Albums

WHAT WOULD WILKIE WANT WITH WOMAN IN WHITE? Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was a well-recognized English novelist, one who specialized in “sensational” novels, including his first big hit, The Woman in White (1859), and who, with Charles Dickens, co-wrote a stage adaptation of it, which had a successful London run. This latest television version — written…

BEYOND BEAUTIFUL The all-boy English vocal group Libera has morphed ever since they began in 1995. The approximately 40 members — 35 on this latest album — are between the ages of seven and sixteen, which means between the changes in voices and age, the singers come and go (most have unchanged boy soprano, a.k.a….

SUNRISE ISN’T THE ONLY THING THAT’S FALLING; IT SOUNDS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD This is my first time hearing the music of Isang Yun, the South Korean composer who was once kidnapped from Germany and put on trial for his support of Korean reunification. Korean born, Berlin resident Isang Yun, who died last…

RITE ON! Remember the first time you heard a classical work that became a seminal moment for you? Mine came watching Disney’s Fantasia. When I heard the pounding and mysticism and that swirl of orchestrated colors in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps), I was hooked. It didn’t hurt that I was watching…

TOO BAD THEY DIDN’T RAISE THE RENT Rent has a romantic history: Jonathan Larson, its author and composer, died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthday and the day before the musical’s first preview performance Off-Off-Broadway. Larson’s score is a mix of rock, rap, and gospel, the…

HARRY POTTER AND THE RECYCLED RECORDING ENGINEER Jack Thorne’s immensely popular two-part play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has taken up residence in London, New York, and Melbourne, and will soon be in San Francisco (Nov. 2019) and Hamburg (2020). Recording artist and engineer extraordinaire Imogen Heap was hired to create a soundtrack for…

í€ BIENTí”T This brilliant series, set in a fictional south-eastern French village during and just after World War II, gives the patient viewer an extraordinary history from the Nazi invasion from 1940 to 1945: the day-to-day survival mechanisms the populace and police had to endure, and the effects of the Vichy government on turncoat French…

WORTH INSPECTING There is something strong to say in favor of MHz’s collection of European dramas and cop shows and Inspector Winter is a quality example. Based on the popular crime novels of í„ke Edwardson, his Swedish detective (Magnus Krepper) is a craggy-faced, 40+ pile of insecurities and power, as depressed as a Scandinavian mid-winter…

AN ACTOR YOU CAN’T REFUSE What would Italian cop shows be without some Mafia to give it juice? The Palermo Connection explores that subject when a hotshot cop, Angelo Caronia (Riccardo Scamarcio), is transferred from his current base in Rome to a small police station on the outskirts of Palermo, capitol of Sicily, his birth-city….

A WOLFE IN BLAND CLOTHING Crime shows do not always have to be violent, sexist or hyper-exciting to be loved. But if they’re not those, then they’d better have strong storytelling and visual acuity to make their mark. Rex Stout (1886-1975) created the character of Nero Wolfe, an overweight, misogynistic, gourmand and armchair detective in…

END OF THE TUNNEL What a send-off for a series! Watching the remarkable chemistry between Stephen Dillane as British cop Karl Roebuck and Clémence Poésy as French officer Elise Wasserman creates the kind of joy that only qualified actors are able to generate with viewers, making the thriller-series mindful of what art should be. The…

SHAKING UP SHAKESPEARE In the English language, no playwright has had as much influence on the arts as William Shakespeare (or the nobleman who many think wrote his plays and sonnets, Edward de Vere, 17th  Earl of Oxford). Thousands of performances of his works have been graced (and, if bad, debased) over four centuries, so there’re…

BULLDOZED It breaks my heart that another poorly made production with no soul or message gets recorded as an Original Cast Recording. Those who may think that  Bulldozer is a musical about construction equipment should read the subtitle: The Ballad of Robert Moses, which is indeed about the renowned and controversial “master builder” of mid-20th century…

A WHIRL AT A NEW NEW WORLD Like a breath of fresh air, this new recording of Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World far exceeded my expectations from this uneven song cycle. This is an early work from the Tony-winner for Parade and Bridges of Madison County. “It’s about one moment,” Brown once…

SOMETHING SWELL FOR MUSICAL LOVERS A studio recording of Cole Porter’s 1943 boisterously farcical musical  Something for the Boys  has just been released, and producer and PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker has done it again. Since the early 1990s, he has helmed the making of studio cast albums of early Broadway musical scores that languished in near…

PANNING FOR GOLDSTEIN You have to glean the plot from the songs, because the synopsis for Charlie Schulman’s libretto for Goldstein, an Off-Broadway musical that closed in July, 2018, and now has an Original Cast Album on Broadway Records, is oddly extant from the booklet. Really? You mean I have to look up reviews for…

RING THOSE BELLS To say that these two tone poems are among Rachmaninov’s finest compositions may raise an eyebrow to those who find his Symphonies the best. Don’t take my word for it. Later in his life, the Great Russian believed that The Bells was his greatest achievement. And if you don’t believe The Rach…

A SERIES YOU CAN’T REFUSE For certain, we in America are well-acquainted with the Sicilian-born gangster clans first labeled The Black Hand (in the late 19th century), then La Cosa Nostra, and finally simplified as the Mafia. We’ve seen them in films and novels and theater. But most of us are not acquainted with the…

ORIGINAL OPERA SHOULD BE SEEN, NOT JUST HEARD I suspected even before opening this new recording that there was trouble ahead on what should have been a fascinating effort. The “world premiere recording” of the “original 1745 version” of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Le Temple de la Gloire is a must for the collector (and you know…