Maazel’s Verdi Requiem: A Moving Valediction

Jeremy Lee writes

Lorin Maazel died on July 13, 2014, and upon his death the musical world mourned at the loss of one of the few remaining “conducting firebrands”:  an extremely gifted and technically secure conductor whose musicality and personality often polarized listeners, especially during his later years.  A frustratingly variable conductor at times, when he was on he could deliver

Giulini in Vienna

Jeremy Lee writes

This 15CD box contains all of Giulini’s DG recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna Symphony, including his concerto recordings.  A substantial proportion of the recordings featuring the Vienna Philharmonic would be considered “Late Giulini” (around mid-1980s), a style that was

Giulini’s Berlin Verdi Requiem

Jeremy Lee writes

There are a few major types of Verdi Requiems.  We have the operatic, dramatic camp (Bernstein, Solti, Muti, Pappano), the cool-headed, more emotionally distant camp (Bychkov, Abbado), the coolly analytical camp (Harnoncourt à la Boulez), and the spiritual, reverential camp (Karajan, Celibidache).  Carlo Maria Giulini’s

Igneous and Inexpensive: Solti’s Verdi Requiem

Jeremy Lee writes

Solti’s Verdi Requiem has been issued on RCA Classic Library previously, and its rather embarrassing length of 81 minutes and 34 seconds–a bit too much for one CD–meant that it had to spill over a second CD.  Now, though, it’s been reissued at a budget price on the new Sony Classical Masters series, and by some technical wizardry