Not For End Of Time: With Nod To Messiaen, A Quartet For Our Time
DIGITAL REVIEW – The Anzû Quartet, combining violin, cello, clarinet, and piano as Messiaen did in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps and dedicated to new music using that specific mix, makes its recording debut with two high-intensity works.
Early-Music Group Casts Engaging New Light On 17th-Century Charmers
DIGITAL REVIEW – Codex Rost, a recording of stylishly arranged sonatas and other movements played by violinist Catherine Aglibut and her ensemble, Open Chamber Berlin, makes it easy to grasp the original appeal of these obscure works.
Of Bees And Piazzolla: Dances Familiar, Bizarre Animate A Violin Album
DIGITAL REVIEW – “I have found myself at the intersection of music and dance for over 15 years,” says violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim, who is concertmaster of Pacific Northwest Ballet and the featured artist on a far-reaching CD titled Kinetic.
Recording Sheds Light On Piano Concertos By Women History Forgot
DIGITAL REVIEW – Conductor Odile de la Martinez and pianist Samantha Ege collaborate on a pairing of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in Two Uninterrupted Speeds by Julia Perry and Concerto for Piano and Strings by Doreen Carwithen.
Musing On Busoni: Pianist Gets At Roots Of An Undervalued Master
DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Jiayan Sun’s new album Ferruccio Busoni and His Muses looks backward at the personalities who influenced him and forward at the progressive ideas that animated this singular, eclectic, and visionary composer.
In Timely Revelations, Recordings Celebrate The March Of Women
DIGITAL REVIEW – March is Women’s History Month, and two new recordings salute female composers who should be much better known than they are: instrumental works by Fernande Decruck and songs by Agathe Backer Grøndahl.
Another Scarlatti Takes Limelight In Oratorio Of Daniel In The Lion’s Den
DIGITAL REVIEW – The imaginative work by Francesco Scarlatti, in its premiere recording by the Armonico Consort under Christopher Monks, displays the influences of Handel as well as the composer's famous older brother Alessandro.
On New Tracks, Silkroad Traces Multiethnic Cost Of America’s Railways
DIGITAL REVIEW – In the13 musical narratives of American Railroad, Silkroad frames the labor and sacrifices, the hidden stories, of the Irish, African American, Chinese, Native American, and Japanese who built the transcontinental railroad.
In An Exotic Travelogue, Wafting Down Silk Road With Oslo Wind Players
DIGITAL REVIEW – On a superb CD, the Oslo Kammerakademi performs two colorful works it commissioned, plus two by Saint-Saëns and André Caplet, all evoking Eastern lands from China to Persia (today: Iran), Afghanistan, and Mongolia.
Soprano On Schoenberg And Moonstruck Pierrot: Wein’s Classical Gas 2.0
PERSPECTIVE – In her second podcast, Gail Wein chats with soprano Lucy Shelton, who brings her vast experience with modern music to bear in demonstrating the radical sung-speech vocalism Schoenberg used in his atonal Pierrot lunaire.
The Boy Mozart’s Riot Of Royalty, Vocal Bling: ‘Mitridate’ Video Glitters
DIGITAL REVIEW – This December 2022 taping of the 14-year-old composer's first important opera, a vocal high-wire act, features Les Musiciens du Louvre led by Marc Minkowski at the Staatsoper Berlin. Its lofty musical values deserve notice.
Profile Of A Monk, Cast In Resonant Lines Of Renaissance Polyphony
DIGITAL REVIEW – Over the course of its 30 tracks, augmented by texts and printed program, the Brabant Ensemble’s new recording, A Monk’s Life, unfolds as a luminous and intriguing biography of a nameless monk in late-Renaissance Germany.
Bryce Dessner’s ‘Solos’ Recording Is A Paradox: It’s About Connections
DIGITAL REVIEW – The guitarist-composer's latest project is deeply personal, a series of solo works that Dessner calls an “intimate diary.” These miniatures represent special rapport – with a musician, a city, family, all honoring collaboration.
Ambitious Album Casts Light On The Composer Inside Conductor MTT
DIGITAL REVIEW – With Michael Tilson Thomas' 80th birthday looming in December, his far-ranging compositions are finally being unleashed upon the world in a handsomely produced four-CD, five-hour set containing most of his music.
Musical Cultures Meld In Renaissance-Based CD Creatively Spiced
DIGITAL REVIEW – Although the music on Pilgrimage: Musical Journey of Kryštof Harant to Jerusalem / circa 1600 is almost 500 years old, the album’s message of cross-cultural parallels and joyous interaction is a needed balm today.
Shedding Words, Two Ensembles Articulate Charm Of Early Music
DIGITAL REVIEW – On imaginative CDs featuring instrumental arrangements of vocal works, Lautten Compagney Berlin and Concerto Scirocco display more differences than similarities. And both of these endeavors are worth hearing.
Recording, Reassessing Saariaho Opera Whose Worth Is Still Unknown
DIGITAL REVIEW – The late composer was crestfallen when her second opera, Adriana Mater, got a modest reception. A new recording by the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen promises to recharge the conversation.
Robeson Compendium: Like Trailblazing Artist, CD Set Is Monumental
DIGITAL REVIEW – A package of 14 CDs plus a 158-page coffee table book includes every recording from 1925-'58 by Paul Robeson, a towering figure who also had a major stage and film career and was a prominent labor and civil rights activist.
Three Decades Later, Hamelin Revisits Depths Of The ‘Hammerklavier’
DIGITAL REVIEW – After a 1993 performance of Beethoven's notoriously difficult Piano Sonata Op. 106, Marc-André Hamelin dropped the work for nearly 30 years. Now it reappears on a CD that reflects the authority of an artist in his sixties.
Vänskä And Minnesota Wrap Mahler Cycle With Sonically Glorious Third
DIGITAL REVIEW – It took longer than intended, but Osmo Vänskä’s valedictory recording project with his former ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, was finally completed this year. It may be the best-sounding Mahler cycle on discs.
