Recording Reviews | Colin's Column

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Kazuki Yamada record William Walton’s Two Symphonies & Orb and Sceptre for Deutsche Grammophon.

Mar 19, 2026 | Recording Reviews

Eighty-three minutes of vintage Walton. Can’t be bad. And it isn’t. Nor is it great, at least as far as the First Symphony is concerned. Total masterpiece of course, but a rather tensionless, at times tame, account, immediately noticeable from the very...

RELEASED TODAY, Friday March 13: Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich & Paavo Järvi record Mahler’s Seventh Symphony for Alpha Classics.

Mar 13, 2026 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews

If Mahler Seven is “problematic” then Paavo Järvi doesn’t agree. He gets it. The listener is hooked immediately when this escapade appears to begin in midsentence, the rowboat already in motion, and, illuminatingly, the violins are explicitly...

RELEASED TODAY, Friday March 6: The Hallé & Sir Mark Elder record Huw Watkins’s Concerto for Orchestra & Symphony No.2.

Mar 6, 2026 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews

Originally posted on February 19 Huw Watkins has enjoyed a recent productive relationship with the Hallé & Sir Mark Elder (music director at the time), four commissioned works. Here are three of them (the other, Symphony No.1, is also recorded), music of fine...

RELEASED TODAY, Friday March 6: Warner Classics releases “Pictures at an Exhibition: The Paintings of Bob Peak” – ten new complementary Peak-related pieces performed by the Los Angeles Film Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

Mar 6, 2026 | Column Honoree Leonard Slatkin, Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews, Videos

Originally posted on February 18 “Born at the intersection of music, visual arts, and the world of cinema, this vibrant new program by producer Robert Townson brings together ten internationally renowned composers in world-premiere compositions. Pictures at an...

Imogen Cooper records Opuses 109, 110 & 111 – Beethoven’s Last Three Piano Sonatas – for Chandos.

Mar 3, 2026 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews

Imogen Cooper inhabits these three Sonatas that are distinguished by hallowed Opus Numbers, delving deeply into each work with naturalness and wisdom: everything belongs, within each movement and together in each Sonata, be it sublime utterance (the opening of...

Víkingur Ólafsson records “Opus 109” for Deutsche Grammophon – J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert.

Feb 27, 2026 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews

Green is for go, Víkingur Ólafsson collecting another yellow label as he explores E-major and -minor, opening with a simple yet profound JSB Prelude that is utterly disarming. Beethoven’s Opus 90 Sonata is rough-and-tumble (in a good way) if a little brittle and...