Classical CDs
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Leo Sowerby: Paul Whiteman Commissions & other early works Andy Baker Orchestra, Avalon String Quartet (Cedille)Chicago’s Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) is remembered chiefly as a prolific composer of sacred scores, a Pullitzer-Prize winning composer famous for church cantatas, organ solos and songs. A self-taught prodigy, Sowerby had been including populist elements in his scores for a decade before he was contacted by bandleader Paul Whiteman (who famously commissioned Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) in 1924, asking him for a piece of symphonic jazz to perform in one of his “Revolutionary Read more ...
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Anthony Collins: Complete Decca Recordings (Decca Eloquence)Born in 1893, Anthony Collins began his musical career as a 17-year-old violist in the Hastings Municipal Orchestra. Active service in World War 1 was followed by a spell at the Royal College of Music, after which Collins established himself as a resourceful and versatile London-based musician. Peter Quantrill’s entertaining booklet essay for this 11 disc Decca Eloquence set has one wondering how such a prominent figure, renowned as a conductor, arranger, composer and performer, managed to slip into obscurity. These mono "FFR" Read more ...
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Die stille Stadt: Songs by Alma Mahler, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold Dorothea Herbert (soprano), Peter Nilsson (piano) (7 Mountain Records)German dramatic soprano Dorothea Herbert will be playing Leonore in a new Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of Fidelio in October. Her debut album provides a welcome excuse to go back to Vienna and re-visit some Lieder from the cusp of the 20th century. Pianist is Chicago-born, Netherlands-based Peter Nilsson, and the album has been beautifully recorded at former radio studios in Hilversum. There’s another timely ‘hook’: the Read more ...
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Imants Kalniņš: Complete Symphonies and Concertos Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Atvars Lakstīgala and Māris Sirmais (Skani)If the eye-catching box design doesn’t attract your attention, the first track on CD 1 will, an extract from the veteran Latvian composer Imants Kalniņš’s 1973 score to the popular Latvian film Blow, Wind. Based on a folk song and lushly orchestrated, it could pass for a slice of Vertigo-era Bernard Herrmann, at least until the electric guitar solo starts. It makes for a perfect appetiser. Skani haven’t arranged Kalniņš’s seven symphonies in chronological order, so to Read more ...
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Louise Farrenc; Symphonies 1&3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc’s music is good as you’d expect from a precocious talent who’d studied piano with Hummel and composition with Reicha. Born in 1804, Farrenc’s misfortune was to be a female composer in 19th century Paris, a city with a highly progressive musical culture but antediluvian sexual politics. She was a renowned pianist and teacher, becoming a Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1842 and having to fight to receive the same salary as her male colleagues. Farrenc’s three symphonies are Read more ...
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Riccardo Muti – The Complete Warner Symphonic Recordings (Warner Classics)As with Warner Classics’s recent André Previn box set, begin at the end. Jon Tolansky’s audio documentary is on the last disc in this 91-CD box, chronicling Riccardo Muti’s galvanising effect on a moribund New Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1970s. Muti, aged 31, made his UK debut in December 1972 in Croydon’s Fairfield Hall; Tolansky recalls the rehearsals, and the fact that “within minutes it was vividly evident what he wanted and what he very quickly obtained: colour, nuance, contrast, character – and knife Read more ...
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Martha Argerich Edition (EuroArts)Almost eight hours of Martha Argerich on film. What a glorious prospect! This six-DVD set mostly consists of recordings of live concerts. The set was released to celebrate the great Argentinian’s 80th birthday last month. Again and again in performance, she finds depths, colours and transcendence that simply stop you in your tracks. There is a Prokofiev 3rd Concerto with the LSO and Previn recorded in Croydon in 1977, where she switches from the most delicate of dream sequences to playing which is forceful, propulsive, totally commanding. And there are Read more ...
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Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 3 Ivan Ilić (piano) (Chandos)Antoine Reicha’s L’Arte de varier tantalises before you’ve heard a note; the composer’s Opus 57, its theme followed by 57 variations. Reicha was an exact contemporary of Beethoven and reportedly the two composers discussed their approaches to variation form. Reicha’s Op. 36 set of fugues had ruffled feathers upon their publication in 1804, and this large-scale set of variations on a simple F major theme is similarly intriguing. All but eight of the variations share the theme’s key signature, the theme usually instantly Read more ...
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One Movement Symphonies: Music by Barber, Scriabin and Sibelius Kansas City Symphony/Michael Stern (Reference Recordings)Placing these three single movements together serves to highlight just how great Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 is, and just how hard it is to create a genuinely cohesive single movement symphony. Schoenberg’s early Chamber Symphony is another convincing example, sounding far less cohesive in the composer’s orchestral transcription. Samuel Barber wrote his Symphony No. 1 in the mid-1930s. If you’ve only heard Barber’s Adagio or the Violin Concerto you’ll be surprised by Read more ...
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André Previn: The Warner Edition – Complete HMV & Teldec Recordings (Warner Classics)Flicking through this box set will provoke a Proustian rush if you’re of a certain age. These recordings were mostly made for EMI, though Warner Classics have wisely kept the LPs’ original sleeve art, reminding us of just how ubiquitous a presence André Previn once was in the UK. Many of these recordings were bestsellers, familiar to anyone who frequented record shops or public libraries in the 1970s or 1980s. A multilingual child prodigy, Previn began his musical career as a conductor and arranger Read more ...
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Dennis Brain: Homage (Warner Classics)Eleven CDs, assembled to mark the centenary of the legendary hornist’s birth. Whoop whoop. Start at the beginning, with a 1938 recording of Mozart’s K334 Divertimento. The horn writing isn’t spectacular but the two players are perfectly blended, phrasing as one. This was the 16-year-old Dennis Brain’s recording debut, sat alongside his father Aubrey in Abbey Road Studios. Dennis’s clean, pure tone was a constant throughout his short but spectacular career, the move from a narrow-bore piston instrument to a modern Alexander horn managed without any Read more ...
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Beethoven: Piano Sonatas 30-32 Boris Giltburg (Naxos)It's worth noting that Beethoven's final piano sonatas weren't his last works; there was still a lot of music in him. Performing them as weighty, epic closing statements can smother the sonatas’ inventiveness, so it’s good to hear Boris Giltburg emphasising Beethoven’s charm and invention (he wrote about his filming of all 32 sonatas last week on theartsdesk). He doesn’t undersell the gravitas, but lightness and energy are what draw us in. Reach the understated close of No. 32’s “Arietta” and there’s a feeling of frustration that we’ Read more ...