Cui Preludes, Op.64

Jeffrey Biegel

Cesar Cui was a notoriously sharp critic, less acute as a self-critic. Many of these Preludes are charming, but it...

Reviewed by John Warrack in issue: 11/1994

Martinu The Marriage

Brno Janácek Opera Orchestra | Helena Buriánová | Jan Hlavsa | Jaroslav Ulrych | Jindra Pokorná | Jindrich Doubek | Josef Stefl | Libuse Lesmanová | Míla Myslíková | Václav Nosek

The Marriage is based on the same Gogol tale used by Mussorgsky for his abortive attempt at a realist opera,...

Reviewed by John Warrack in issue: 11/1999

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets Nos 13-15 SCHNITTKE String Quartet No 3

Pacifica Quartet

With so many Shostakovich quartet cycles in progress, the sequence must by now have overtaken Bartók’s as the 20th century’s...

Reviewed by David Gutman in issue: 03/2014

DONIZETTI String Quartets (Quartetto Delfico)

Quartetto Delfico

Hands up: I was dimly aware that Donizetti had written string quartets, but rather like Berlioz (with his insistence that...

Reviewed by Richard Bratby in issue: 08/2023

E MAYER String Quartets Vol 1

Constanze Quartet

The north German composer Emilie Mayer seems to have turned to chamber music in Berlin in the mid-1850s, largely –...

Reviewed by Richard Bratby in issue: 10/2023

The Great Regondi, Vol. 1

D'Anna Fortunato | David Starobin | Douglas Rogers | Julie Lustman

Our hero's mother died in giving birth to him in 1822, probably in Geneva, after which he was brought up...

Reviewed by John Duarte in issue: 12/1995

Borodin/Shostakovich Piano Quintets

Monte Carlo Pro Arte Quintet

Although the thematic fibre of Borodin's charming 1863 Piano Quintet—his first mature work—is distinctly Russian, the manner of its exposition...

Reviewed in issue 10/1994

(The) Vanishing Nordic Chorale

There is something enchanting about this disc that opens it up to a wider circle of listeners than those who...

Reviewed by Geoffrey Norris in issue: 11/2011

Wieniawski Piano Works, Vol 1

Tomasz Kamieniak

The only work of Józef Wieniawski (1837-1912) I’d heard before these was his Piano Concerto issued on an early (1987)...

Reviewed by Jeremy Nicholas in issue: 8/2009

R. Strauss: Rarely heard orchestral works

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra | Kenneth Schermerhorn

Here is a collection of curiosities. The Symphony was written while Strauss was a 16-year-old schoolboy and was conducted by...

Reviewed in issue 2/1986