Holiday picks: Creative remastering of the masterpieces

HOLIDAY DISCS

This year, the best of the holiday sets are the creative remasterings: taking the best of past masterpieces, adding new unreleased tracks, refining the sound quality. The holidays are all about tradition, and those who want to tap into the musical past to build a nice collection of holiday CDs are definitely in luck. Our 2005 picks:

"O Holy Night," Luciano Pavarotti (Decca): Newly remastered with three previously unavailable bonus tracks, this CD was mostly recorded in Il Tenorissimo's glory days back in the 1960s and 1970s (though the 1997 tracks are still pretty impressive).

"The Baroque Christmas Album" (Archiv): Archiv has compiled the best of holiday music from such great ensembles as the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Les Musiciens du Louvre and the English Concert, for these selections from Corelli's Christmas Concerto, Schutz's "Christmas Story," and other works.

"A Christmas Nativity" (Deutsche Grammophon): An award-winning collection with everyone from Leontyne Price and Joan Sutherland to the Trapp Family Sisters and the King's College Choir, with most of the repertoire leaning toward familiar carols. Price's "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" is worth the purchase all on its own.

"Essential Carols," King's College Choir (Decca): This double-disc set features that ne plus ultra of Christmas, the choir of King's College, Cambridge (England). Some of these recordings date back to 1959 (those little boys could be grandpas now), but the remastered sound is first-rate, and this collection is just downright exquisite.

"Merry Christmas" (Deutsche Grammophon): Back to the 1950s for this two-CD set of Christmas music from the Deutsche Grammophon vaults by such legends as tenor Fritz Wunderlich, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and the Munich Bach Choir under Karl Richter, whose opening "Magnificat" chorus will shiver your timbers.

"Noel: Carols and Chants for Christmas," Anonymous 4 (Harmonia Mundi): The glory days of the a cappella vocal quartet Anonymous 4 are revisited here in a beautiful four-disc boxed set of holiday music. Recorded between 1993 and 2003, the discs make enthralling listening with the uncanny blend of these four seraphic voices. With a handsomely produced, complete program book of liner notes.

GIFT CDs — HOLIDAY OR NOT

A crop of year-end CDs are vying for your gift-buying buck. Some of our favorites:

"The Essential Yo-Yo Ma" (Sony Classical/Legacy): This peerless cellist needs no introduction to music lovers, and this career-spanning set of two CDs (34 tracks) shows his tremendous diversity — extending from "Appalachia Waltz" and Brazilian music to tango, Silk Road international classics, and even a pair of Broadway tunes.

"Opera Proibita," Cecilia Bartoli (Decca): Don't worry; this CD is safe for the children. The title refers to a papal edict banning opera in Rome in the early 18th century, so such composers as Handel, Scarlatti and Caldara wrote oratorios and cantatas for Roman audiences instead. Some of their arias are recorded here for the first time by Bartoli with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre. Delicious sound; awe-inspiring pyrotechnics.

"Evgeny Kissin: Scriabin, Medtner, Stravinsky" (RCA Red Seal): The Russian sensation Evgeny Kissin is 34 now, and he has developed more maturity to go with 10 of the world's most amazing digits. He gives a probing, soulful account of Scriabin's Sonata No. 3 and Five Preludes to go with the fireworks of three "Petrouchka" movements.

BOOKS

Along with the many pages devoted to Mozart (see accompanying story on J 1), gift-ready books include tomes on Beethoven and Copland, and a great primer for the classical-music newcomer.

"The Penguin Companion to Classical Music," compiled by Paul Griffiths (Penguin Books, $25): This is one of those encyclopedic books in which you begin to look something up, then get sidetracked by all sorts of entrancing nearby articles, and hours later you emerge, having lost track of time. Great for musical beginners (it's blessedly jargon-free and straightforward), this book also has in-depth analyses of musical forms, plot summaries of operas, loads of biographies and almost everything else having to do with music.

"Aaron Copland and His World," edited by Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton University Press, $22.95 paperback, $55 cloth): A collection of intriguing essays about one of America's best-known composers, with scholars in music, dance, cultural history and art history all providing different angles on Copland, his milieu and his long life (1900-1990). This complicated, conflicted and brilliant man emerges from all sorts of perspectives. (Larry Starr from the University of Washington is one of the contributors.)

Beethoven: The Universal Composer, by Edmund Morris (Atlas Books/HarperCollins, $21.95): Part of the "Eminent Lives" series of compact biographies, this new work by Pulitzer Prize-winner Edmund Morris (the biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan) focuses on how Beethoven's life — his difficult childhood, many illnesses and many disappointments shaped his music.

— Melinda Bargreen, mbargreen@seattletimes.com