Tune Surfing

file-types: MP3, four lossless formats (WAV, FLAC, WMA and AIFF), and now it also provides high-quality, better-than-CD quality 24-bit 96kHz files (at the moment these are primarily restricted to Chandos recordings). If you buy a recording in “studio-master” quality you automatically get it as MP3 and CD-quality lossless files as well. Pricing is focused in a number of bands:

MP3 files for between £4.80 and £7.99; lossless for £7.99 to £9.99; and the 24-bit files at £15.99 per album. (Certain surround-sound recordings will also be on offer at £19.99.) All recordings offered at classicalshop.net

are DRM free, allowing ease of transfer between storage and playback devices. Some 70 labels are carried, which include: Albany, Arts, Avie, Brana, Centaur, Chandos, Coro, Collegium, Danacord, Delphian, Diversions, Divine Art, Doyen, Egon, Guild, JCL, Landor, LSO Live, Metier, Naxos, Nimbus, NMC, Obsidian, Onyx, Pentatone, Priory, Pristine Audio, Quartz, Saydisc, SDG, Signum, Somm, Toccata Classics, Unicorn-Kanchana and Wigmore Hall Live. Together there are approximately 350,000 tracks on offer, with many thousands being added each month. Booklets are also available for download

simultaneously with the sound files. In addition, the site promises a daily 25 per cent discount on a selected album.

T

he Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall currently has a special offer that allows anyone to sample the

site in action. In the comfort of your own home you can attend, free of charge, a Philharmonie performance by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Phil of Haydn’s Symphony No 92, filmed in high-definition. This offer will run into June (dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de). And if you’re a regular visitor to the DCH, April’s concerts feature the following: a programme of Bach, Haydn and Mozart (including the Piano Concerto No 20) directed from the keyboard by András Schiff (April 17); Janá∂ek, Schoenberg (Piano Concerto with Pierre-Laurent Aimard) and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony under Ji∑í B∆lohlávek (April 24); and a concert conducted by Daniel Barenboim of Wagner’sMeistersinger Act 3 Prelude, Elgar’s Cello Concerto (Alisa Weilerstein) and Brahms’s First Symphony (April 27).

L

ast month I enthused about the new website (and download facility) offered by DaCapo (dacapo-records/dk), the

Danish record label. I commented that payment is made in Euros, proving quite expensive. I’m delighted to be corrected – you can pay in sterling, at which rate the albums are priced on a par with other sites.G

www.gramophone.co.uk

BLOGWATCH

James Jolly spent a week in Tokyo sampling music in the Japanese capital (see Musical Journeys on page 122). Here’s one of his daily blogs, Day Six, of his Week in Tokyo

wall (I’d have liked a bit more – the nocturnal scene with projected trees looked gorgeous). And there were so many hints of things to come in Mozart’s later operas – including that night scene, which would reappear in Figaro. The opera – directed with many lovely

Imagine a company putting on a chamber opera on a Friday afternoon and filling the hall – and with ticket prices between about £50 and £80. Well, yesterday I witnessed just that – a rare chance to see Mozart’s early La finta giardiniera, a little charmer that, when done well, has a great deal to offer. And high on the list of things to guarantee its success must be the ability to convey the text to the audience; so the spoken passages were done in Japanese and the sung bits in Italian. The cast was full of engaging characters whose acting, even to someone who couldn’t understand a word, was very funny. The venue was another hall belonging to a

large corporation, in this case one in the steel business. Kioi Hall in Yotsuya is more ornate than the other halls I’ve visited, and with a livelier acoustic, which sometimes acted against the lower-voiced male singers. But it was skilfully adapted from a space more often used for chamber orchestra concerts (Tadaaki Otaka’s ensemble plays here), and the opera worked well with a simple set and some very clever projection of images onto the wooden-screened

comic touches by Leo Iizuka – was set in an Italian spa hotel in the early years of the last century: Arminda and her girls sported Pankhurst-esque sashes with “Votes for women” written on them in both English and Italian. And the costumes suited the period well – Belfiore, a pocket-sized fop, was decked out in blazer and baggy trousers. The women were excellent, singing with finely

focused tone and buckets of personality. Noriko Hasuda as the heroine Sandrina/Violante was moving and poised, and Etsuko Maezawa as Arminda, her rival in love, both looked and sounded terrific – she was an accomplished actress with a lovely, rather ironic manner on stage. As Serpetta (a kind of Despina in the making), Keiko Akahoshi sent sparks out over the orchestra and was a very funny performer. Belfiore, a slightly difficult character to warm to, was sung a little effortfully by the diminutive Yasuhiro Mori, and the local mayor, Don Anchise, looking like a mad academic was a spot-on characterisation. As the cavalier Ramiro (a Cherubino-to-be), Sonoka Daigo was suitably ardent. Presiding over the musical goings-on was the

Italian Vito Clemente drawing some stylish playing from the Tokyo Chamber Opera Theatre Orchestra, though his gestures were rather more appropriate to Puccini than to Mozart. Luckily his musicians ignored his entreaties and remained within the bounds of Mozartian good taste.

The Gramophone Archive Quiz

Go hunting for musical treasures in Gramophone’s archive at gramophone.co.uk for the

archivequiz@haymarket.com (stating “May 2010” in subject line);

please include your name, address and contact telephone number. Closing date: June 3. The answer to February’s archive quiz was Mstislav Rostropovich. The winner was Marcel Verstraete of Ghent, Belgium.

On gramophone.co.uk…

Gramophone’s new website is now live, offering the latest news, the Gramophone Archive (every issue since 1923 digitised), blogs, the Gramophone Listening Room and the Specialist Classical Chart. We’ve now added interviews, photo galleries and a Forum, which will become an environment rich in informed and vibrant discussion. So join in – and let us know what you think!

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