Category: Classical
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George Dyson: Choral Symphony / St Paul’s Voyage to Melita
This enjoyable CD is made remarkable because it was written by Dyson as part of his DMus of Oxford, conferred in 1917. The work was unknown before researcher Paul Spicer found it in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Born into a working-class family in Halifax, Dyson became one of the most important musicians and composers…
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Falter Bramnk: Glassical Music
You want experimental? Try this, an album based on the sound of glasses rinsed with hot water. You’ve all done the washing up and heard odd noises from the glasses as the water/air cools and dries. If you stuck a mic close enough, presumably the different shapes and sizes would produce different sounds. You might…
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Michael Alec: Rose Il Ritorno
This rather wonderful CD is an impressionist description of landscape using only violin and viola; perhaps not the most promising of descriptions but it is engrossing and draws in the listener. The sleeve notes are fun to read and help with the listening. Michael Alec Rose is (apparently) a leading light in the contemporary music…
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Rob Keeley: Twists and Turns
Skittish is the word for this CD from Keeley. This is partly because of the pairing of instruments such as clarinet and harpsichord (which create a sound different to what one normally hears) but also because of the music itself, which skitters about like a giddy rabbit in a summer’s field. The sound is somewhere…
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Madeleine Mitchell: Violin Muse
This CD demonstrates the violin at its most bleak/stark/purest; take your pick. Even Atlantic Drift, which opens with the sound of a lively folk song, is sparse and with an edge. This is not a criticism, just to say the album is mostly not warm or romantic, just dry and slightly melancholy; more a funeral…
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Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow: Franz Schubert: Complete Piano Duets
This came out a while back. It’s a lovely thing to have, as an object: a nice box, with seven CDs and a thick booklet. That’s before you hear a note. Short of an essay, how can you review it fairly? Worse, Anthony Goldstone died last January, while Divine Art was finalising the design…
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The Septura Ensemble: Music for Brass Septet, Vol.5
This is not really a Christmas album, but it’s Christmassy. Septura (not to be confused with the Brazilian metal band from Belo Horizonte) brings together a number of London’s leading brass players. It’s a brass septet and thus has no traditional repertoire, and is creating its own, recording a series of 10 CDs of different…
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Michala Petri and Lars Hannibal: Garden Party
This is an odd little album, but in a good way. Michala Petri (recorder) and Lars Hannibal (guitar) played their first concert in Andalusia, Spain, in 1992, and 25 years and 1,500 concerts later have selected this programme of some of the pieces they have played live. As the cover suggests, birds loom large and…
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John Turner: Christmas Card Carols
This has got to be one of the coolest things: recorder player Turner writes a short Christmas carol each year and sends it to friends and family, not in the form of a recording but as notes written on a card. They’re all musicians, so they play the music for themselves. One recipient writes in…
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Timothy Hamilton: Requiem
Carlsberg have that advert, “If Carlsberg did…” followed by something really good. The best way we can put this is, “If Cliff Adams did requiems…” By which we mean that this modern piece — it was commissioned in 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War — manages to be…
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