Robert Ripps

The Mahler Symphonies on SACD — and Vinyl LP

Partly launched to promote the state of the art, SFS Media now goes retro.

By Robert Ripps
Posted June 22, 2011

Back in September 2002, I interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas about the launch of a bold new project with the San Francisco Symphony: a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies to be released on hybrid multichannel SACD via the orchestra’s fledgling in-house label, SFS Media. At the time, Thomas already had clearly formed ideas about the sound he wanted:

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CD Review: Perahia Plays Bach

. . . on a piano, not a harpsichord. Got a problem with that? You shouldn’t.

By Robert Ripps
Posted August 7, 2011

Murray Perahia’s recordings of Bach’s Keyboard Concertos, originally released from 2001 to 2003, have now been reissued in this specially priced Limited Edition three-CD set (with a new essay by Jeremy Siepmann) — and if you missed them the first time around, do not make that mistake again.

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Claudio Abbado conducts Fidelio

CD Review: Beethoven’s “Fidelio”

A new recording that can stand with the classics.

By Robert Ripps
Posted August 31, 2011

In his monumental six-part work The Oxford History of Western Music, Richard Taruskin begins the volume devoted to the 19th century with Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, which debuted in Vienna in 1805 before its final revised version was staged there in 1814. Here we have an opus of searing intensity that signaled the arrival of Romanticism in music.

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McCartney in session at Henry Wood Hall

2011 Reference CD

CD Review: Paul McCartney

The ballet production may be one thing, but the music of “Ocean’s Kingdom” is engaging, and the CD is demo-quality.

By Robert Ripps
Posted October 4, 2011

According to the press release that accompanied my preview copy of this CD, Paul McCartney was “keen to tell a story through the music” of his first-ever ballet score. He ended up telling two: not just a love story but also the tale of “an underwater world whose people are threatened by the humans of Earth.”

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Osmo Vänskä conducts

Review: Sibelius' Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 on SACD

Osmo Vänskä revisits his compatriot's most popular symphonies, this time in surround

By Robert Ripps
Posted February 15, 2012

After becoming music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003 Osmo Vänskä began recording an excellent multi-channel SACD set of Beethoven symphonies with his new group. The Finnish conductor has since returned to the work of his countryman Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), recording this multi-channel SACD of the composer’s most popular symphonies, Nos. 2 & 5.

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