Danielpour: An American Requiem.
Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano; Hugh Smith, tenor; Mark Oswald, baritone. Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Carl St. Clair, conductor. Richard Danielpour and J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., producers; Keith Johnson, engineer. Reference Recordings RR-97 (HDCD)

Richard Danielpour says that his American Requiem was conceived as "both a tribute to the American soldier and an examination of war." Chance brought about an added dedication, to "those who died in the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001." Danielpour called his publisher in Manhattan a little after nine that morning about a routine matter, and she told him that just a few minutes earlier, she'd witnessed the second jet crash into the World Trade Center from her office window.

Born in 1956 and educated at the New England Conservatory and the Julliard School, Danielpour is a busy and widely performed American composer. An American Requiem is a large-scale, Romantic work with a contemporary harmonic twist. It uses the traditional Latin text, with interpolated poetry by Walt Whitman and others. Danielpour has clearly heard the choral music of Poulenc and Messiaen, and Ligeti (remember the "Lux aeterna" chorus in 2001: A Space Odyssey?). But his music is in no way a copy of any of these possible influences. The spooky, otherworldly opening "Requiem aeternam" movement will appeal to a wide spectrum of listeners, and once he gets our interest, Danielpour never lets go. At times, the piece flares with wildly active rhythms?for example, the opening of the "Dies Irae," reminiscent of the lumbering quality in the "Confutatis" movement of Mozart's Requiem, but with jazzy syncopations Mozart would not have envisaged.

Conductor Carl St. Clair leads a performance that demonstrates the composer's deep empathy for the Latin and English words he has chosen. Orchestra and chorus deliver the contemplative passages with restrained beauty, and aggressively tackle wilder moments like the opening of the "Libera me," in which the drums and brass boom out loudly. In the final movement, "Lux Aeterna," we hear the kind of heavenly pianissimo that only a large chorus can produce. Among three impressive soloists, Hugh Smith impressed most, with a voice reminiscent of Peter Pears.

The HDCD recording is a gem. Transient detail and the sense of the orchestra onstage are unusually good for the CD medium, and the soundstage is agreeably wide. This sounds stunning when played at lifelike volume. The softer sequences are audible and focused, while larger-scale moments like the frenzied "Dies Irae" remain stable and surprisingly realistic. An American Requiem is the first accessible, musically commendable new setting of these timeless words that I have heard in years. All concerned should be proud of this recording. It is a fitting tribute, just as they intended.

John Higgins

Ives: An American Journey.
Orchestral and Choral works; Songs. Thomas Hampson, baritone. San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and piano. San Francisco Symphony Chorus, San Francisco Symphony Girls Chorus. Andreas Neubronner, producer; Markus Heiland, engineer. BMG 09026-63703

Nowhere is Michael Tilson Thomas' advocacy of the music of America's visionary mavericks more persuasive than in this portal into the sonic universe of Charles Ives.

Ives, the Yale graduate turned successful insurance salesman who feverishly composed on nights and weekends, is usually considered a craggy iconoclast who single-handedly set American music on its ear by juxtaposing fragments of hymns, marches, and patriotic songs within a polytonal, polyrhythmic, and sometimes riotously atonal fabric. This approach is epitomized by Leonard Bernstein's live 1987 version of The Unanswered Question [DG 429-220]. Seemingly accompanied by every air conditioner in NYC, sundry woodwinds rudely punctuate a serene, hymn-like fabric in a manner more puzzling than reassuring.

In Tilson Thomas's new live version, however, the serene fabric predominates, thankfully unwrinkled by background noise, with questions posed by the woodwinds barely ruffling what is transformed into a statement of faith in the power of spiritual transcendence.

Tilson Thomas first recorded Three Places in New England with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1970. In that recently remastered early performance [DG 463 633], sabotaged by seriously compressed dynamics and forward, "in your face" sonics, the young MTT presents Ives as brash, bold, and almost one-dimensional in his quirky adamancy. Here, in a convincing testament to his maturation as a conductor,

Tilson Thomas paints the opening "St. Gaudens" in mystical, impressionistic colors. Abetted by soft, atmospheric engineering, Ives seems to gaze at his subject through a time warp, nostalgically revisiting a fading way of life; the contrast with the rollicking march of the subsequent "Putnam's Camp" seems ironic.

