Sep 23, 2021 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Delightful, eloquent, witty, fired-up, capricious, profound, mercurial … Haydn’s music does all these things, and more, during this CD’s sixty-seven minutes. Paul Lewis is exploring Haydn’s Piano Sonatas – this is Volume Two – and includes four of them here: C-minor...
Sep 22, 2021 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
With superbly immediate recorded sound courtesy of David Hinitt (November 2019, London) complementing Andrew Keener’s high-end production values, Garrick Ohlsson can totally focus on the first two Piano Sonatas to continue his notable if occasional Brahms series for...
Sep 19, 2021 | Recording Reviews
For eighty-four minutes Víkingur Ólafsson delights and dissertates as he shares music composed by composers contemporary to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, opening with an attractive Sonata movement by Galuppi, short and sweet, if put into the shade by WAM’s own F-major...
Sep 4, 2021 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Transferred at an unexpectedly high volume, which goes against the relative intimacy of this music and these reduced-forces readings of it, a decrease in volume (by about a third of normal) tames the stridency that is immediately apparent in K216 without sacrificing...
Aug 27, 2021 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
With a fair wind, this important and impressive release should go some way to rehabilitating the unjustly neglected music of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), a celebrated pianist of his day (there are recorded examples); indeed, no less than Claudio Arrau (1903-91)...
Aug 24, 2021 | Recording Reviews
If Brahms 3 is the autumnal work it is often described as being, then Iván Fischer’s painterly conducting showers us with falling leaves. This cossetted account enjoys innumerable subtleties of dynamics and nuances, the BFO playing with affection and warmth – brass...
