DJ RIX 2003 FAVORITES
by Bob Rixon
After several attempts with other more famous divas old & new, a modest 1971 recording by then 30 year old Welsh songbird Margaret Price finally won me over to Schubert lieder. & I first heard her singing a high wordless modal melody in a Vaughan Williams symphony.
Ah, the movie soundtrack nuts must despise this recording. No complete scores with" lost" 30 second cues; just some fine Bernard Herrmann & Franz Waxman music for Hitchcock films distilled into short concert suites. Add a few things by Schifrin including symphonic Dirty Harry themes & Mission Impossible & you have a swell recital.
Every year a few recordings come out of nowhere to utterly & unexpectedly charm me. These serenades, compositions of Brahms' youth - his twenties after the Schumann's had championed him but before he'd done any really large works - are, well, youthful. Filled with lovely melodies, interesting experiments, high spirits & soft melancholy, dances & songs, it spent many hours inside my CD player. The Preraphaelite cover art for this series a plus. Bargain, too.
Bedroom Bliss with Beethoven
I have no idea what's on this ghastly "concept" album. Explicit lyrics? Not our boy. Even Fidelio was more about prison & male envy than about love. Poor Luddy was probably the most unsexy & most sexually frustrated of all the greatest composers. So he argued with The Deity instead. An anonymous vacation in southern Italy would've done wonders for his psyche. Nonetheless, this is the best CD cover of the year.
