Category: Classical
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Septura: Christmas with Septura
Seven-piece Septura have played a blinder with this album, which presents classic Christmas music played on brass. Septura, a group that brings together London’s leading players “to redefine brass chamber music”, manages to sound both non-brass band-y and non-Christmas-y on an album that offers a brass band playing Christmas music. It’s a Christmas miracle. By…
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Michael Wollny and Vincent Peirani: Tandem
Opening piece Song Yet Untitled is something of a surprise: the pairing of German pianist Michael Wollny and French accordionist Vincent Peirani produces a sound you’re not expecting. There’s jazz/classical piano and accordion, with an overall sound like Last Of The Summer Wine if not on steroids at least some strong coffee and a Gauloise.…
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José Luis Domínguez: The Legend of Joaquín Murieta
We’ve been enjoying this dramatic double CD of music, a romp written in the style of a classical symphony. Domínguez is one of most sought-after Chilean conductors, conducting opera, ballet and symphony, and for ten years has been resident director of the Santiago Philharmonic Orchestra (who play on this CD). He wanted to write a…
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Franz Liszt: Transcriptions of Symphonic Poems
The music on this recording features solo piano versions of Liszt’s orchestral music, either produced by Liszt or transcribed under his supervision. According to the sleeve notes, Liszt often revised his own music while transcribing it, or gave the task to his pupils and select associates, overseeing their work and then revising before publication. These…
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Frank Martin: Ein Totentanz zu Basel
We’ve been enjoying this varied and surprisingly light piece, considering it’s based on death (Amazon translates the title as dance macabre). This is not the death of modern times. He’s more the death of Terry Pratchett, a sympathetic person who takes people off to the next world with a grin, albeit skeletal. The work is…
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Copland: Appalachian Spring / Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
The themes of these two pieces are almost opposites yet the music is quite similar — presumably why they have been paired — both pieces being bouncy and crisp, the liveliness of the speakeasy life portrayed in the first piece (Hear Ye!) matching the crispness of the pioneer life in Spring. Hear Ye! Hear Ye!…
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Mozart: Serenades For Wind Instruments
The Press notes for his new album, played by the European Union Chamber Orchestra (conducted by Santiago Mantas) open by saying “Mozart’s wind serenades need little introduction as … true works of genius,” describing the performance as “fine”, all but making a review redundant. It’s Mozart, it’s played well, what more is there to say?…
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Tom Winpenny: Williamson, Organ Music
If often helps to understand a composer: an on-line obituary to Williamson compared him to fellow Oz ex-pats Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Clive James, leaving a “culturally deadening” Australia. The obit noted: “It is possible that some of his headline-making indiscretions at the expense of the fashionable would have remained private if he’d been…
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Elizabeth Hilliard: Sea To The West
There’s no use pretending this is an easy album to get into, though it is beautiful and calming in places. It’s an album of contemporary works for solo voice with occasional electronics, six works by four composers, all written for the solo voice. If it was purely an electronic album it would be out on…
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Jonathan Antoine: Believe
Possibly the best-named person to come from Chigwell, and predictably called the “teenage Pavarotti”, Antoine rose to stardom through Britain’s Got Talent, the rare exception of someone with real talent appearing on the show. Antoine has a fantastic tenor voice and on this album he sings a selection of popular classics, both old and new,…
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