Throughout this disc's fifteen live orchestral and vocal selections, harmony and dissonance unite in affirmation of what Ives claimed was "A conception unlimited by the narrow names of Christian, Pagan, Jew, or Angel! A vision higher and deeper than art itself!" Whether Tilson Thomas and the wonderfully versatile Hampson are marching along to "The Circus Band," celebrating "Charlie Rutledge" in appropriate cowboyese, or honoring the Sabbath in the sanctified, albeit equivocating "Serenity," they unfailingly illuminate what MTT describes as Ives' brilliant "musical/psychological landscapes suffused with a tender melancholy."

Jason Serinus

Korngold: The Sea Hawk. Captain Blood. The Prince and the Pauper. Elizabeth and Essex.
London Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn, conductor. Sid McLauchlan, producer; Ulrich Vette, engineer. Deutsche Grammophon 471347

If this was the first recording of Erich Korngold's film music in modern sound it would be a major event. However, anyone familiar with Charles Gerhardt's Classic Film Score Series will be seriously disappointed. This is surprising, because Previn would seem to be the ideal interpreter: Like Korngold, he is an extremely versatile musician who has composed orchestral music, opera, lieder, and film scores. An interview with Previn provides insight as to why these performances don't work. He applauds Korngold's versatility ("he did it all"), but elsewhere seems to be strangely patronizing: "His music is just so pretty. It is very hard to resist." On the subject of conducting this material: "?whatever is difficult about the music is technical. You don't have to soul search to conduct it."

In a probable attempt to emphasize the perceived prettiness, Previn plays everything slowly. This may work to a limited extent for some of the lyrical melodies, but it undermines the wide dynamic contrasts in flamboyant spectacles like The Sea Hawk. Sometimes the tempos are so unremittingly slow that forward momentum grinds to a halt. In The Prince and the Pauper, the quicksilver lightness of this Fallstaffian cinematic scherzo becomes leaden. The effervescent, syncopated main theme (which Korngold would later use in the third movement of his Violin Concerto) sounds like a monotonous dirge. Perhaps the best thing about this production is that it contains significant portions of The Prince and the Pauper and Captain Blood not included on Gerhardt's recordings. Other previous versions are compromised by second-rate orchestras and mediocre sound. But even the London Symphony Orchestra sounds perfunctory here.

The sound is also problematical. There is ample ambient hall sound, but the richness, high-end presence, and deep warm bass so vital to a successful Korngold recording are missing. "Ship in the Night," from Captain Blood, demonstrates this clearly. With their subtly nuanced texture on Gerhardt/RCA, the diaphanous strings depicting rippling waves lapping against the ship's hull are breathtaking. On this recording, they are essentially inaudible. The bizarre jazzy passage utilizing a fantastic array of exotic percussion instruments in The Sea Hawk has little effect.

Despite all of these problems, the inherent beauty of the music shines through. In Previn's world, all must be well. But there is so much more to Korngold. An opportunity missed.

Berio: Voci (Folk Songs II). Naturale (Su melodie siciliane), per viola sola, e percussione.
Kim Kashkashian, viola; Robyn Schulkowsky, percussion. Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna, Dennis Russell Davies, conductor. Manfred Eicher, producer; Joseph Schütz, engineer (Voci); Peter Laenger, engineer (Naturale). ECM New Series 1735 461 808

BUY CD

Two compositions by the Italian modernist Luciano Berio sandwich five autentico Sicilian folk songs culled from a Roman archive. The Berio scores extract their piquant juice from these native roots. Indeed, Naturale, for viola and percussion, incorporates a Sicilian folk singer on tape as an exotic background motif. Taken together, one could suppose these echt morsels from some time-distant Eurasian fastness?outlandish Scythian remnants perhaps. We can surely appreciate the fascination the tunes hold for a composer whose interest in folk music appears elsewhere his work, even though Berio disclaims an ethnomusicologist's intensity. In this regard, he differs from the exhaustively inquiring Béla Bartók, who, with Zoltán Kodály, wandered the Hungarian countryside in search of all he could find. Relative to Bartók's scholarly engagement, Folk Songs, the present program's precursor, takes a decidedly "top-twenty" tack.

