For once the CD album cover photo (by Magnus Arrevad) sums up its contents very accurately: Anna Zassimova in black dress storm-tossed in a bleak evening landscape. She carries a hat, the interior of which seems to contain a cyclone all its own…
There is an attractive smokiness to Viktoria Mullova’s playing on gut strings which gives these performances a truly domestic chamber feeling, far removed from the modern concert hall…
Manchester Camerata is fifty years old this year and it has been a distinguished half century. Before it was started as a project by Ralph Gonley under the auspices of BBC Radio Manchester, the city had two symphony orchestras but no professional chamber orchestra of any great standing…
The main appeal of these chamber versions of Chopin’s concertos, for piano and string quintet (including double bass) is that it makes them available to venues that cannot fit or afford a full orchestra…
Samantha Edge has, from her base in Oxford, been doing superb work recently in championing the music of Florence Price and here she extends her reach to a further group of black women composers of the last century…
The one thing I expected from this young team of soloist and conductor was a load of romantic passion but that doesn’t seem to be their thing at all…