Brahms: (Ein) Deutsches Requiem

Advantages: Mutter's eloquence and sensitivity in older recording are enhanced here.
Disadvantages: None at all!

...As a fantastically talented eighteen-year-old, Anne-Sophie Mutter already awed me with her sensitive and thoughtful eloquence in her 1981 recording of the Brahms violin concerto (with Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic). However, there’s an even deeper understanding in Mutter’s reading of the Brahms piece on this newer disc. This performance was taped live at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York City, in 1997. Kurt Masur conducts the New York Philharmonic in particularly inspired fashion. A difference of fifteen years separates the two recordings. In the time between, she married, had children, and then was widowed at a very young age. When Mutter returned to her instrument, she would bring a greater strength, emotional depth and insight to her playing, lending a maturity and assuredness to her... Read review

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Advantages: Two outstanding peices of chamber music for an unusual combination of instruments
Disadvantages: On the surface quite contrasting works, listener must be openminded

...The work of Ligeti has been at the forefront of Western avant-garde since his escape from the oppressive communist regime of Hungary in 1956, and he is widely appreciated as one of the most outstanding contemporary composers. The Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano because it was born out of a three-year period of illness and writer's block after the completion of Le Grand Macabre in which time he laboured over a piano concerto but completed only two short harpsichord pieces (Continuum and Hungarian Rock), yet the result in 1982 was the Trio, one of the finest and most complex pieces written so far. His career up to this point had included such sucesses as his Requiem, Atmosphères and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001. Tiring of his own cluster-textural techniques and the avant-garde, Ligeti refreshed his compositional... Read review

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Advantages: Allows you to relive the film from moment to moment, wonderful composition, Additctive overture.
Disadvantages: Tracks are fragmented and short

...Requiem for a dream .. aka Delusion Over Addiction Soundtracks accompany and enhance the experience of a movie. But seldom does it happen that that the score is so good that it stands out on its own to be marvelled at…. The Film ~ Requiem for a Dream, is an adaptation of Hubert Selby's 1978 novel about the harrowing lives of four drug addicts. A mother her son and his beloved Girlfriend, all who become dependant upon drugs and suffer mental illness. This film documents the emotional downfall of these characters, and illustrates their sheer drug induced desperation and melancholy quite graphically. Don't expect any happy end for its swamped in tragedy. The film itself is highly stylised. Aronofsky tries to a degree through surrealist imagery to create a realism where you become emotionally connected with the characters... Read review

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