Nov 28, 2020 | Recording Reviews
This civilised performance of the C-major Piano Concerto No.1 (from Berlin concerts in December 2016) is led-off by a dapper and nuanced introduction from the Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann, the orchestra captured wide and deep, timpani hard-right, basses...
Nov 28, 2020 | Recording Reviews
July 25. It should have been the opening night of this year’s Bayreuth Festival. It was not to be. Indeed, the whole season was “silent”. Instead the conductor and selected instrumentalists decanted to Haus Wahnfried – once the Wagners’ villa and now a museum devoted...
Nov 15, 2020 | Recording Reviews
If, like me, you sometimes feel a little lost amidst the sheer diversity and structural complexity of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (thirty) Goldberg Variations (BWV988) – Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen – then, also like me, you may find Pavel Kolesnikov’s reading a...
Nov 15, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Well, here it is, recorded July last year, the three-movement (slow-fast-slow) Piano Concerto by Jaap Nico Hamburger, born in Amsterdam and now living in Canada – I got that bit off the net, for apart from presenting this twenty-two-minute work by itself, Leaf Music...
Nov 13, 2020 | Recording Reviews
Previously published on October 30 A Tchaikovsky Symphony Cycle begins. This first release includes Francesca da Rimini (Symphonic Fantasy after Dante), one Hell of a performance, an opera for orchestra, incisive, intense, suitably fiery and tempestuous, vivid, raw –...
Nov 8, 2020 | Recording Reviews
The time: Saturday evening/Sunday morning. The place: my bedroom/office. The music: Schubert’s Eight Symphonies (those composed by his own hand: numbers 1-6; the Unfinished; and the Great C-major). The intention: to listen to the whole cycle uninterrupted (save for...