Outcast – String Quartets
This release on the Dutch group Matangi’s own label is all too depressingly timely. It comprises of quartets written in the Soviet Union by composers who were always under stress from the censorious regime…
Mahler – Symphony No. 4
There are performances where the conductor is barely discernable, where the music feels everyday and standard, its familiarity enough to make it presentable, the orchestra playing as they always do. Semyon Bychkov simply doesn’t allow that level of complacency, from orchestra or listener…
Handel – Opera Arias
I am a sucker for Handel’s operas. Of all the composers from the first half of the 18th century he managed to combine dramatic force with engaging and memorable melody best…
Mozart – Flute Quartets
There is something luxuriously domestic about this recording. The quartet feel appropriately as if they are in a not particularly grand 18th century drawing room on a pleasant New England Autumn evening…
Full of the Highland Humours
I was surprised to find I had a tenuous personal connection to one of these pieces, in that I spent several childhood summers at Kilravock Castle, hard by Culloden, where some of the music of Thomas Erskine was discovered in manuscript…