Voci (1984), subtitled Folk Songs II, sounds like a masterwork. As a gentle irony (Berio's a bear for musical caprice), the composer eschews the human voice for a poignantly expressive viola against a luminously misted orchestral terrain (two instrumental ensembles in fact, a separation less than obvious on recording). Folk Songs of 1963/64?the vanguard's Roaring Sixties?provoked controversy. Berio's critical contemporaries anticipated adherence to art music's "difficult," crowd-dispersing line. Its second of eleven numbers, "I Wonder as I Wander," might be taken for a mini-manifesto. Should the present release's ethnic linkage suggest the "easy" direction Folk Songs explored? To the contrary. The writing for both soloist and ensemble, elegant in its will-o'-the-wisp plasticity, trades rather more directly with the twentieth century's more ardent explorations of orchestral color; likewise for Naturale on a rather smaller scale.

ECM's Manfred Eicher is a glorious obsessive. The CD is slipcased with a plump, quatre-lingual booklet, nicely bound, good paper, featuring evocative b&w photos of the Sicilian countryside by Guiseppe Leone. There's an insert with a detailed table of contents, photos of the composer and participants, and an interview with Kim Kashkashian. Two of the pictures show percussionist Robyn Schul-kowsky bowing a huge tam-tam as a suggestion of Naturale's misterioso soundscape. I'm particularly taken with Voci's recording: wonderful detail and soundfield spread. In Dennis Russell Davies, Kim Kashkashian, and Robyn Schulkowsky, Berio's case could not be better made.

Mike Silverton
 

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3. Scriabin: Etudes.
Lang Lang, piano. St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Yuri Temirkanov, conductor. Robert Woods, James Mallinson, producers; Jack Renner, Michael Bishop, engineers. Telarc 80582

Some people may think that it is arrogant for a nineteen-year-old pianist to select this mighty pillar of the repertoire for his first concerto recording. The competition is formidable. Vladimir Horowitz and Eugene Ormandy would seem to be an ideal combination, but Horowitz' steely tone blends poorly with Ormandy's lush instrumental textures. Martha Argerich's vaunted technique is dazzling, and Riccardo Chailly's accompaniment works well. Arcadi Volodos and James Levine utilize tempos similar to Argerich/Chailly, but the overall impression is more expansive. Despite gorgeous SACD sound, that project is curiously low in voltage. Not so with Byron Janis and Antal Dorati in their legendary Mercury recording. They play it faster than anyone, and Janis is incandescent. Mercury's sound manages to be simultaneously lean, detailed, and lustrous. This may not be the last word in romantic indulgence, but is probably the most electrifying version ever recorded.

Does Lang Lang belong in this company? No question about it. He throws the technical difficulties aside with shocking ease. Lang Lang never sounds as close to the edge as Horowitz, but this is no note-perfect, faceless run-through. The subtly nuanced tempo shifts and fingerwork in the first movement are lovely. Lang Lang and Temirkanov tend to linger, and you occasionally wish they would get on with it. But the fireworks come, primarily in the third movement, where the pianist's power is readily apparent, though never willful. He has clearly worked extensively with Temirkanov and the two are in complete accord. This performance is temperamentally close to Volodos/Levine, but the overall effect is more emotionally gratifying and exciting.

Telarc has come remarkably close to preserving the aura of a concert-hall experience. The piano and orchestra are balanced perfectly, and there is adequate inner detail. Listen to the diaphanous strings and the solo winds in the first movement. As is often the case with Telarc, I find the high strings to be a little dull, especially in comparison to Mercury's bright "Living Presence."

My favorite performance is still Janis/Dorati, but even if you treasure that recording, you need to hear Lang Lang/Temirkanov. These polar-opposite versions are the finest recorded representations of their equally valid interpretive stances. The disc is filled out with a generous selection of Scriabin Etudes for solo piano, ravishingly played.

Arthur B. Lintgen

Menotti: Violin Concerto. Muero Porque No Muero. Oh Ilama De Amor Viva. The Death of Orpheus.
Jennifer Koh, violin. Spoleto Festival Orchestra and Choir, Richard Hickox, conductor. Ralph Couzens, engineer and producer. Chandos 9979

Though much better known for his dramatic works, Gian Carlo Menotti wrote concertos for piano and for violin. His 1952 Violin Concerto is the younger sibling?or perhaps the "domestic partner"?of Samuel Barber's. Like that evergreen masterpiece, Menotti's is a richly scored, full-blooded showpiece that shapes its grand tunes and Romantic ardor into Classical forms. Though it doesn't quite match Barber's soaring melodic inspiration and lapidary craft?but then, what does?it's a splendid (and, at 28 minutes, longer and more various) creation that, given a hearing, is sure to delight performers and audiences alike.

