Feb 24, 2021 | Outstanding [w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Notwithstanding Hyperion’s herculean efforts on behalf of Robert Simpson’s music (including recording all Eleven Symphonies, Vernon Handley conducting the first ten, Matthew Taylor the Eleventh), this centenary offering from Lyrita of Simpson’s Fifth and Sixth...
Feb 21, 2021 | Outstanding [w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
It’s good to have a record of some recent orchestral music by Raymond Yiu (born 1973). In these BBC Symphony Orchestra concert tapings (applause removed), the first work, The London Citizen Exceedingly Injured (2012), is a scintillating scherzo, neon-coloured,...
Feb 13, 2021 | Outstanding [w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Whether the tag of “the English Rachmaninov” helps or hinders the cause of London-born composer and pianist York Bowen (1884-1961; in the mid-1920s he made the first recording of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto) is a moot point. However, as superbly recorded here by...
Feb 13, 2021 | Outstanding [w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
The Schoenberg (the composer’s 1943 adaptation for string orchestra of the sextet original) is given a gripping outing, quite fleet (a minute shy of half-an-hour; more-expansive versions are available) and within which images, emotions and incidents are to the fore;...
Feb 7, 2021 | Outstanding [w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
If, like me, you can’t stand pigeonholing and such things, you’ll also love what David Greilsammer does here. He has chosen nineteen pieces which play uninterruptedly (literally attacca – this is not an album to dip into, rather to be beguiled by instructive...
Feb 7, 2021 | Recording Reviews
For eighty minutes and eighteen pieces, Khatia Buniatishvili mixes things up nicely – no barriers and nothing obvious – her first four choices are respectively by Morricone, Satie, Chopin and Ligeti, varieties of slowness, each distinctive. Lively (ex-flute) steps...