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December
2003
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>> NEWS <<
In the Studio
Gramophone Awards success
Echo Awards
Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album - album
reviews
Concert review - Cecilia Bartoli, Bridgewater
Hall, Manchester
Renee Fleming - Triumph at the Met
Luciano Pavarotti spreads the word - ti adoro!
Hayley Westenra storms the UK charts
Bond Remixed - in the US and Japan
>>
NEW RELEASES <<
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LISTEN & WATCH
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Luciano
Pavarotti - Ti adoro video
http://www.deccaclassics.com/media/ram/pavarotti_tiadoro_mbr.ram
Luciano
Pavarotti - Il Canto video
http://www.deccaclassics.com/media/ram/pavarotti_ilcanto_mbr.ram
The
Salieri Album - web feature
http://www.ceciliabartolionline.com
Renee
Fleming: by request - web feature
http://www.deccaclassics.com/reneefleming
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NEWS
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>> In the Studio <<
Alfred
Brendel and Matthias Goerne are recording
their concerts of Schubert: Winterreise at
London's Wigmore Hall for release in 2004,
and new tenor signing Joseph Calleja continues
recording sessions for his debut album with
Riccardo Chailly - due out next spring. We'll
bring you more on this in the New Year.
>>
Gramophone Awards success <<
The
Gramophone Awards 2003 have just been announced,
and there are notable Decca successes this
year. This month's Gramophone cover star,
Cecilia Bartoli, has been voted the Classic
FM 'Listener's Choice. See http://www.ceciliabartolionline.com
for the full story.
The Clifford Curzon, Original Masters Vol
I recordings won in the category of historical
reissue and made it into the final 6 for album
of the year. For a complete list of our 'Original
Masters' series, go to http://www.deccaclassics.com/originalmasters.
Clifford Curzon Volume II is now available!
Also Leontyne Price received Gramophone's
2003 Lifetime Achievement Award at a special
ceremony held recently in New York City.
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>>
Echo Awards <<
In
the prestigious German Echo Awards, our artists
have been awarded the following awards:
Concerto performance - Viktoria Mullova/Mozart
Violin Concertos 1, 3, 5 with the OAE
http://www.deccaclassics.com/newsandnewreleases/september2002/470292.html
Opera
recording - Renee Fleming: Bel Canto
http://www.deccaclassics.com/features/fleming/bel_canto/index.html
Solo
repertoire 20th century - Jean-Yves Thibaudet
- The Magic of Satie
http://www.deccaclassics.com/features/thibaudet/satie/index.htm
Bestseller
- Andrea Bocelli/Sentimento
http://www.deccaclassics.com/newsandnewreleases/november2002/470400.html
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>>
Cecilia Bartoli - The Salieri Album - album
reviews <<
Cecilia's
recent Gramophone success (see news above)
comes right in the middle of her concert tour
for her new album - The Salieri Album. Both
the album and the concerts have been attracting
praise from the critics, and Cecilia has made
a rare appearance in several pop album charts!
The Salieri album went into the French pop
charts at 24, the German pop charts at No.43
(her highest entry ever), No.26 in the Portuguese
pop charts and No.33 in the Belgian pop charts.
Read on for a few excerpts from recent reviews:
"
I need hardly say that Bartoli is and enormously
accomplished artist: every note plumb in the
middle, the words always carefully placed,
naturally musical phrasing, and of course
beauty and variety of tone. Adam Fischer accompanies
attentively and produces much musicanly and
finely modulated playing from the Orchestra
of the Age of Enlightenment whose timbres
set off the voice perfectly" - Gramophone,
November 2003
"This
CD opens with an impressive bang: An aria
from La secchia rapita features a wild vocal
line complete with wild coloratura, huge leaps,
a range from low G to high D flat (Bartoli
flirts more and more with the soprano range
while using her chest register even more forcefully!),
and vast dynamic changes accompanied by a
full orchestra augmented with grand, martial
trumpets." - Robert Levine - Amazon.com
Listen
to clips from the album at http://www.ceciliabartolionline.com
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>>
Concert review - Cecilia Bartoli, Bridgewater
Hall, Manchester <<
If
anyone could rehabilitate Antonio Salieri,
that most maligned and most misunderstood
of Mozart's contemporaries, Cecilia Bartoli
is the singer most likely to succeed. There
is no one better equipped to banish the miserable
image of F Murray Abraham, who played the
composer in Forman' s film of Shaffer's Amadeus.
