Recording Reviews Archives - Page 2 of 16

Sonatas for Violin & Piano by Elgar & Vaughan Williams, plus The Lark Ascending – Jennifer Pike & Martin Roscoe [Chandos]

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...

John Williams in Vienna – A selection of film scores – Wiener Philharmoniker & Anne-Sophie Mutter [Deutsche Grammophon]

Jul 30, 2020 | Recording Reviews

January this year, Goldener Saal der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, eighty-seven-year-old John Williams conducts the Philharmonic in some of his movie music, Deutsche Grammophon captures the occasion in sumptuous, vivid and dynamic sound. This may not be...

Colin Davis conducts Mozart with the LSO – five Symphonies and, with Hubert Barwahser, the Flute Concertos [Eloquence]

Jul 28, 2020 | Recording Reviews

In 1961 and 1963, when these recordings were made in Walthamstow Assembly Hall, Colin Davis (1927-2013) was a couple of decades away from a knighthood but already heading up Sadler’s Wells Opera (later ENO) and forging what would become a lifetime association with the...

The Cleveland Orchestra: A New Century – Franz Welser-Möst conducts.

Jul 26, 2020 | Recording Reviews

Presented by The Cleveland Orchestra, these three SACDs come packaged in a box more akin to housing luxurious chocolates than playable discs, and are supported by a tome of a “companion book”, 150 pages, with all the essays in English and garnished with numerous...

Daniel Barenboim records Elgar – Sea Pictures & Falstaff – Elīna Garanča & Staatskapelle Berlin [Decca]

Jul 26, 2020 | Recording Reviews

Daniel Barenboim continues his re-explorations of Elgar’s music. Previously it was the London Philharmonic (Yvonne Minton in Sea Pictures) for CBS/Sony; now it’s Berlin and Decca – so far the two Symphonies the composer completed, the Cello Concerto (Alisa...

Clarinet Concertos Reawakened – Robert Plane with BBC Scottish SO & Martyn Brabbins [Champs Hill Records]

Jul 25, 2020 | Recording Reviews

A treasure-trove of clarinet discoveries; all are first recordings. If you need a taster, try the slow movement of Ruth Gipps’s Concerto (1940); it’s really quiet lovely, pastoral-bittersweet, Finzi-like in its soulful character. The surrounding movements are,...