Handel: The Messiah
Scholars Baroque Ensemble
Naxos

George Frederic Handel was a Saxon who became an Englishman to compose Italian Opera. I suspect that is how one would define an impresario. The horrible irony about Handel is that in spite of his popularity as a composer in all forms including the concerto grossi, keyboard and solo instrument sonata, choral, opera, and oratorio. It is in the last category, the oratorio (where opera is musical theater, the oratorio is strictly a concert genera), specifically Messiah for which Handel is remembered. And that is just fine. Save for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Messiah is perhaps the best loved and most performed composition globally. Of 30 performances I personally own, my favorite is the period performance by the Scholars Baroque Ensemble. A stripped-down orchestra and chorus give an amazingly full-bodied performance of the original 1742 composition. The soloists are also part of the chorus, in keeping with the standard practice in Handel's time. This is a superb recording of Messiah, but if inclined, by no means make it your only one to own.

Scott Joplin: Piano Rags
Joshua Rifkin
Nonesuch

Joshua Rifkin made his musical bones in 1981 with a paper presented at American Musicological Society where first he corrected history by proving that Bach’s St. Matthew Passion premiered 1727 and not the previously thought 1729 and second, by proposing that much of Johann Sebastian Bach's vocal music, including the famous St. Matthew Passion, was performed with only one singer per choral part. Rifkin was unable to finish his presentation because of “strong audience reaction.” Yea, I suspect it was the same “strong audience reaction” Stravinsky experienced at the premier of Le Sacre du printemps in Paris, May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées… a surely bunch, those classical types. Before all of the Bach scholarship, Rifkin recorded a crystalline yet warm collection of Scott Joplin rags released in the 1970s. Before I ever knew of Rifkin’s Bach connection, I opined that Rifkin played Joplin as Bach would have. And that is with love, care, and precision. Rifkin bridges 300 years of music to show the thread, the remnant that exists in and through all music. The sonics of the old LP are close and warm and these characteristics well transferred to CD. There are many collections of Joplin Rag’s, but none transcends that of Rifkin.

Tschaikovsky, Dvorák: String Serenades
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan
Deutsche Grammophon

What? No Swan Lake? Yep, that’s right. Should one wish to find the essence of Pyotr Ilyich Tschaikovsky in a small space of time, he of she need look no further. Tschaikovsky distilled every dance, ballet, waltz, and symphony into his four-movement string serenade that clocks in at less than half an hour. The late Herbert von Karajan, with the considerable forces of the Berlin Philharmonic, frame perfectly the unabashed Romanticism that emanates from the music as smoldering orange from the winter fireplace in a fine Russian palace. The added bonus is the Dvorák serenade. The Czech sensibility blends with the Tschaikovsky in a brilliantly Slavic eutectoid that rarely forms when two separate works by separate composers are brought together on the same release. This reflects the genius of Herbert von Karajan.