Christiane Karg/Arcangelo, etc
Scene!
(Berlin Classics)
My ultimate Album of the Year in 2014 was the wonderful recording of Richard Strauss's lieder featuring the beautiful soprano voice of Christiane Karg in tandem with pianist Malcolm Martineau, who furnished a set of infinitely nuanced accompaniments. Here is the Herald Angel Award-winning soprano again, now in a different guise, but no less-alluring in the beauty of her voice, and ranging infinitely over the dramatic spectrum.
In a basketful of riches, with Jonathan Cohen and his peerless period-band Arcangelo, and with two special guests (Malcolm Martineau, again, though this time on a Hammerflugel pianoforte, and the irresistible Alina Pogostkina on solo violin), Karg has recorded six concert arias by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Mendelssohn.
These are fabulous, stand-alone pieces, condensed and compact in their form, yet so wide-ranging in mood they are like operas in microcosm. They feel like big pieces, not 10- or 12-minute one-offs.
Karg is devastating in the acuity of her dramatic insight and emotional power, Cohen and his band are stylishly super-articulate, Martineau is a quiet demon on his Hammerflugel, while Pogostkina and her violin tone would melt polar ice. The disc is so packed with musical and textural variety, blinding performances, and the drop-dead gorgeous voice of Christiane Karg as its molten core, it's almost beyond description.
Michael Tumelty
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