Welcome to the Decca Music Group news for January 2002. Select one of the headlines below to take a look at what's going on this month. If you want to get all this delivered to your email inbox, then don't forget to signup for our newsletters. And if you have any questions to ask us, you can write to us by using our Contact form. See you next month!

Competition winners!
In the Studio
Juan Diego Flórez debuts with Rossini Arias
Decca & Philips recordings nominated for US Grammy Awards
Waltzing with the Euro - the New Year's Concert 2002
Renée Fleming on the South Bank Show
Russell Watson in New Zealand and Australia
Decca & Philips DVD site now live


Competition winners!
Many thanks to the thousands of people who wrote in to enter our festive competition. This has been our biggest competition ever on the Decca & Philips website and it's been a real struggle to go through the competition entries to pick out the winners. It's also been a real pleasure to read your comments about your favourite music.

The winners are:
Francisco A. M. Joffily from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
"My favourite recording is Brahms: Piano Concerto Nr.1 - Clifford Curzon, Eduard van Beinum, Concertgebouworkest. Best ever recorded version of this work. Both Curzon and Beinum master their parts in an absolute manner.

Alain Phomphoukhao from Melbourne, Australia
"My favourite is The Beyondness of Things, by John Barry. WHY? The most soothing, vivid, and heartbreaking take on life captured in music. This is the kind of music that makes you want to thank God for ears!

Stephen Smith, from Washington DC, USA
"My favourite recording is Ein Heldenleben, 1975, Haitink/Concertegebouw. The hero is majestic, not bombastic, the love scene sensual, the battle fierce, the works of peace poetic, and the departure moving. Krebbers rules!"

Chen Kok Wai from Singapore
"my favourite is Born, by Bond - Great music that breaks all boundaries of music. Music to the ears, peace to the soul."

Vangelis, from Prague, Czech Republic.
"My Favourite recording is for sure the opera RINALDO by George Friedrich Handel. He is my most favourite composer and I can not imagine my life without this wonderful opera. And of course I love Cecilia Bartoli."

Juan Diego Flórez - Rossini Arias

New tenor sensation Juan Diego Flórez releases his long-awaited Decca debut album of Rossini arias performed with the young Peruvian's customary passion and flair. Read more, watch the exclusive documentary video, and listen to clips in out special album feature at www.deccaclassics.com/juandiegoflorez
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Decca & Philips recordings nominated for US Grammy Awards
Cecilia Bartoli has been nominated in the Best Classical Vocal Performance category (which she won in 2001) for her Decca recording Dreams and Fables: Gluck Italian Arias. Also nominated is soprano Barbara Bonney's Fairest Isle, a collection of songs by Dowland, Campion, and Marley.

The Angeles String Quartet's Haydn: The Complete String Quartets on Philips is nominated for Best Chamber Music Performance and Best Engineered Album (Marc Aubort, Engineer). The 21-CD set's producer Joanna Nickrenz is also nominated as Classical Producer of the Year.
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Waltzing with the Euro - Seiji Ozawa conducts the New Year’s Concert 2002

The New Years’s Concert from Vienna is a prominent part of the classical musical landscape, and with the repertoire almost exclusively devoted to the Strauss family, there’s always the danger that one year’s concert will seem much like another. This year, however, two notable features guaranteed it would be memorable.

The lesser of these was entirely non-musical. New Year’s Day 2002 also marked the launch of the euro – celebrated at the concert by the presence of a large euro symbol hanging behind the orchestra (its blue and yellow clashing confidently with the Musikverein’s sumptuous reds and golds). Just a few hours earlier, partying Viennese in the Kärntnerstrasse had crowded around the street’s ATMs to be the first to inspect the new euro notes. Inside the hall, most of the champagne was still being purchased in Austrian schillings.

The other, more notable, feature of this year’s concert was the presence of Seiji Ozawa – the first Japanese to be invited to conduct this most European of musical events. The choice of sub-tropical flowers (plus oranges) to decorate the Musikverein was presumably a mark of respect to him and his audience, which contained a significant Japanese contingent. For once the sombre ranks of fur coats were lightened by the pastel shades of silk kimonos, and there was even a gentleman in traditional Japanese costume. But, in fact, Ozawa is no stranger to Vienna and its illustrious orchestra. He has appeared many times here over the years, conducting the great classical and romantic repertoire, and is about to assume the directorship of the Vienna State Opera.

Ozawa’s conducting style is distinctive. Dressed in a high-collared black tunic and crowned by a mane of greying hair, he spurns the baton and uses just his highly-expressive hands to mould the music-making in front of him. Almost balletic at times, his urgent, energetic manner reveals a concern to craft every nuance from the score. And though he had a conductor’s stand in front of him, there was no music upon it – just a piece of paper, perhaps a reminder of the order of the programme.

