Category: Uncategorized
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Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie (self titled)
Tango In The Night was pretty much Buckingham / McVie —Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood were banished to a mobile home because of drugs issues, John McVie was off drinking — so we had high hopes for this. Oh well. Buckingham / McVie are talented songwriters who’ve been doing this for donkey’s, and Buckingham is…
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Randall Thompson: Symphony No.2
Thompson is known as one of the most-performed American composers of choral music, notable for writing that is approachable to both audiences and choirs. The Second Symphony is “an excellent example” of what the composer was capable of when not composing for voices, say the sleeve notes. We say it’s ideal if you want to…
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Twelfth Day: Cracks in the Room
This slightly left-field folk album might take you unawares at first, as Twelfth Day play standard folk subtly melded with jazz and classical — some parts are more akin to chamber music – with added eccentricity thrown in. Twelfth Day is Catriona Price, a singer and fiddler from Orkney, and Esther Swift, singer and harpist…
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Chris T-T: Best Of
We had this a couple of weeks before playing it. A bloke we’ve never heard of issuing a best-of package as he jacks it in after 20 years of limited success? What’s going to be good about that? A lot, it transpires. The man’s a genius at what he does, with an unlimited supply of…
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Aylish Kerrigan and Dearhbla Collins: Schoenberg Vocal Works
All those hours spent listening to experimental, modern classical music have paid off: we dipped our toes into the waters of Arnold Schoenberg and came up smiling, to mix metaphors. A couple of reviews said it was not for the faint-hearted; it’s true that it’s not for someone expecting the Cliff Adams Singers singing something…
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Enzo Bellomo: Legacy and R-Evolution
“Modern” classical music can be vexing at times, interesting ideas and experimentation not always making for the easiest of listens. This debut album by Italian composer Enzo Bellomo aims to be (as it says on the tin) a modern classical record but drawing on the legacy of past greats. It’s less r-evolution than comfort food,…
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Alvarez Kings: Somewhere Between
After the recent review of the harmless-but-fan-friendly Scouting For Girls’ re-issue of their debut after a decade-long career, we’ll be more charitable to formulaic pop bands for a while. Alvarez Kings make a sound that’s somewhere between Coldplay/U2 (stadium-filling Marr-ish guitar and muscular ambient synths) and poppier fare, and sing songs about love, and the…
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Will Joseph Cook: Sweet Dreamer
We can see young Will (he looks about 12) carving out a nice career among people who like well-crafted tunes from cool singer-songwriters; the kind of act that fills Manchester Apollo without bothering the charts much. A nice living if you can do it. The songs are all neat and crisp, well produced but not…
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Franz Liszt: 12 Grandes Études
Liszt was one of the most remarkable pianists of all time, and were he alive today he’d probably be in a prog band, trading keyboard solos of fearsome technical complexity with someone like Dream Theater’s John Petrucci. Happily, interminably long and dull prog solos were still more than 100 years away when Liszt composed these,…
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Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Complete Sonatas For Violin And Piano
Weinberg is recognised as one of the outstanding Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century (say the Press notes, we won’t pretend we knew that). He was feted for his symphonies and string quartets, but also wrote a sequence of violin sonatas. Shostakovich’s influence is evident (say the notes) in the Third…
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