'Oriental Landscapes' is a subtle showcase for percussionist Evelyn Glennie's... “Glennie is superb, and somehow self-effacing; you never feel that her performance is screaming 'soloist!' at you...and the recording helps, beautif…
“All this alternately thoughtful and exuberant music is played with great care and authority by the Mirage Quintet who never mistake a term such as animé for fast. Brilliantly alive to their challenge, they have been well recorded.” --Gramophone Mag…
“she fares extremely well in major solo works by Rachmaninov...Every one of the numbers in the Op. 33 Etudes-tableaux is vividly and incisively characterised, and she conjures a wonderful depth of feeling and range of keyboard colouring...The Corell…
“A welcome disc shines light on David Matthews's rhapsodic, fantastic music. Guy Johnstonis a technically immaculate soloist, while Ruman Gamba with the BBC Philharmonic are excellent throughout in first-rate recordings.” --Gramophone, Abril 200…
A coming together of two artists with enormous followings – Valentina Lisitsa, with her dazzling artistry and hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube, and Michael Nyman, with his hugely popular film soundtracks. This release, in the year of Ny…
“Kopatchinskaja marries consummate technical brilliance and an amazing aural imagination wiuth a capacity to bring completely new interpretative perspectives to some very familiar music. This...may well be her finest achievement to date. She is abso…
“His performance of the Mendelssohn...points to a musician with all the technical gifts that these days are accepted as norms but also with stylistic taste, purity of tone and an attractive blend of flair and interpretative discretion...Adams's …
Astor Piazzolla’s much-loved tangos have been arranged for all manner of instrumental line-ups, this album presenting an exuberant selection specially arranged for the acclaimed Tuscan Brass and Percussion Quintet. The Quintet is joined by guest vio…
“Francesco La Vecchia directs the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in a committed and colourful performance, relishing these moments of darkness, but they are equally good in the rampant spikiness of much of the Concerto...Unreserved applause for Naxos a…
“Debussy's unjustly-dismissed Fantasie and Francaix's pithy Concertino are the highlights of this programme, superbly interpreted by Florian Uhlig.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2013 **** “What an enticing programme this is...Uhlig proves a …
It was in 1947 that Doreen Carwithen’s career took off. Her Masefield-inspired overture ODTAA (One Damn Thing After Another) was premiered by Sir Adrian Boult. This meaty, confident and muscular work suggests the influence of Moeran, and relates …
Though Holst learned of the discovery of Pluto four years before he died, it probably did not occur to him to add another movement, especially since the work's last section, "Neptune, the Mystic," ends in an other-worldly, ethereal fad…
“Ehnes is a very fine violinist and there is barely a moment here when his playing is anything but silken in tone and sinuously refined...Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra make cultured colleagues but there is not much danger in their …
“The fact that Turina was a skilled orchestrator is manifest throughout this disc in performances of La procesion del rocio and the Danzas gitans that have a shifting, subtle spectrum of coour delineating the music's light and shade, its sunshin…
"A must-hear disc for anyone with any kind of passing interest in the development of 20th Century music – decide for yourself if it represents prophetic music or a blind alley. For myself, I’m glad to be able to hear all of this music for mysel…
“The performances here are excellent. Francesco La Vecchia drives the orchestra hard in the symphony, with a big payoff in terms of emotional spontaneity and impact…This boldly engineered disc is the first of four surveying Casella's orchestral …
“Ekaterina Semenchuk...[is] the contralto with the biggest range and lustre since Bernstein's Troyanos, and Sergey Semishkur's Oedipus blends clarion authority with youthful pathos...all the right musical phrases shine through. Even Bernstei…
“I have not heard such a beautiful performance of the First Violin Concerto since Itzhak Perlman's 1982 EMI recording, and Ehnes enjoys the advantage of a more natural balance with the orchestra...Ehnes smoothes some of the First Sonata's ro…
“there is little doubt that the present performance of the First Concerto is even more incisive than its predecessor...Petrenko draws out a wealth of fascinating detail from the orchestral accompaniment...The Second Concerto, on the other hand, does…
“Few can rival Valery Gergiev's pedigree in Prokofiev's music, and he is palpably aware of how this score works in the theatre. His pacing of events is masterly, with plenty of verve and passion… what really impresses… is the tenderness and …