Feb 2, 2022 | Opera Reviews, Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Few words are needed for what is a magnificent release. Havergal Brian (1876-1972) composed Faust between 1955 and the following year, and, perhaps needless to say, this prolific composer (not least of thirty-two Symphonies) never heard a note. Setting Goethe’s...
Jan 28, 2022 | Recording Reviews
Originally published on January 23 I started with Boléro (it’s the final item on this eighty-four-minute release). Steady tempo, well-taken solos, well-built crescendo (if too loud too soon) … “première recording of this edition”: antiphonal side-drums alternating,...
Jan 26, 2022 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Debussy’s opera, first-performed 1902, and Schoenberg’s symphonic poem (his Opus 5) premiered in 1905. For the Debussy, Jonathan Nott has compiled (and copyrighted) a continuous forty-seven-minute sequence using the opera’s...
Jan 23, 2022 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
The title owes to Proust. Imogen Cooper, re-exploring pieces she learnt when a teenager in Paris (she explains this in the booklet), opens this eighty-three-minute recital with Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, establishing that she is very well recorded, with...
Jan 22, 2022 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Following this, http://www.colinscolumn.com/paul-lewis-plays-beethovens-bagatelles-harmonia-mundi/, and this, http://www.colinscolumn.com/paul-lewis-records-haydn-piano-sonatas-for-harmonia-mundi/, Paul Lewis now turns to Brahms, the twenty pieces that constitute his...
Jan 22, 2022 | Recording Reviews
Recorded at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (12/1999) or at the Berlin Philharmonie (4/1996) or during the Styriarte Festival in Graz, Austria (7/1989, 7/1997, 6/1999, 6/2002, 6/2004, 6/2007) Not for a second does one doubt the close bond between the COE and Nikolaus...
