G. Bizet - Don Procopio - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In the early 1960s, Wergo launched a series that would become a legend in the history of contemporary music recordings. Studio Reihe Neuer Musik featured some of the most important and cutting-edge compositions of the modern era, ranging from Schoenberg's Erwartung to the symphonies of Lutoslawski to the Concord Sonata by Charles Ives. Some of these seminal recordings have never been released on CD and some have been unavailable in any form for many years. On the occasion of the tag's 50th anniversary, Wergo is releasing a selection of these gems from the early days of it's 50-year history. These are highlights of 20th-century music history that have lost nothing of their topicality and liveliness, in standard-setting recordings featuring great performers and audiophile sound quality. The CD reissue series starts with recordings featuring works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Christian Wolff.

This delightful selection from Naxos where, as usual, the playing, conducting and recorded sound cannot be faulted, is topped and tailed by the third and fourth movements of Bizet's 'Symphony in C' that he composed at the age of seventeen. In between are, amongst others, the best known bits of 'Carmen', 'The Pearl Fishers' and the 'L'Arlesienne Suites'. The music on this collection, with it's catchy melodic invention tied to sudden, serendipitous changes in tempo and pitch, harkens back to one of the fathers of French music, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

G. Bizet - Carmen [COMPACT DISCS] 2 Pack date 05/15/2012