Montgeroult
There are some discs that go instantly onto the pile of those one wants to listen to again and again, happily, on repeat. At first sight it is surprising that this is one of them…
Walton Shostakovich
There is a commitment and intensity to the playing on this disc that is, in my view, a real step forward from the Albion Quartet’s previous series of Dvorak quartets released over the last couple of years…
Mozart arr. Schäfer
Ulf-Guido Schäfer is the clarinettist of the Trio Roseau and he is a highly skilful arranger, as well as a superb player…
Purcell – Gardiner Records
To have all these seminal recordings in one box is terrific. For many years they set the standards for Purcell recordings, vocally and instrumentally, with Gardiner being the conductor who took over from Benjamin Britten in taking the major works from the 1690s seriously…
Mozart – Lucio Silla
The problem with Lucio Silla is not that Mozart wrote it when he was sixteen – he was already an experienced opera composer – nor that it has a silly story. It doesn’t…
Heinrich Biber
Perhaps the last thing one expects from this extraordinary disc is to find that it starts with the chimes of Big Ben played on the sheng, in a piece derived from one of Telemann’s a century before that bell tolled…
Hasse, arr. Handel
These days the idea of an artistic director who was also a composer presenting an opera by a contemporary the year after its first production would be thought of as a co-production…
Silk Baroque
Perhaps the last thing one expects from this extraordinary disc is to find that it starts with the chimes of Big Ben played on the sheng, in a piece derived from one of Telemann’s a century before that bell tolled…
Hallé – Vaughan Williams
This is England’s most intelligent conductor meeting the country’s greatest symphonist with its most consistently excellent orchestra: hard to better…
Elgar – Barbirolli Records
Now I have this box, I wouldn’t want to be without it…
Fantasiebilder aus Wien – Zassimova
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…
Schubert – Mullova & Beatson
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…