Dec 17, 2020 | Recording Reviews
If you didn’t know Christ on the Mount of Olives, and were listening to it blind, I wonder if Beethoven would be the first composer to come to mind. There are though numerous hints that it’s by him – traits of orchestration being one, plenty of narrative...
Dec 13, 2020 | Recording Reviews
If you are a little uncertain as to whether this release of music by Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) fits the bill, he is musically a Frenchman through and through and can be spoken of in the same breath as Debussy, Dukas, Ravel and Roussel. Sample if at all possible...
![Rhapsody in Navy Blue [Channel Classics]](https://www.colinscolumn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/navy.jpg)
Dec 13, 2020 | Recording Reviews
This eighty-one-minute release courtesy of the Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy and its conductor Major Arjan Tien – great playing, superb sound – contains plenty of good listening, opening with Stephen Melillo’s sonorous and filmic A Sending, then comes...
Dec 13, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Volume Eight of Martin Roscoe’s Beethoven Cycle for Deux-Elles includes an absorbing, electrifying and subtly dynamic account of the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (Opus 57) that enthrals from first note to last – the pianist’s concentration is palpable as his fingers stride...
Dec 12, 2020 | Recording Reviews
It would be easy, I think, to pass over this release on the nod. But, performance-wise it’s very good. Set down as recently as October in Henry Wood Hall, London – albeit with rather edgy sound (the venue is dry but not this fortissimo-steely) – Rimma Sushanskaya...
Dec 6, 2020 | Recording Reviews
When Rafael Kubelík recorded Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon he conducted each one with a different orchestra. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (which back then partnered him for a superb Symphony No.2) reverses that concept – this august ensemble...