Rare as recordings of the Menotti Concerto are, this new Chandos faces stiff competition from the Ruggiero Ricci performance [Reference Recordings RR-45] that offers a somewhat faster and more straight-ahead rendition, and an airier, livelier recording, albeit Ricci is a little far back and a tad too reverberant. Chandos puts violinist Jennifer Koh considerably closer, which is fine, but doesn't capture the bloom and ambiance around her nearly as well. And Koh's playing, though certainly virtuosic, doesn't quite have Ricci's ease and authority. On the other hand, if you want Menotti's three short cantatas (each for vocal soloist, chorus, and orchestra), this is their first and only recording, and it's a beauty?if you don't mind singers with vibratos wide enough to jump rope through. Two of the cantatas set Spanish texts that dramatize the agonies of religious ecstasy with a melodramatic abandon suitable for erotic trysts and, at one point, a bullfight. The third re-tells the myth of Orpheus, going from grim frenzy to gushing sentiment. Gorgeous, effusive music that fans of Gian Carlo's operas will adore. But not me.

Mark Lehman

Brahms: Piano Trio No.1 in B major, Op.8. Piano Trio No.2 in C major, Op.87.
Eroica Trio: Erika Nickrenz, piano; Adela Peña, violin; Sara Sant'Angelo, cello. Joanna Nickrenz, producer; Marc Aubort, engineer. EMI Classics 7243557199

Production credits include Emir, hairstyles, and Jeff Gautier, makeup. Omen-wise, not good. On the bright side, the credits also list Joanna Nickrenz and Marc Aubort as producer and recording engineer, respectively. I've been a fan for ages, as have many audiophiles. Aubort's microphones mimic our ears, which, in the live concert setting, experience multiple reflections, thus somewhat softening?or better, contextualizing?the rather more precisely defined edges other styles of recording provide. In the event, I hear the Nickrenz-Aubort team's hallmark warmth and deep-nap textures as the ideal match to Brahms' own.

Perhaps as a symptom of desperation, the classical market being what it is, an alarming number of recent releases picture their young female soloists in such as way as to suggest nubile accessibility as the principal draw. A colleague wondered whether Eroica mightn't be mistaken for Erotica. Cancel the thought. One would pick up on this trio's chops through a thick brick wall. These folks don't mince about. Depart in peace, Emir and Jeff, in clouds of fragrant talc.

Together, Brahms' deeply affecting piano trios are quite the perfect marriage of a rosy-ripe Gemütlichkeit with alla zingarese and csárdás fire. In his teens, the composer absorbed what Hamburgers incorrectly supposed was Hungarian folk music, then in local vogue as a result of the 1848 disruptions that drove Magyar insurgents into Brahms' home town and beyond. Quite apart from the Hungarian Dances, it's a strain that appears throughout the composer's oeuvre, primarily in his application of piquant "irregular" rhythms. The first piano trio's early opus number?it's his first published chamber work (1854)?belies its 1890 revision, as easily described as a radical reduction. For this listener, the amended first and better celebrated second piano trio of 1882 play pretty much as equals in their articulation of that peculiarly Brahmsian thematic luxuriance, passion and scope.

Mike Silverton

Mahler: Symphony No. 4. Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen.
Alison Browner, soprano; Olaf Bär, baritone. Linos Ensemble. Christian Schmitt, producer; Mark Hohn, engineer. Capriccio 10863

If a piano reduction of an orchestral work results in a kind of X-ray image that reduces the fully scored artifact to an austere skeletal outline, an arrangement for chamber ensemble yields a kind of line drawing with some areas lightly tinted by translucent pastels. Much of the full, rich coloring, as well as the expanse, weightiness, and (paradoxically) some of the delicacy?for, as Berlioz pointed out, it takes a large orchestra to play extremely quietly?are gone. Still, the form is recognizably complete, and something new is gained: certain qualities normally submerged in luxuriant orchestra drapery (even drapery as transparent as Mahler's) are thrown into relief. The result can be a fresh, enlightening view of an old favorite.

