Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Mendelssohn’s enchanting, gossamer-light score for Shakespeare’s play suits Ozawa and his superb Boston orchestra perfectly. The deftness of the playing, brilliant in every sense of the word, imbues this gloriously inventive score with real magic. And that magic is given an extra dimension in this new spatial audio with Dolby Atmos remastering. Judi Dench, not surprisingly a wonderfully authoritative narrator, brings Shakespeare’s words to vivid life, while whole musical worlds spring up around her. Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade, both pure of tone, add to this album’s many triumphs, with every note now twinkling all around us like fireflies in the dark.