Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla had the same problem as Scott Joplin; known for only one genre of music, confining himself to a set of rules that makes all the pieces feel interchangeable – Joplin with ragtime, Piazzolla with the tango…
Crépuscule
The collection, taking its overall title from William Alwyn’s Crépuscule, covers exactly a century of composition for this rarefied group of instruments (sometimes minus the viola): from Arnold Bax’s very Ravelian Elegiac Trio from 1916 to Paul Patterson’s engaging Canonic Lullaby from 2016, which was premiered by Halnan and Wright in this version (flute replacing oboe)…
De Profundis Clamavi
Only the works by the famous composers, Britten, Bridge and Parry in this set have been recorded before so Honeybourne’s selection is bound to be a series of discoveries. EM Records is pursuing its task of exploring the attic of English music with diligence…
Die Stille Stadt
Dorothea Herbert’s voice is not yet the finished article, I suspect – there is a dull spot in the middle register and a tremble that never quite settles – but it is thoroughly appropriate for most of this overheated music from the first few decades of the last century…
Fauré – The Complete Songs
Malcom Martineau has long been one of Britain’s best accompanists for singers and he is continuing a tradition of a lone pianist exploring the collected songs of a single composer with many collaborators, in the same way that Graham Johnson did with his Songmakers Almanac from the 1970s onwards…
Brahms – Emmanuel Despax
It is every generation’s right to put on record their interpretation of the standard repertoire and Despax is a capable and sensitive pianist who certainly deserves to tackle Brahms’ massive First Concerto, at almost an hour one of the grandest and most taxing works in the genre…