classical music: Marin Alsop

classical music: Marin Alsop

classical music:

Marin Alsop

Philip Glass, Marin Alsop, ...

Naxos American, 2004

Glass Deepens With Two Dramatically Resonant Pieces
Along with his colleague John Adams, Philip Glass is the most familiar of the modern minimalists. Yet like Adams, Glass seems to be building a greater communicative sense with each new work I hear. These two symphonies were composed in the early nineties, and Naxos is ...

Red Violin Concerto

Joshua Bell

SONY CLASSICS, 2007

A Fiddle of Infinite Jest
Forty years passed between the composition of Corigliano's "Sonata for violin and Piano" (1963) and the Red Violin Concerto premiere in 2003. The two works are very different in scope and scale, but to my ears they have a lot in common. I don't guarantee that I could ...

Dvorak: Symphony No. 9; "From The New World"

Dvorak, Alsop, ...

Naxos, 2008

Alsop and Baltimore make "New World" live
Having just heard this recording on the classical station on July 4th, I have to say that it is an inspired reading. Clean, with tempi that are appropriate. I have never heard the Baltimore Symphony sound better. The one star fan? from Maryland is very probably one of ...

Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

Paul Charrier, Leonard Bernstein, ...

Naxos American, 2003

Marin Alsop's excellent Bernstein disc by NAXOS- a winner.
Armchair critics (just like armchair generals) are dime a dozen. The previous reviewers may be knowledgeable, but they miss the point. This recording has already earned quite a bit of international recognition, not to mention "Recording of the Month" of Gramophone ...

Roy Harris: Symphony No. 3; Symphony No. 4 'Folk Song Symphony'

Roy Harris, Marin Alsop, ...

Naxos American, 2006

Harris Third: Five Stars; Harris Fourth: Four Stars
When Serge Koussevitzky premiered the Third Symphony of Roy Harris (1898-1979) with the Boston Symphony in 1939 he commented that this was the 'first great American symphony.' That's stretching it a bit -- I'm sure you can come up with other earlier candidates -- but ...

Double Violin Concerto

Mark O'Connor, Spiritual Traditional, ...

Omac, 2005

Expansive Americana
Mark O'Connor has become quite the composer in recent years. Known very well among the Nashville session musician circle as one of the great fiddle players of all times (his fiddle work is featured on the landmark 1987 TRIO album by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and ...

The Fiddle Concerto

Mark O'Connor

Warner Bros / Wea, 1995

Bluegrass Meets Mozart
This wonderful CD is an honest attempt to marry American bluegrass idom to classical music forms. The result manages to be both toe-tapping and extraordinarily rich; maybe Dvorak would have joined in with O'Connor if he were alive today and came back to Iowa. I can't ...

Discover Music of the 20th Century

Roger Heaton, John Adams, ...

Naxos, 2005

For the price you can't lose
This 2 cd set consists of, as the title indicates, various 20c pieces or movements from the Naxos catalog. Sound quality is uniformly high, although for some such as Stockhausen's it's not clear if that's good or bad. What is excellent is the variety of the ...

Of Beauty & Light: The Music of Philip Glass [Box Set]

Glass, Marin Alsop, ...

Naxos, 2008

good selections but questionable 4th disc
I have not bought this set, but I have heard all the music on it from other sources. The symphonies are good, but I was not sure what was on every disc since there is no listing on Amazon. I went to the Naxos website to see the track listings for the 4 cd's, and the ...

Glass: Heroes Symphony; The Light

Philip Glass, Marin Alsop, ...

Naxos American, 2007

Glass energy is ordered and breathing
Heroes Symphony and The Light are written and performed with all that I have appreciated of Glass' music since I first heard the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1971. As with Handel, for example, parts of the symphonies are "taken from" previous works. These compositional ...

Christopher Rouse: Trombone Concerto, Gorgon, Iscariot

Christopher Rouse, Marin Alsop, ...

Phoenix USA, 2007

Sonic Blockbuster, Trombone Masterpiece
This is the best collection available of the music of Christopher Rouse, one of the most audience-pleasing Americans writing today. It is a reissue of a deleted RCA release. The Trombone Concerto won the Pulitzer Prize for its mastery of form and content--but it ...

Nominations for the Gramophone Awards 2000
Timothy Hugh, Samuel Barber, ...

Naxos, 2000

Bernstein: Serenade, Facsimile, Divertimento

Timothy Walden, Leonard Bernstein, ...

Naxos American, 2005

Spotlight on Three Exhilarating Bernstein Works Impeccably Performed
The stunning drama of Leonard Bernstein's music comes to full light under his protege Marin Alsop's direction in superlative interpretations of three of his lesser known works. The first, "Serenade (after Plato's "Symposium") for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and ...

John Adams: Shaker Loops; The Wound-Dresser; Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Nathan Gunn, John Adams, ...

Naxos American, 2004

Four Revelations by Adams, Impressive Work by Alsop and Gunn
As a collection of John Adams' earlier works (1979-91), this is nothing sort of a revelation for me. Long associated with the American minimalism movement, Adams composes music which I tend to think of as alternately challenging and droning with unexpected flashes of ...

Michael Torke: Rapture; An American Abroad; Jasper

Michael Torke, Marin Alsop, ...

Naxos American, 2003

Yowza!
Poor Michael Torke has a hard time being taken seriously, largely because he writes uniformly optimistic, pop-tinged, lively, soul-easing music. But then Gershwin had the same problem in his era. Torke's time will come, I strongly suspect. And this release will help. ...