Search - Bartok, Marin Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra :: Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle

Bartok, Marin Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle
Genre: Classical

Track Listings (12) - Disc #1
1. "Meg?rkezt?nk" "We have arrived" (Bluebeard)
2. "Ez a K?kszak?ll? v?ra!" "This is Bluebeard's castle!" (Judith)
3. "Nagy csukott ajt?kat l?tok" "I see large closed doors" (Judith)
4. First Door - "Jaj!" "Oh!" (Judith)
5. Second Door - "Mit l?tsz?" "What do you see?" (Bluebeard)
6. Third Door - "Oh, be sok kincs!" "Oh, how much treasure!" (Judith)
7. Fourth Door - "Oh, vir?gok!" "Oh, flowers!" (Judith)
8. Fifth Door - "N?zd hogy der?l m?r a v?ram" "See how my castle brightens" (Bluebeard)
9. Sixth Door - "Csendes feh?r tavat l?tok" "I see a silent white lake" (Judith)
10. "Az utols?t nem nyitom ki" "I won't open the last one" (Bluebeard)
11. "Tudom, tudom, K?kszak?ll?" "I know, I know, Bluebeard" (Judith)
12. "L?sd a r?gi asszonyokat" "Look at the women of the past" (Bluebeard)

CD Details

All Artists: Bartok, Marin Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Andrea Melath, Gustov Belacek
Title: Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Naxos
Original Release Date: 1/1/2007
Re-Release Date: 11/20/2007
Genre: Classical
Styles: Opera & Classical Vocal, Symphonies
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 730099692823

Synopsis

Album Description

A modern version of the old European folk-tale about the cruel, blue-bearded prince and his many disappearing wives, Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle is a metaphor for the impossiblility of complete love between a man and a woman. No scene is more vividly portrayed or more memorable than the moment when Judith opens the fifth door to behold a vista looking out ofver all Bluebeard's domains. One of the most spine tingling moments in twentierh-century opera, a violently dissonant wave of sound transforms, in an instant, to a massive C Major chord in the full orchestra.

CD Reviews

A careful, too relaxed Bluebeard -- where's the shock?

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/05/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Marin Alsop was praised for her recent Naxos CD of The Miraculous Mandarin, but her noiton of Bartok is too smoothed out and rhythmically idle for me, two qualities that especially show up in this account of Bluebeard's Castle. Having jsut heard a reissue of a nearly fogotten CD of the opera from 1979 with Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady on DG, I came to this new one thinking that even if Alsop didn't have great singers, she could do mor with the orchestral score than Sawalisch on that disc.

she doesn't. This is caeful conducting of a competent provinical orchestra (the oft-recorded Bournemouth Sym.), which is bettered by almost eveyr version of this wonderful work that I've ever heard, going back to Istvan Kertesz and the Vienna Phil. in the Sixties (still a great recording). As for the two singers, Andrea Melath and Gustov Belacek, she is a touching, vulnerable Judith, paiting a monochromatic portrait of a character who has her own obsessions to counter bluebeard's supressed guilty secrets. I cringed whe I first heard Belacek curdled voice, but he is so idiomatically Hungarian that I came to appreciate the dramatic force of his Bluebeard -- still, he's no Walter Berry, fishcer-Dieskau, John Tomlinson, or Samuel Ramey in this part.

ONe final note: since Naxos is promoting Marin Alsop -- as are most critics -- as a major conductor, shouldn't they pair her with better singers? To me, hers isns't a major talent, but she is certainly near the top of the vast Naxos roster of conductors, and you'd think the label would boost her into a higher league than what we hear on this CD.

"