“British trumpeter Alison Balsom has been popular from the start, and she seems to gain strength as she tackles each new project and expands her range. Here she plays a Baroque trumpet (apparently a natural trumpet with finger holes but no keys) and is accompanied by the period-instrument English Concert under its veteran conductor Trevor [...]
Category Archive for 'Concertos'
“South African-born historical-performance specialist Kristian Bezuidenhout uses unusual microphone placement in this recording of two of Mozart’s mature and very frequently recorded concertos, and the effect is certainly different enough to justify yet another version.” –All Music Guide Check Our Catalog
“Alisa Weilerstein presents three major works of the cello repertoire with Daniel Barenboim leading the Staatskapelle Berlin. The star vehicle, naturally, is Edward Elgar’s Concerto in E minor, which Weilerstein plays with commanding presence, rich tone, and emotional depth.” –All Music Guide Check Our Catalog
“Renowned as one of the world’s leading conductors, Esa-Pekka Salonen is also a gifted composer of highly expressive, colorful, and idiomatic music that has found a growing audience… If there is one influence that shines through this darkly brilliant score, it seems to be Sibelius, for Salonen shares much of the master’s sensitivity to low [...]
“Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is a phenomenon, and kudos to Sony Classical for snagging her! This is Chopin of the old school, with massive interposition of the performer between music and listener. And it’s glorious…. This is the kind of Chopin playing that people used to line up to hear.” –All Music Guide Check Our [...]
“Johannes Moser’s performance on this album of modern works for cello and orchestra is impressive, as is the playing of WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under the direction of Pietari Inkinen. …Moser plays with so much vibrato and tension… that it keeps the listener on the edge of his or her seat. …Overall, Moser’s artistry is not [...]
“Canadian violinist James Ehnes, ably backed by the BBC Philharmonic under the energetic Gianandrea Noseda, sets himself a challenge here with an original and difficult program, and then meets all the challenges involved in this fine Bartók disc. …An excellent choice not only for Bartók’s concertos, but as an introduction to this giant of 20th [...]
Lisa Batiashvili: Echoes of Time
Posted in Concertos, Solo Violin on Mar 12th, 2012
“Dmitry Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 sets a keynote of gravitas and introduces us to the theme of the album, which is that the works presented here were influenced in one way or another by the culture and politics of the Soviet Union.” –All Music Guide Check Our Catalog
“A dominant figure in American music throughout most of the twentieth century, composer Leon Kirchner wrote a large quantity of music which, although stylistically tied to the work of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, remains powerfully individual in expression, and free of the systematic use of 12-tone techniques. In addition, he proved himself [...]
“Violinist Lisa Batiashvili has developed a highly successful career both as a soloist appearing with the world’s leading orchestras and as a chamber player performing in duos or larger groups. A major recording artist, her vast repertory encompasses works from J.S. Bach and Beethoven to Prokofiev and Shostakovich and contemporaries.” –All Music Guide Check [...]
“Sir Colin Davis became one of the world’s best-known conductors during the last four decades of the twentieth century. He is particularly well known for his recordings of Berlioz and Sibelius.” –All Music Guide Check Our Catalog
Karol Szymanowski: Song of the Night
Posted in Classical, Concertos, Symphonies on May 5th, 2011
“Szymanowski’s unique brand of expressive, lyric modernism has found many admirers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Though his earliest music is perhaps too closely allied to that of his childhood idol Chopin to fully stand on its own, his later work synthesizes the stylistic characteristics of a wide range of composers into a highly [...]
Check Our Catalog “In this disc of Wellesz’s 1933 Piano Concerto and 1961 Violin Concerto, the musical language remains the same, fundamentally tonal in harmony, though with strong chromatic and atonal accents and essentially romantic in style, though with a dash more irony and a dollop more anguish. Both pieces are given exemplary performances by [...]
Check Our Catalog “Hilary Hahn is among the world’s greatest violinists of her or, arguably, any generation. She is one of those rare artists who possess both a colossal technique and interpretive acumen to set them apart from most of their rivals.” –All Music Guide
Check Our Catalog “This CD of Beethoven’s “Fourth” and “Fifth” piano concertos shows Fellner is still impetuous but more commanding, still virtuosic but less demonstrative, and still playful but less prankish and more thoughtful.”–All Music Guide
Check Our Catalog “Thomas Adès is among the brightest young stars in contemporary composition, and a musician of broad achievement and influence. His complex and appealing music exhibits a flair for drama, humor, and personal expression, and is notable for the creative use of instrumental color.”–All Music Guide
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 8; Adagio from Symphony No. 10
Posted in Alt-Country, Concertos, Rap/Hip Hop on May 19th, 2010
Check Our Catalog “It has the right balance of line and harmony, the right feel for mass and momentum, the right sense of being in and of the moment, and above all, the sheer audacity to pull off the whole mighty and monumental work.” — All Music Guide
Check Our Catalog “Jansen’s technique is fully formed and flashy, while her interpretation is big-boned but lyrical.” –All Music Guide
Check Our Catalog “[Uchida] brings remarkable sensitivity and insight to every harmonic twist and melodic turn of two of the great masterpieces of the genre.” –New York Times
Albeniz: Orchestral Music
Posted in Classical, Concertos, Orchestral Music on May 15th, 2009
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