Schallpattenkritik distinguishes La Scintilla and Bartoli
The production of Vincenzo Bellini's Norma by mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and the Orchestra La Scintilla under the direction of Giovanni Antonini (Decca) has been awarded an annual prize by the German Record Critics.
There is the traditional line of Norma readings, with Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland or Edita Gruberova. And there is Cecilia Bartoli, writes the German Record Critics' Jury.
Bartoli has given Norma back the bel canto part of the originally intended mezzo-soprano fach. She does this with her own art of singing: a singing "with clenched fists, so to speak, full of banging coloratura, explosive fioritura and skillfully overcoming the slightly elderly grandeur that we hear in many recordings of this work, not least because of the conventional orchestras".
This year's prize-winners also include solo motets by Antonio Vivaldi with Julia Lezhneva and Il Giardino Armonico (Decca), Scarlatti's Dove è amore è gelosia with the Schwarzenberg Court Orchestra (Naxos) and an anniversary edition with recordings by Alfred Cortot (EMI)
The German Record Critics' Award was founded in its current form in 1980 by a group of record critics who joined together in December 1988 to form an independent registered association; it continues the tradition of the first German record award of the same name, which was founded in 1963 by the Bielefeld publisher Richard Kaselowsky.