So it is that these remarkable chamber ensemble versions of two Mahler masterpieces?arranged for string quintet, flute, oboe, clarinet, piano, harmonium, percussion, and vocal soloists in the early 1920s for Arnold Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances?reveal qualities that otherwise remain mostly subliminal. How Schubertian, for instance, the Fourth Symphony's delightful scherzo now sounds! There's a touch of Viennese dance-band in its mocking, bittersweet lilt, and a half-rustic roughness that the full string choirs smooth away. And the serene opening of the great slow movement?how tenderly seraphic it now seems, how unearthly yet intimate, how akin to one of Beethoven's celestial adagios.

No one would claim that these arrangements, marvelously idiomatic though they are, replace Mahler's music as he wrote it. Eleven players simply can't generate the grandeur and spaciousness needed for the big climaxes, nor can they create the contrasting colors and interplay of tuttis with solo lines of the full-orchestra originals. The Wayfarer cycle, being more essentially a vocal composition, fares better in this regard. Still, anyone who loves these works will hear in these extraordinary reincarnations unthought-of resonances and reverberations from across the centuries of Western music.

No small part of this is due to the loving performances by the two fine singers and the superb Linos Ensemble?a bit brisk for my taste in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, but close to perfect after that. Also crucial is Capriccio's vivid, airy, euphonious, and up-close recording that puts the listener amid the soundstage. It's as if we've invited the performers into our living room instead of being asked to audition them in the concert hall. This, in my view, is the ideal chamber-music perspective, and it's surely how Schoenberg and his loyal band of devoted music lovers heard these arrangements as they brought to life precious music whose time, as Mahler predicted, was yet to come.

Mark Lehman

J.S. Bach: St. John Passion (1725 version).
Mark Padmore and Malcolm Bennett, tenor; Michael Volle, Sebastian Noack, and Dominik Worner, bass; Sibylla Rubens and Cecile Kempenaers, sopranos; Andreas Scholl, alto. Collegium Vocale Ghent, Philippe Herreweghe, conductor. Andreas Neubronner, producer; Markus Heiland, engineer. Harmonia Mundi 901748.49 (2 CDs)

Bach revised his St. John Passion four times. Scarcely a year after its first performance on Good Friday, 1724, he undertook revisions for a performance that followed a twelve-month cycle of chorale cantatas, leading some scholars to believe he wanted to make it more dramatic. He composed new opening and closing choruses and inserted a vigorous bass aria into Part I. He also replaced two other arias and dropped a third, deletions for which Philippe Herreweghe posits a practical basis: they're among the most difficult to sing.

The most consequential change of 1725 is the opening chorus, which startles modern listeners in a way it couldn't have Bach's own, since we know it as the end of Part I of his St. Matthew Passion, composed three years later. The replacement is certainly grander, if more generalized in effect. The St. John concentrates its drama far more intensely than the more contemplative St. Matthew, the turbulent urgency, at once sinister and mournful, of the original chorus adumbrating themes of deceit and betrayal.

The St. John has always been something of a house specialty chez Herreweghe, whose 1987 recording of the first, most widely preferred version?also for Harmonia Mundi though with different forces [901264.65]?is conducted with deep feeling and conviction. He says he undertook this new one, which celebrates his twentieth year with the label, less to do the 1725 revision than because his period-instrument players and singers are so much better now. The new version displays keener rhythmic alertness, more incisive attack, and greater beauty of tone. As a group, the soloists sing with more imaginative expression and interpretive freedom. The clearer, more focused and dynamic recording provides an appropriately panoramic soundstage.

My only complaint has to do with a missed opportunity. Once Herre-weghe decided on an alternate version, why didn't the producer follow the exemplary model of Harmonia Mundi USA's Robina Young, who, in the Messiah she produced for Nicholas McGegan [HMU 907050/2], recorded all of Handel's variants, then laid out the discs so that every version performed in the composer's lifetime could be programmed? Moreover, the new notes fail to name arias deleted (nos. 13, 19, and 20 of 1724) or identify the 1725 variants by track number (1, 12, and 14 on Disc 1; 5 and 40 on Disc 2). Sets of this distinction deserve better documentation.

But that doesn't preclude the highest recommendation or make this recording any less fitting a tribute to this extraordinary conductor.

