Category: Classical
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York Bowen: String Quartets
Bowen is another British composer who’s been lost to present music fans. Like Arnold Cooke from last week, this was originally released by the British Music Society and is now out on Naxos. Bowen (1884-1961) was active before WWI and seems to have disappeared without trace afterwards, which is a shame. This album from […]
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Eric Craven : Piano Sonatas 7+8+9
We’ve not heard of Craven, but apparently he was a teacher who taught music and mathematics in secondary schools in Manchester. He has composed music since his teens, but rarely performed or published until recently. Encouraged by Mary Dullea and Divine Art/Metier Records, the first album of his music SET for piano, performed by Dullea, […]
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Michael Finnissy: Mississipi Hornpipes
If the title suggests to you some folkie American Appalachian adaptations, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Finnissy — Prof Finnissy to give him his proper title — is professor of composition at the University of Southampton. We found this quote attributed to him: “If it’s a commercial success you have in your sights, lay […]
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Arnold Cooke: Three String Sonatas
This appears to be a CD that was originally released (in 2009) by the British Music Society, formed in 1979 by a group of amateur and professional music lovers to promote British music in the face of indifference. Cooke was a good one to support: despite having a prolific working life over nearly a century, […]
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Moscow Chamber Orchestra / Rudolf Barshai : Baroque Music volume one
The most surprising thing about this CD is the fact that its recordings are 50 years old, as they sound so fresh and new. Barshai won numerous Soviet and international competitions and was the founding violist of the Borodin Quartet in 1945. In 1955, he founded the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, which he led and […]
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Lei Liang: Bamboo Lights
We like a bit of avant-garde in the Review Corner, and this garde is as avant as they come. This is a “portrait CD” of Liang’s work, which we are going to crudely summarise thus: imagine an upmarket kung fu movie with pretensions of art, and a scene where the protagonists walk through a bamboo […]
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Jerome Lowenthal: Rochberg Chihara Rorem
The main quality of this latest CD by Jerome Lowenthal, veteran pianist and academic, is its playfulness. The opening couple of bars sound like it’s going to be frightfully modern and American but that’s just a witty opening to George Rochberg’s Carnival Music, written for Lowenthal (much of the album is Rochberg). The carnival of […]
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George Crumb: Sun and Shadow / Voices from the Heartland
This is the 16th volume of record label Bridge’s George Crumb series, and the music is quite late. It’s an intriguing album and, because part one (Sun and Shadow) is based on the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca it has some similarities with Siobhan Lamb (see above) in that the singers step out of the […]
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Jos Zwaanenburg: Grist
Nominally this is a “classical” album because it features a flute but it’s really an experimental album featuring flute and lots of electronic noise. It’s a whole album’s worth of sonic twiddling that sounds like a long section from a wacky krautrock band of the 70s. Zwaanenburg graduated with distinction from the Sweelinck Conservatorium-Amsterdam in […]
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