As an example of the triumph of content over packaging this album is prime. Forget the kitsch cover, the inaccurate name and the truly garish graphic design. Once you turn it on, there is superb period instrument playing by this thoroughly serious and accomplished ensemble…
The LSO has made many distinguished recordings of this symphony over the years but this is up with the best of them; beautifully recorded in SACD sound that completely belies its origination in a pair of concerts at The Barbican in 2019…
It is appropriate, in a way, that a disc which has music full of hidden or clouded meanings should have a title and be by artists with a name that is mildly baffling. I assume, because it is not explained in Wolfgang Stähr’s excellent accompanying essay, that Burning through the cold refers to the years of Stalin’s Soviet Union, during which the Shostakovich and Babadjanian works were written…
I am always lost in admiration for Clare Hammond’s playing. She seems to have invincible fingers and can tackle anything a composer throws at her…
These are not for the most part the extraordinary recordings Boult made in the late 1960s and into the 70s for EMI, produced by Christopher Bishop, that introduced him as an interpreter of the classics to a new generation – mine. In those years Boult emerged as the grand master, freed from the smothering of his reputation by factional music politics and his own tendency to accept whatever was thrown at him…
Ironwood give these quintets the full period style treatment, the period being the middle years of the 19th century, when romantic practice was maturing and becoming more indulgent of special effects. If you don’t like spread piano chords, extensive portamento in the violins and a piano sound far more brittle than a modern Steinway, then this record is not for you…