CCMusic.com

Sony Classical offers opera lovers another ten complete recordings from the RCA Victor, CBS/Sony and Eurodisc catalogues, with highlights from La Juive and the complete Thaïs with Anna Moffo as well as Schoenberg's Moses und Aron by Hans Rosbaud for the first time on CD, remastered from the analogue masters. This latest release is one of the widest ranging yet in this series, spanning the history of theatrical music from Monteverdi to Schoenberg. We move into the 19th century and early German, Italian and French Romanticism. A memorable version of Weber's Der Freischütz from 1994 returns to the catalogue. It offers some outstanding vocal contributions, opined BBC Music Magazine, "sung with a genuine feeling for melodic shape and verbal emphasis: Peter Seiffert's sensitive, conscience-stricken Max and Ruth Ziesak's delightfully pert Ännchen." But, the review also states, perhaps the recording's "chief glories are the resplendent playing of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin, alive to every nuance of Weber's colourful orchestration, and the dynamic conducting of Marek Janowski."