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Recording of the month

‘Journey Through a Century’

Sueye Park vn

BIS

An extraordinary album of solo repertoire, Sueye Park transcending the technical demands with performances of vivid character, drama, emotion and engagement – captured in superb sound too.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

Haydn Symphonies Nos 6-8

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini

Alpha

‘A spirit of shared enjoyment’ writes reviewer Richard Wigmore – a description that embodies this team’s many superb Haydn recordings, to which this is a triumphant addition.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

‘History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol 4’

The Brahms Trio

Naxos

The Brahms Trio present works by Arensky and Taneyev with elegance and brilliant musicianship – an excellent starting point for exploring all five volumes of this outstanding series.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

Mozart ‘Prussian’ String Quartets

Doric Quartet

Chandos

The Doric Quartet continue to enrich the catalogue with another recording full of exactly what makes chamber music so rewarding: exploration, conversation, joyful collaboration and superb artistry.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

‘La clarinette parisienne’

Michael Collins cl Noriko Ogawa pf

BIS

Master of the clarinet Michael Collins’s beauty of tone and impeccable shaping of phrase seems an absolutely perfect fit for these early (or turn-of-the-) 20th-century French works.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

Mozart Piano Duet Sonatas K497 & 251

Ferenc Rados, Kirill Gerstein pf

Myrios

This is truly joyful. A revered teacher and one of his most free-thinking students joined in duets that, as Michelle Assay puts it, ‘reminds you why you fell in love with music in the first place’.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

‘Camino’

Sean Shibe gtr

Pentatone

Each of these mainly Spanish works feels like a beautifully crafted and intimate painting – delicate, reflective, exquisite, mysterious – quietly gifted to listeners by a guitarist whose instinct for colour compels and transfixes.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

‘Echoes of an Old Hall’

Music from the Old Hall Manuscript

Gothic Voices

Linn

Music from the Old Hall manuscript, a hugely important collection of English medieval music, performed with atmospheric beauty by Gothic Voices.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

‘Phidylé’

Kateřina Kněžíková sop Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Ostrava / Robert Jindra

Supraphon

Soprano Kateřina Kněžíková’s tone – warm, drawn straight from the heart – seems perfect for this repertoire of dreamy, richly coloured orchestral songs.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

Corigliano The Ghosts of Versailles

Sols; Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal / Joseph Colaneri

Château de Versailles Spectacles

A new (audio and visual) recording of this opera made, fittingly enough, exactly where the events are set: the Palace of Versailles.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

DVD/blu-ray

R Strauss Elektra

Sols; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst

C Major Entertainment

A towering performance, an unsettling vision – ‘I found the whole thing utterly compelling,’ concludes Tim Ashley.

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database

Reissue/archive

Schubert Song-Cycles

Christoph Prégardien ten

Challenge Classics

Intelligent, poetic, human and always communicative, Christoph Prégardien’s Schubert lieder has long been a highlight of the catalogue: this reissue set of the composer’s song cycles is self-recommending. 

Read the review in Gramophone’s Reviews Database