From the piano stool to the stage
This month’s round-up has a feast of opera, and Lenny on keys
The releases to mark Leonard Bernstein’s centenary year keep on coming, and none could be more perfectly formed than Sony’s Bernstein
– The Pianist (Sony Classical 88985483792). Taking in Bernstein’s turns at the piano stool, as opposed to the podium, the 10-disc collection features neat original album artwork. While three of the discs were previously released as part of the label’s hefty 100-disc centenary set last year, this one is certainly more shelf friendly, not to mention a little lighter on the wallet.
Joseph Keilberth’s careerend truly was a showstopper when, in 1968, the conductor died of a heart during Act II of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in Munich. Mercifully that moment isn’t captured in Warner Classics’s new 22-disc set, though The Telefunken Recordings 1953-1963 (Warner 9029568926) isn’t without its own drama. Curated from a decade of LP recordings, this generous set is, like the conductor, discerning and wide-ranging in its tastes. From Mozart to Mendelssohn, Haydn to Hindemith, it’s a genuine smorgasbord. While there’s no Tchaikovsky to be found in the Keilberth set, there is plenty on offer in Profil Hänssler’s new plainly packaged 22-disc box devoted entirely to the Russian master’s operas (PH17053). Of course not all of his work in this genre survived in full, given that the composer tore up or burned his earliest works. Fragments did survive, however, and these join the complete operas and incidental music in these archival recordings from the Bolshoi Theatre, made between 1936 and ’63. Slightly more pleasing to the eye is a further opera box, this time celebrating some of Massenet’s greatest works for the stage (Erato 90295683474). Featuring some dazzling original cover art, this 16-disc set is comprised of seven operas: Werther, Manon,
Thaïs, Don Quichotte, Le Jongleur de Notre-dame, Hérodiade and Sapho. The recordings include turns from luminous names such as conductors Lorin Maazel and Michel Plasson, soprano Victoria de Los Angeles and mezzosoprano Teresa Berganza.
The Keilberth Telefunken Recordings is a generous, varied set