Oct 3, 2020 | Recording Reviews
… and not forgetting the Overture (one of music’s miracles) to Weber’s Oberon, magically and exhilaratingly outed by Antal Dorati (LSO, 1962). Otherwise it’s the 1958 show in Watford. Beguiling Mozart 39 & 41 from Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1900-73), the E-flat...
Oct 3, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Don Juan lacks the opening sweep and timpani attack of Paavo Järvi’s fairly recent NHK account (RCA Red Seal), and although there are some glowing sounds and considered detailing later, as well as personable solo contributions from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester,...
Oct 3, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Released to mark Seiji Ozawa’s eighty-fifth-birthday (on September 1), these two Beethoven performances, superbly recorded by Jonathan Stokes in 2016 and the following year, have about them a wonderful musicality, a labour of love for the conductor and a devoted...
Oct 2, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Recorded in July last year, preceding Job (A Masque for Dancing), which is one of Vaughan Williams’s truly inspired pieces, bass-baritone Neal Davies illuminates Songs of Travel (originally with piano, then co-orchestrated by the composer and Roy Douglas) to good...
Sep 27, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Paavo Järvi is following in his father Neeme’s footsteps who recorded Franz Schmidt’s Four Symphonies in Chicago and Detroit for Chandos. (Other complete Schmidt cycles are available.) It’s wonderful repertoire, which the Frankfurt Radio Symphony now does proud,...
Sep 25, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Previously published on September 20 Among his appointments, Luigi Piovano is principal cellist of the Rome-based Santa Cecilia Orchestra of which Sir Antonio Pappano is music director. They make for an engaging duo – Piovano playing on a rich-toned Alessandro...