Aug 9, 2020 | Recording Reviews
If there is a caveat for this release, it’s that the hour-long playing time is not enough – a measure of just how good this Rachmaninov recital is. Sergei Babayan has chosen fifteen pieces – mostly from the Preludes and Etudes-tableaux, adding, as a novelty, Volodos’s...
Aug 8, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Just a few days ago I wrote favourable words about Andrew Manze’s Onyx recording of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, mentioning imminent ones of it from Michael Collins and Martyn Brabbins. Here’s the Collins, his recording debut as a podium-standing conductor, and...
Aug 7, 2020 | Recording Reviews
To be honest I have become adrift from Andrew Manze’s Vaughan Williams cycle, and this coupling of Symphonies 5 and 6 is far from new, but it is a good time to assess his view of both works given the imminent arrival of two more accounts of the Fifth – from Michael...
Aug 6, 2020 | Recording Reviews
This account of Elgar’s Violin Concerto gets off to a plodding start for a few seconds, then Vladimir Jurowski jerks the music into life – a mannerism that fails to convince, yet he has obvious sympathy with Elgar’s passions and the need for phrasal flexibility....
Aug 5, 2020 | Recording Reviews
This D & G co-production with Denon and the BBC may only play for forty minutes, but quality before quantity – this is an impressive account of Elgar’s (ubiquitous) Cello Concerto, portraying Dai Miyata as a rich-toned, thoughtful and passionate cellist. Recorded...
Aug 3, 2020 | Recording Reviews
On this well-recorded occasion The Lark Ascending (1914) comes with piano accompaniment – Vaughan Williams’s original version before orchestrating it. Jennifer Pike is sensitive on violin, rapturous, sometimes expressively free (as a bird), flowing upwards and...