Three of the year’s weirder classical album covers. Feel free to add your own.
1 I am a zebra. I like Handel.
2 Not sure what bird I am, but I’m French and I don’t sing Messiaen
3 I am a sheep. A dead sheep. Just like you lot.
We hear that Stephen Rose, former head of…
The steady departure of cherished professors at the…
There have been some irreparable losses. Germany mourned…
The prolific international conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, diagnosed…
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This year’s? This Harnoncourt album is from 2000.
Nothing strange about the Harnoncourt cover if you know what the St. Matthew Passion is about.
The painting is by Francisco de Zurbarán and is called Agnus Dei. It hangs in the Prado.
Isaiah 53:7 : “He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth.”
The Harnoncourt picture would have been far more appropriate for a performance if the St John Passion. Of the four gospels, only John refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God (1:29, 1:36). John also changes the day of the crucifixion to the day before Passover to drive home the theological point that Jesus was killed on the same day as the Passover animal sacrifices.
Cecilia Bartoli’s Mission comes to mind.
And Andre Rieu’s Mother and Child is just painful.
And the cover in Harnoncourt’s Bach, is perfectly appropriate, as it represents the Lamb of God and its sacrifice……… the interpretation of the music is another topic.
№ 2 – Chants d’oiseaux – BIRD song
and Messiaen had a bit to do with bird song too….
Yes, but not sure that the flamingo is particularly known for its song.
And the sheep or rather lamb is not dead. Just extremely exhausted after being anxious and desperate.
Wish there had been a Carnival des Animaux album coming out this year meanwhile.
My nomination for the most hideous animal cover of the year is from DG: Salonen’s assay of the Shostakovitch Fourth Symphony paired with the premiere of the Prelude to “Orango.” The picture is enough to scare small children. Heck, it scares one small adult: me! http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/us/cat/4790249
Oops; sorry, apparently the album is from 2012. Still, it would be hard to surpass that cover in hideousness in this, or perhaps in any other year!