The programme itself was the traditional mixture of the familiar, the very familiar, and something new. On this occasion, the concert set off with a New Year’s Day premiere – Johann Strauss’s jolly march ‘Zivio‘, more suggestive of dance music than anything military. The first half also saw another of the traditional features of the concert – the Viennese musical joke. This came at the end of the polka Die Schwätzerin, with the oboe doggedly carrying on after everyone had finished, until waved to a stop by a mock-exasperated Ozawa. Aside from these lighter items, the one indisputable ‘classic‘ in the first half – Künstlerleben – reminded us of the matchless acoustic of the Musikverein, with the orchestra’s cellos floating their melody into the audience to eye-moistening effect.

Following the serious socialising of the interval came a brisk Fledermaus overture (the operetta is also running this week at the State Opera), marking the start of the concert as it is broadcast outside Austria. The remaining repertoire included the gentle, undulating Die Libelle (an Ozawa favourite), a luminous Aquarellen (worthy of Adam and even Tchaikovsky) and a whirlwind Plappermäulchen! (‘chatterbox‘) regularly interrupted by two types of orchestral rattle – all works from Johann’s younger brother, Joseph. But the piece that brought a roar of approval from the audience was one of the other premieres – the Danse diabolique by Josef Hellmesberger (1855-1907), a Viennese composer of dances, marches and operettas. Dashed off with the Vienna Philharmonic’s standard aplomb (and with virtuosic trombone solos), this was mostly a dervish-style dance before bizarrely transforming itself into a sultry waltz. A wonderful discovery. Performances of the Tik-Tak polka, the Blue Danube (preceded by members of the orchestra wishing the audience a Happy New Year in eleven native tongues) and the Radetsky march rounded off a snowy morning in Vienna.

The orchestra‘s mastery of Strauss and the famous Viennese waltz ‘limp‘ are taken as read. But the occasion also reminded us of Ozawa’s stylistic authority and his obvious empathy with the orchestra in this ‘local‘ repertoire. We repeatedly hear that we live in a global village and that music is the international language, but this concert nevertheless demonstrated the underlying truth of these clichés. And as a musical performance, local devotees remarked afterwards that this year’s concert was surely one of the finest of these glamorous occasions.
Ben Pateman, Decca Music Group

See our special feature with soundclips and exclusive photographs at philipsclassics.com/newyearsconcert2002
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Renée Fleming on the South Bank Show
Renée Fleming will be featured on an upcoming South Bank Show special on January 27th in the UK. Renee's most recent album 'Night Songs' (with Jean-Yves Thibaudet) has recently been released in the US, and is due for release in the UK this month. Reneé and Jean-Yves have been performing this repertoire in the US recently and have attracted rave reviews.

"The soprano Renée Fleming and the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet have recorded an appealing thematic program called Night Songs (Decca), in which they offer various ruminations on night (literal and allegorical) through late 19th - and early 20th - century German, French and Russian songs. On Saturday evening Ms. Fleming and Mr. Thibaudet performed most of that material, and a few other pieces, in a joint recital at Carnegie Hall. As on the recording, the familiar and less familiar were balanced thoughtfully. Joseph Marx's post-Wagnerian meditations opened the program, and a handful of Rachmaninoff songs closed it. Between them were some Strauss favorites and Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis, as well two short solo turns for Mr. Thibaudet, who played Liszt's Ballade No.2 and Debussy's Clair de Lune and Feux d' Artifice... Ms. Fleming was at her best in the six Rachmaninoff songs that closed the recital. These long-neglected works are finally beginning to get the exploration they deserve, and until now they have been taken up mostly by Eastern European singers. Ms. Fleming's interest in them is heartening, and the suppleness she brought to several did the songs a service. Mr. Thibaudet brought energy and remarkable clarity of texture to the Liszt and Debussy pieces he played, and he endowed his accompaniments with those qualities as well."
- Allan Kozinn -New York Times, November 22, 2001

"Renée Fleming is famous for the beauty of her voice, which is what first attracted our attention. What has held it is the security of her technique, the directness and intelligence of her musicality, and her personal warmth...Last night she brought selections from her Night Songs CD, with the dashing Jean-Yves Thibaudet as her keyboard collaborator. She sang songs by Joseph Marx (a composer favored in the 1940s by the beloved Lotte Lehmann, although few singers have investigated him since), Strauss, Debussy and Rachmaninoff....by the second of them, Natchgebet, Thibaudet was ripping easily over the keyboard.
Fleming's singing of these songs was imaginative, subtle, and sometimes torrential in emotion...Repeated standing ovations brought repeated encores, five of them."
Richard Dyer - Boston Globe, November 3 2001

Decca & Philips DVD site now live
We've recently launched the Decca and Philips DVD section - be sure to check out all our DVD releases at www.deccaclassics.com/dvd The recently released La Traviata DVD has been gathering some great reviews also
" ...the sets and staging are so superbly accomplished, the lighting so artful Dan the cast so perfect-looking, that this is the rare live performance that is a complete joy visually. It helps that they have the Violetta of one's dreams, Angela Gheorghiu. It is unlikely that we will ever see a finer Violetta on film or, for that matter, in the theater! The disc also serves as a wonderful memorial to the great Covent Garden performances given by Sir Georg Solti. The DVD transfer is crystal-clear. To sum up... La Traviata a must!"
(Fanfare, November/December 2001)