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Sol & Pat
William Blake’s aphorism ‘no bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings’ can be interpreted to mirror...
Reviewed by Rob Cowan in issue: 01/2022
The Myth of Venice: 16th-Century Music for Cornetto & Keyboards
The standout moment on this album is the Ricercar del VI tuono by Annibale Padovano. Silas Wollston’s performance feels far...
Reviewed by Mark Seow in issue: 01/2022
Ferio Saxophone Quartet: Evoke
The saxophone quartet may not be an unexplored medium these days, but few outfits are as enterprising as Ferio, now...
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse in issue: 01/2022
Bach Before Bach
There are two lines of thought going on in this enjoyable collaboration between violinist Chouchane Siranossian, harpsichordist Leonardo García Alarcón...
Reviewed by Charlotte Gardner in issue: 01/2022
SAINT-SAËNS Chamber Music with Winds
The players of the Orchestre de Paris mark the centenary of Saint-Saëns’s death with a survey of his chamber works...
Reviewed by Tim Ashley in issue: 01/2022
Four Trumpet Sonatas after Mozart (Jonathan Freeman-Attwood)
Mozart’s relationship with the trumpet was famously antipathetic. He is reported to have been terrified by the instrument as a...
Reviewed by David Threasher in issue: 01/2022
Crossroads: American Violin Sonatas
The American violin sonata remains a slightly neglected corner of the repertoire for European artists and audiences (and ditto for...
Reviewed by Charlotte Gardner in issue: 01/2022
BRAHMS Viola Sonatas 1 & 2 SCHUMANN Adagio and Allegro (Philip Dukes)
The other day a friend of mine in her 80s told me that she sees an old lady when she...
Reviewed by Andrew Farach-Colton in issue: 01/2022
BARTÓK String Quartets, Vol 2 (Ragazze Quartet)
In reviewing the first volume of Bartók quartets featuring these Dutch-based players I affirmed that ‘the Ragazze Quartet certainly cut...
Reviewed by Rob Cowan in issue: 01/2022
The Imaginary Music Book of J.S. Bach
I’ve followed Café Zimmermann with great interest down the years, and this latest addition to their catalogue is no less...
Reviewed by Fabrice Fitch in issue: 01/2022
ARENSKY; SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trios (Trio Con Brio Copenhagen)
The teenage Shostakovich’s single-movement First Trio is obviously not a patch on the mature second – the structural seams show...
Reviewed by David Fanning in issue: 01/2022
'Scenes from the Kalevala' Klami. Madetoja. Pylkkänen. Sibelius
A comprehensive compendium of music drawn from Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala, would run to many discs (see 6/13 for...
Reviewed by Andrew Mellor in issue: 01/2022
Pyrotechnia: Fire & Fury from 18th-Century Italy
There’s a slight but clear danger to the part-misquote of Macbeth (intentional or otherwise) in the subtitle of this recording:...
Reviewed by Lindsay Kemp in issue: 01/2022
The Beginnings of the Violin Concerto in France (Johannes Pramsohler)
How do you reconcile the near-chaotic theatrical rhetoric and flashy bravura of the Italian violin concerto with the greater subtlety,...
Reviewed by Charlotte Gardner in issue: 01/2022
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No 6, ‘Pathétique’ (Järvi)
Paavo Järvi’s Tchaikovsky is undoubtedly a painstaking labour of love. Every single detail has been thought through and is expressed...
Reviewed by Marina Frolova-Walker in issue: 01/2022
SCHACHT Symphonies, Vol 2 (Schmalfuss)
Why haven’t I heard of Theodor von Schacht until now? A very skeletal biography for the similarly uninitiated: born in...
Reviewed by Mark Seow in issue: 01/2022
RÓZYCKI Violin Concerto. Works with Violin ( Ewelina Nowicka)
>Ludomir Różycki (1883-1953) is far from a household name even in Poland. Józef Kański, in his useful booklet notes, points...
Reviewed by Ivan Moody in issue: 01/2022
PIERNÉ Ratmuntcho. Cydalise Et Le Chèvre-Pied Suites
The two Ramuntcho suites derive from Pierné’s incidental music for a play by Pierre Loti, first staged in 1908, which...
Reviewed by Christian Hoskins in issue: 01/2022
MOZART Violin Concerto No 3. Symphony No 41 (Julien Chauvin)
Le Concert de la Loge Olympique was the professional orchestra active in Paris in the 1780s, conducted by (among others)...
Reviewed by David Threasher in issue: 01/2022
MESSIAEN La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Poemes pour Mi. Chronochromie (Nagano)
Considered as a pocket history of Messiaen’s large-scale writing, this set could hardly be improved upon. We hear the composer’s...
Reviewed by Peter Quantrill in issue: 01/2022
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