Paul Seydor

Puccini: Tosca.
Angela Gheorghiu (Tosca); Roberto Alagna (Cavaradossi); Ruggero Raimondi (Scarpia). Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano, conductor. David Groves, producer; Simon Rhodes, engineer. EMI 557173 (2 CDs)

Verdi: Il Trovatore. Barbara Frittoli (Leonora); Salvatore Licitra (Manrico); Leo Nucci, (Count di Luna); Violeta Urmana (Azucena). Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Riccardo Muti, conductor. Elfride Forone, producer; Gianfranco Bendin, engineer. Sony 89553 (2 CDs)

With dozens of Tosca and Il Trovatore recordings available, it's easy to assume that these new ones are superfluous. They're not. In fact, they're among the "don't miss" versions of these operas. If you already own multiple versions and think you know them inside out, you're in for a pleasant surprise.

Tosca is often labeled a tawdry potboiler, but potboilers don't have the stunning melodies, dramatic subtleties, and heightened tension it generates. EMI's stars are the heavily hyped Golden Couple, Gheorghiu and Alagna. Whatever you may think of her husband's faltering bid for superstardom, Gheorghiu's the real thing, the best Tosca since Callas ruled the stage. She sings with sweep, passion, and bloodcurdling intensity. Hers isn't a conventionally "pretty" voice, though she can float beautiful tones that make you weep. But it's a voice full of color and shading, creating a convincing Tosca whether she's portraying love, jealousy, or desperation. Only a slightly bumpy "Vissi d'arte" falls somewhat short, wanting the fullness of a true spinto voice to fill out Puccini's arching line. But that's a quibble, given Gheorghiu's magnificent singing and dramatic power.

Another hero of this set is conductor Pappano, the driving force of a performance brimming with excitement and dramatic thrust. He lets the orchestra rip, as in the snarling brass that introduce Scarpia and convince you this isn't someone you'd care to meet in a dark alley. Pappano also revels in Puccini's orchestral mastery, as in the delicacy of the portrait of dawn breaking over Rome that begins Act III.

The rest of the participants are good. Alagna's Cavaradossi can't match di Stefano in the classic Callas/De Sabata set (EMI) or Björling (RCA) but it's as good as we have today, a bit pressured on top and lacking tone in his soft singing. Raimondi, a wily veteran vocal actor, is a properly villainous Scarpia. Chorus and orchestra are outstanding, the comprimario roles well done. Kick the volume up and you get wide dynamic range, from the powerful opening brass chords to quiet passages that retain instrumental body and unravel orchestral details. Balances tilt slightly in the singers' favor and there's a realistic soundstage with plenty of depth. When Tosca enters the church with her calls of "Mario, Mario, Mario," she's far to the rear. The Callas/De Sabata recording is in a class by itself, but this is the best Tosca in decades; you can't go wrong.

Nor can you miss with Sony's new Il Trovatore. It's prime middle-period Verdi, full of tunes you can't get out of your mind. Just take the plot on faith. Trovatore's notoriously prone to bad performances, with provincial bands burping out oom-pah-pah rhythms and singers struggling with parts several sizes too big for them. But bring together four great voices attuned to the appropriate style, and it can't miss. That's why this Trovatore is so unusual. Only Urmana, as the gypsy Azucena, has an outstanding voice. Nucci is past his prime, Licitra's tenor is good without raising goosebumps, and Frittoli lacks the amplitude of such great Leonoras as Tebaldi and Leontyne Price.

So why am I so high on this? Because Muti conducts like the reincarnation of Toscanini. This may be the most thrilling Trovatore on disc thanks to his exciting direction, full of thrustful power, wide dynamic range, refined, atmospheric scenes, and revelatory orchestral detail. He has his singers phrase idiomatically in the Verdian style that's become an endangered art. His keen rhythmic sense and sharp accents keep the flow going, and I've never before heard the ominous bass lines projected so clearly or to such dramatic effect. Muti treats Verdi's orchestration as seriously as Wagner's, so there's not a single oom-pah in the set. An opera thought crude is revealed as sophisticated and powerful. But Muti's obsessive fidelity to the text means there's no high C in "Di quella pira." The loss is ours, as well as the tenor's.

The recording realistically captures La Scala's live performances. Stage and audience noises are at a minimum, balances are good, and the wealth of orchestral detail uncovered by Muti is clearly heard.

Dan Davis