Classical CDs
graham.rickson
There’s still a market for classical music, whether you stream, download or get your fix from your local classical CD shop. Universal’s acquisition of the independent Hyperion label worried many listeners early in 2023, but the fact that Hyperion’s entire catalogue will be made available for streaming has to be a good thing. We’re also seeing more and more big boxes of reissued material, and I’ve chosen three of them as particular favourites. Two celebrate conductors: Warner Classics’ breezeblock-sized compendium of Otto Klemperer’s orchestral recordings contains some of the best Read more ...
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Thomas Adès: Alchymia Mark Simpson, Quatuor Diotima (Orchid Classics)Thomas Adès continues to hit new heights of inventiveness in this new mini-album, a digital release of a mere 24 minutes. But there is no danger of feeling short-changed: Alchymia’s music is intense and dense, but also fluent and engrossing, demanding and rewarding multiple hearings. A four-movement piece for string quartet with basset-clarinet (an instrument usually only heard in Mozart’s Requiem) which, like his early string quartet Arcadiana examines a cultural idea from a range of perspectives, Alchymia is a Read more ...
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Winter Breviary St Martin’s Voices/Andrew Earis (Resonus)The music at the St Martin-in-the-Fields in London has been reinvigorated in the last couple of years by new Director of Music, Andrew Earis, and St Martin’s Voices, the resident chamber choir of young professional singers, has been at the heart of that. Their Christmas offering is a selection of premiere recordings by predominantly women composers, a debut collaboration with the Resonus label: I hope there will be more. Olivia Sparkhall’s “All and Some” has a springy medieval feel, all drone textures and modal melodies, and is a Read more ...
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Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1-5 Garrick Ohlsson (piano), Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra/Sir Donald Runnicles (Reference Recordings)This set would be an artistic treat had it been captured onto a couple of C90 cassettes with a boombox. Instead, Garrick Ohlsson’s Beethoven concerto cycle was taped over a week in July 2022 in Walk Festival Hall, a medium-sized wooden venue in a small Wyoming village, Sir Donald Runnicles conducting a festival orchestra drawing its members from elite ensembles in the US and Europe. There’s an interesting booklet essay from producer Vic Muenzer Read more ...
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Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 Bamberger Symphoniker/Jakub Hrůša (Accentus)The technical aspects of this release run the risk of overwhelming its musical qualities: this version of Dvořák’s "New World" symphony is spread over six 45rpm LP sides and is, remarkably, a wholly analogue affair. As with this label’s direct-to-disc box set of Smetana’s Ma Vlast, Jakub Hrůša’s Bamberg players recorded the symphony in single takes, the performance captured over two days in April 2023 via three well-placed microphones sending the signal straight to the cutting stylus. There’s no download available – we’ Read more ...
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Kabeláč: Eight Preludes, Motifs from Exotic Lands, Smetana: Dreams Jan Bartoš (piano) (Supraphon)Anyone interested in 20th century music should investigate Supraphon’s box set of Miloslav Kabeláč’s eight symphonies. when you've done that, get hold of pianist Jan Bartoš's engrossing recital disc. Kabeláč’s relationship with the communist regime in post-war Czechoslovakia was often strained, though things improved after Stalin’s death. He was fascinated by cosmology (“…everything in the world and the universe has a centre around which it revolves…”) and his music, though often Read more ...
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Bach: Goldberg Variations Víkingur Ólafsson (piano) (DG)Bach Goldberg Variations Reimagined Rachel Podger/Brecon Baroque (Channel Classics)It feels like ages since I’ve listened to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I’m more team piano than team harpsichord, so my current favourites include recordings by Glenn Gould (both of them), Murray Perahia and Igor Levit. Víkingur Ólafsson’s lucid sleeve note is entertaining, particularly when he follows his florid comparison of the work to “…a grand oak tree… living and vibrant, its forms both responsive and regenerative…” with Bach’s punchier Read more ...
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Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Concerto, Concerto for Two Pianos, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion Peter Jablonski, Elisabeth Brauß (pianos), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon (Ondine)Grażyna Bacewicz packed an incredible amount into her relatively short lifespan, and besides the composing, performing and teaching, she found time to study Hindu poetry and write four novels. The earliest piece in this anthology gives us a sense of her restless energy: the six-minute Overture composed in 1943 while Poland was under German occupation and premiered in September 1945. It’s Read more ...
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Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4, Paganini Rhapsody Lukáš Vondráček, Prague Symphony Orchestra/Tomáš Brauner (Supraphon)Yuja Wang, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel (DG)Yet more Rachmaninov, but I’m not complaining, and comparing pianists Lukáš Vondráček and Yuja Wang in the composer’s five concertante works has been an enjoyable experience. Vondráček’s set was recorded between February and June 2021 in pandemic conditions, whereas Wang’s cycle was taped live over two weekends in February 2023. Vondráček favours broader tempi and plenty of introspection in Concertos 2 and 3, Read more ...
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Antal Doráti: The Mercury Masters – The Mono Recordings (Decca Eloquence)The great Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti (1906-1988) enjoyed a long and prolific recording career, stretching from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s. This beautifully produced 30-CD package is one of two dedicated to Doráti’s 11-year stint in charge of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now known as the Minnesota Orchestra). Doráti’s predecessor was the charismatic, erratic Dimitri Mitropoulos. His penchant for new and challenging music wasn’t to all tastes, and in 1949 Doráti took charge of an ensemble whose Read more ...
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Otto Klemperer: The Warner Classics Remastered Edition (Warner Classics)The young Otto Klemperer’s conducting career was encouraged by no less than Gustav Mahler, Klemperer’s meteoric rise leading him to become director of Berlin’s Kroll Opera from 1927 to 1931. The first two CDs in this set comprise recordings made during his tenure there; dim mono sound aside, these fiery readings of Wagner, Brahms and Strauss defy their age. The following decades saw the conductor faced with exile in Los Angeles and range of physical and personal catastrophes, including brief imprisonment. Do listen Read more ...
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Louise Farrenc: Symphonies 1-3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is not perhaps the best-known name among pre-20th century women composers garnering increased attention recent years – but she might be the best. She managed to achieve success in her own lifetime, even in the field of the symphony – the form most guarded by the high-art (male) gatekeepers – before pretty much disappearing from music history. This release of Farrenc’s three symphonies (plus two overtures) by the Insula Orchestra, playing on period instruments, makes a very persuasive Read more ...