CDs stream into the office too quickly to keep up. But after screening them, a few go onto the iPod for closer examination. Here are the recordings keeping me going in these last two weeks of August when live music is scarce.
- Arleen Auger is a wonder in a 1986 recording of the Mozart Mass in C Minor (Phoenix Edition), along with a young Thomas Quasthoff in a 1991 take of the Requiem. Gary Bertini conducts the Kölner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester.
- Simone Dinnerstein plays Bach and Beethoven in The Berlin Concert (Telarc), and also a substantive but friendly work by Philip Lasser, the Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach.
- Interesting but hardly brimming with obvious genius is a new recording of the Clara Schumann Piano Concerto in A Minor, Opus 7 with pianist Frederick Moyer. I keep listening for strong ideas but have so far found few. The release comes with MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, which I remember liking more as a 16-year-old hornist in youth orchestra.
- Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery in a terrifically incisive and colorful recording from Glyndebourne conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
Photo: boy encounters one of Glyndebourne's production props for Betrothal in a Monastery.
