Review Corner

Category: Classical

  • Weder/Berliner Camerata Chopin: Piano Concertos 1&2

    We started reviewing classical CDs in the Review Corner to try and appreciate the genre more, and our enjoyment of this album and the one below surely means it’s a case of mission accomplished. As far as this goes, we can’t say much about Chopin, as his genius precedes him. This CD sees Joseph-Maurice Weder,…

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    Leo Brouwer: Bandurria and Guitar Music

    This does what it says on the label: Cuban Leo Brouwer is acknowledged as one of the most challenging and innovative of contemporary composers, and this is his music for bandurria — a lute-type instrument dating back to the c16th — and guitar. The former is perennially popular in South America, says the Press notes.…

  • Jonathan Ostlund Lunaris

      Trying to describe this double CD in a short review is like condensing War And Peace into 25 words. There’s just too much going on to do it justice. The sleeve does a good job, suggestive as it is of dreamy, other-worldly soundscapes featuring unicorns and maidens in ponds. The CD opens with a…

  • Boreas Quartet: Tye, In Nomine

    You’ve all heard the work of Christopher Tye, even though he died before 1573 — he wrote the hymn Winchester Old, the basis for one of those songs we all love around December, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. We meant to review this album for Christmas but hey ho (ho ho ho) we never did,…

  • Reto Kuppel: Vieuxtemps, Solo Violin Works

    Henri Vieuxtemps was born nearly 200 years ago (1820), and was a Belgian composer and violinist, a towering figure in his field (says Wikipedia). He was the son of a weaver, from Verviers (now twinned with Bradford). Despite the age of this music, and the fact that it’s a lone violin for the best part…

  • Dominion String Quartet: Alfred Hill, String Quartets, vol. 6, Nos. 15-17

    Last week we reviewed the piano quintets of Frank Bridge and Cyril Scott; Hill was operating at a similar time and writes music that’s not a million miles away, but while Bridge and Scott were stiff upper lippish and English, this collection, the last in a series, offers the warmth of an Antipodean giving you…

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    Bingham String Quartet: Bridge/Scott Piano Quintets

    Frank Bridge (1879–1941) was an English composer, violist and conductor, while Cheshire-born Cyril Scott (1879–1970) was a composer, writer, and poet. Bridge was a pacifist and Bridge friends with a Christian Scientist, later becoming interested in metaphysics, and spending many of his latter years living with a clairvoyant. Both the compositions on here — Bridge’s…

  • Percy Grainger: Music for Saxophones

    This isn’t what you might expect from Grainger, at least if you only know Percy for his jaunty arrangements of sea shanties that are played at the Last Night of the Proms. There’s a little bit of said jauntiness towards the end but mostly the sound reflects Grainger’s fondness for folk songs and early music.…

  • Carson Cooman: Liminal

    According to Wikipedia, liminality is an anthropological term (from the Latin word limen, meaning a threshold, but you knew that, right?), “the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will…

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    Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunk: Johann Sebastian Bach, Weichnachts Oratorium

    After a couple of weeks of subtle early / church music that suits the Christmas mood well, this is a double CD of one of the daddies of the genre. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is a baroque masterpiece made up of six cantatas. It tells the story of Christmas from the Nativity to the visit of…