course earns my highest recommendation.Sonic Alchemy. Vasks: Balta Ainava (White Scenery); Pärt: Fratres; Mozart: Fantasia in D minor, K. 397; Pärt: Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280); Mozart: Fantasia in C minor, K. 475; Vasks: Castillo Interior (Interior Castle); Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel. YuEun Kim, violin; Mina Gajić, piano; Coleman Itzkoff, cello. Sono Luminus DSL-92261 Pianist Mina Gajić says of this album that it was “inspired by the transformation and fluidity of life, represented by the seasons in nature, and in humankind in the way people connect through religion and spirituality.” In its own way, Sonic Alchemy is something of a spiritual album, but not in the way that a mass or other liturgically-oriented composition would […]
2022-02-07 14:06:00
R.I.P. Hans Neuenfels, 1941-2022
[…] Neuenfels is a celebrated figure from an earlier generation of so-called Regietheater, whether in spoken or musical drama. Though many visual motifs from his productions have proved highly contentious when first seen – his 1980 Aida for Frankfurt, resolutely contemporary in setting, with the slave girl a modern cleaner, or a highly eroticised, narcoticised Così fan tuttefor the 2000 Salzburg Festival – a few years subsequently they will often have passed into common currency. Der Spiegelreported heavy booing for Neuenfels in 2010, yet by the time of my second visit in 2012, the staging seemed almost to have attained the status of a modern classic.[2] And, although it would be difficult to claim that Neuenfels engaged so closely with the music as, say, Herheim did in Parsifal, he did not work against it – unless one were of the opinion that rats on stage did so ipso facto. Shifts in […]
2022-01-24 05:39:00
[…] always contended he transcribed the Adagio from a long-lost manuscript by the Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751), but that claim remains in doubt. Whatever, we get a terrific account of it here, neither too sentimental nor too matter-of-fact. It glides smoothly along on the back of Katta’s organ passages, with a rather forward part for the soloist.Mr. Hope rounds out the album with over half a dozen shorter works: Byblos, the Old City by Bechara El-Khoury; Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Part; Nimrod from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar; “Dream a Little Dream” by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt; “Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway” by Stephen Foster; and two traditional songs, “Danny Boy” and “Amazing Grace.”In short, it’s an endearing album, if perhaps more than a tad on the solemn side. Still, the music is so beautiful and so beautifully performed, one cannot help going away impressed and, yes, hopeful.Producers Christoph […]
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