Review Corner

Category: Classical

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    Natalie Schwaabe: Piccolo Works

    A bit like the Opera Jazz Blues album, an album featuring the piccolo — known as the screaming twig or Ak47 for its ability to cut through the loudest orchestra — might be something that you never think you’d need, but this is a decent, if idiosyncratic, album. You wouldn’t want a collection of piccolo…

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    Hibla Gerzmava: Opera Jazz Blues

    This CD is a programme of work it probably never crossed your mind you’d need: soprano Gerzmava sings classical, jazz and blues. This doesn’t mean she stops being a soprano and sings jazz in husky tones, it means you get jazz/blues (and classical) piano accompanying what is mostly operatic singing. Track one is a delicate…

  • Vyacheslav Artyomov: Gentle Emanation + On The Threshold Of A Bright World

    In the review of the Kreutzer Quartet we said that work was on a micro scale, this on a macro, it making the listener think of the vastness of space. After writing this, we noticed the stellar scenes on the CD sleeves but also that, as a young man, Artyomov was preparing to become physicist,…

  • Kreutzer Quartet: Choreography, The Soundtrack

    So: you make a film about the importance of seeing music being played, featuring pieces that have a strong visual component (by Stravinsky, Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Finnissy). Then you release a CD soundtrack of that film. In other words, this is a CD of music that’s meant to be seen being played, that accompanies a…

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    Kenari Quartet: French Saxophone Quartets

    This fun album features pieces that used what was still a relatively new-fangled instrument in the classical form. The sax was invented in 1846 by the eponymous Mr Sax, and the pieces on here (from Dubois, Pierné, Françaix, Desenclos, Bozza and Schmitt) were written in the early to mid-20th century. French composers apparently went mad…

  • Natalia Andreeva: Piano Sonatas

    We reviewed her Preludes And Fugues the other week and it was delightful, the pianist interpreting various piano pieces for their spiritual side. This companion CD is less ethereal in feel, more of the concert hall than the cathedral, the closing section from Debussy aside. In the (again, very clear) sleeve notes, she writes she…

  • Celso Garrido-Lecca: Orchestral Works

    Peruvian Celso Garrido-Lecca is one of the foremost Ibero-American composers, linking the native sounds of the Andes and Western classical music. He studied with Aaran Copland and so there’s an American feel in places but I think it sounds very English at times, a sprightly Vaughan Williams writing about a jolly day out in the…

  • Natalia Andreeva: Preludes and Fugues

    Anyone who saw the Young Pope on Sky will have enjoyed the soundtrack, the programme juxtaposing the classical and the modern — there was a lot of electronic music — to highlight the story, a radical new pope taking on the staid Catholic Church. There was also the shock of the unexpected — a nun…

  • Nelson Goerner/Beethoven: Piano Sonata No29 Hammerklavier and Bagatelles, Op. 126

    The Press notes say he’s nicknamed “the poet of the piano” and from this CD we can see why. Hammerklavier is seen as one of the greatest piano sonatas, and Beethoven himself said: “Here is a sonata that will make pianists work hard.” Written in 1818, it is said to be Beethoven’s most technically challenging…

  • Sergei Bortkiewicz / Alfonso Soldano: Russian Piano Music Series, Vol 12

    This is an excellent CD from Divine Art, pianist Alfonso Soldano playing the work of Ukranian Sergei Bortkiewicz to a high standard, and Bortkiewicz proving to be an interesting composer. Wikipedia reports that he had a life that was at times very hard: in World War I and living in Berlin, he was placed under…