She
and her collaborator, Claudio Osele, have
dug out dusty manuscripts from the Vienna
Library, poured over faded margin notes, examined
all aspects of Salieri' s long life and many
cultural influences, and produced a programme
of his overtures and arias that is as scrupulously
researched as it is immaculately performed.
The starting point, as has become Bartoli'
s practice, was a CD exploring the range of
Salieri's melodic style and his musical characterisation
over a long career. Following the disc, comes
the concert version, a selection of arias
interspersed with four opera overtures played
by her partners in the recording and concert
project, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment...
In Bartoli's exquisitely focused turn of phrase,
her dynamic contrasts and thrilling mezzo
voce, it is impossible not to hear the same
kind of passion and expression of vulnerability
as Mozart captured even more movingly some
years later.
Bartoli'
s own astonishingly agile instrument might
have been created especially for this type
of virtuoso repertoire. In "Vi sono sposa
e amante", a real showpiece, her vocal
runs were in serious danger of overtaking
the nimble fingers of her duetting partners,
oboe and flute. It was as if she were the
trio' s missing clarinet, on legs. In a longer
chunk from his early Armida Bartoli' s expressive
intensity, her innate sense of phrasing and
her ability to place each note dead in tune
held the audience spellbound.
By
Lynne Walker, from The Independent. Read the
whole article at
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/story..jsp?story=451603
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>>
Renee Fleming - Triumph at the Met <<
Renee wowed the crowds and critics with her
recent performance at the New York's Metropolitan
Opera, New York. Read some extracts from recent
reviews below;
"Ms.
Fleming triumphed, giving perhaps her strongest
overall performance at the Met. . . here every
interpretive turn, from her pure-toned shaping
of arching melodic lines to her breathy intonation
of Violetta's self-doubting utterances, seemed
born of a dramatic impulse and touchingly
natural.
Throughout
Ms. Fleming seemed empowered by Mr. Gergiev's
palpable support from the pit. Though a notably
impetuous conductor, he was attentive to every
tug and pull of Ms. Fleming's phrasing. In
the melting melodies of the final act aria
"Addio, del passato," which Ms.
Fleming sang mostly while prostrate onstage,
Mr. Gergiev cushioned her poignantly expansive
singing with tenderly undulant shaping of
the orchestral accompaniment. He understands
that this standard Verdian oom-pah-pah is
actually a sophisticated musical device.
The
news, though, is Ms. Fleming's Violetta. With
the support of Mr. Gergiev and the company,
she made this staple, performed all too often
for its own good, suddenly seem a fresh, psychologically
astute and daring musical drama."
By Anthony Tommasini - Excerpt taken from
The New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E2D71E3DF932A35753C1A9659C8B63
Don't
forget to listen to our webcast from Renee
in concert in Dallas. Almost 20,000 people
have already tuned in so far! You can still
listen to this for FREE! By clicking the link
below
http://www.iclassics.com/homepage.jsp/iclassics/iclassics_live.jsp
Renee's
latest album By Request is now available,
and features a brand new recording from La
Traviata. If you're in the US, you can buy
the album from iClassics here. http://www.iclassics.com/homepage.jsp/iclassics/album.jsp?selectionId=53350
>>
Luciano Pavarotti spreads the word - ti adoro!
<<
Luciano Pavarotti's new album ti adoro has
just been released internationally and Maestro
Pavarotti has been exceptionally busy appearing
on TV shows in the US such as Good Morning
America, CNN Music Room, Larry King Live and
The View. At a recent signing in Tower Records,
New York, fans and reporters alike queued
up to meet the big man himself. Look out for
Pavarotti on German TV (ZDF) this week, and
there will be a feature in Neue Post on October
29th.
Photo>>
http://www.deccaclassics.com/dykt/october_2003/pavarotti-3.jpg
News
story>> http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=musicNews&storyID=3556483
Two
new videos have just been finished for the
songs il canto and ti adoro, which feature
Pavarotti as you've never seen him before.
Click the links below to see the videos.
Ti adoro video >> http://www.deccaclassics.com/media/ram/pavarotti_tiadoro_mbr.ram
Il
Canto video >> http://www.deccaclassics.com/media/ram/pavarotti_ilcanto_mbr.ram
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