Apr 19, 2020 | Recording Reviews
The Early Horn – the title bringing Carry On connotations to my mind – is explained thus in Hyperion’s annotation: “Exploring the natural horn’s pivotal role in eighteenth-century chamber music, this album celebrates the instrument’s dramatic arrival from its rustic...
Apr 18, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Thomas Adès’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, a conscious title of equal billing, premiered in 2019 (see link below), and his Totentanz (first heard at the BBC Proms in 2013) are captured from Boston Symphony concerts in excellent performances (Adès is a fine...
Apr 18, 2020 | Recording Reviews
I spent a few hours this afternoon in the company of Jonathan Biss, who has now journeyed his survey of Beethoven’s Complete Piano Sonatas, recorded between 2011 and last year. The layout of the individual discs (all separately available) is maintained for the box,...
Apr 17, 2020 | Recording Reviews
The National Symphony Orchestra (based in Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center) now has its own record label. This is the first release. Gianandrea Noseda, recently installed as NSO music director, isn’t as ‘inside’ Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid (Suite) as Leonard...
Apr 17, 2020 | Recording Reviews
In 1819 Anton Diabelli (1781-1858), composer and publisher, wrote a ditty for piano in the form of a Waltz. He asked numerous composers, not least fellow-Austrians, to write a single Variation on it, each to be collected in a grand publication. He had fifty-odd...
Apr 16, 2020 | Recording Reviews
This long-running series is now eighty-not-out, and here focuses on two Belgian composers. Who better than Howard Shelley, who also directs Sinfonieorchester St Gallen (Switzerland), to essay the Piano Concerto No.3 in F-minor (Opus 49) by Auguste Dupont (1827-90). As...