Search - Various :: Music for Wine Lovers: Vintage Classics

Wine, women and song : Strauss s potent waltz sums up the lighthearted mood of this album of Bacchanalian pleasure! Beginning with one of opera s most famous song, from the first act of Verdi s La Traviata , this album leads us into a mellow mood, in which elegant chamber music is punctuated by a few more famous operatic drinking songs. Mozart s notorious hero Don Giovanni exhorts us to party, while Smetana s chorus from the opening of Act II of The Bartered Bride sings the praises of the grain rather than the grape, in a paean to the foaming glass of beer. And from Cavalleria Rusticana we have chosen, in stark contrast, the rather dark final scene in which the hero Turiddu sings farewell to his mother outside her wine shop. The beautiful music of Haydn provides dramatic contrast to these great operatic moments. Haydn s quartets are some of his most personal musical statements. He composed them in groups throughout his life. Op20, from which our two selections are taken, are early works, and their gentle simplicity belies their precisely wrought form and clear, well-constructed counterpoint, in which each of the four string instruments plays an equal part. The Divertimento in C is a stunning piece. In contrast to the equal voices of the quartets, here the piano is definitely a solo instrument, with a gentle, unobtrusive accompaniment. We couldn t resist finishing a Wine Lovers CD with a bit of Brahms and Liszt. The Brahms Sextet doubles the richness of the Haydn quartet texture by the addition of only two extra instruments. Classic Brahms is always like this: yearning music, urgent at times, particularly in the central section, but wrapped up in music of immense beauty and technically perfect, of course. The Liszt piano piece receives an outstanding interpretation from Louis Kentner, one of the twentieth century s most outstanding players. As in the Brahms, the music surges to a majestic climax before finishing in the subdued tones reminiscent of a summer evening enjoyed, we hope, with a fine glass of wine or two!