Four years ago, in Fanfare 30:4, I reviewed the audio of this broadcast (Golden Melodram 5.0059). It had been in circulation since at least the late...

Gottfried Finger (c.1655–1730) came into the world at the dawn of the High Baroque, a time of tremendous flux and experimentation. Born in Olmütz (now Olomouc...

“A program of ballet music composed during the turbulent interwar years of the 20th century. The music reflects the edgy, dangerous, and restless political and social...

One might be forgiven for assuming that any complete series of works by a single composer might be presented sequentially, but I have been through enough...

This is not the first time Marc-André Hamelin has been competing with himself for a position on my Want List. And if his recording of his...

Here’s a perfect example of how the record companies sully the waters of perfection by mixing and matching stuff in their vaults. The Nash Ensemble’s Debussy...

Karl Böhm was the conducting world’s tortoise to his contemporaries’ hares. Soft-spoken yet forceful, methodical and not given to telling people things twice, he was a...

Four years ago, in Fanfare 30:4, I reviewed the audio of this broadcast (Golden Melodram 5.0059). It had been in circulation since at least the late...

Gottfried Finger (c.1655–1730) came into the world at the dawn of the High Baroque, a time of tremendous flux and experimentation. Born in Olmütz (now Olomouc...

The mid 20th century was truly a golden age for conductors. The point is made forcefully by the author’s quoting of a 1955 review of a...

The rationale of this guide is “to advise readers as to the most desirable recordings available.” The prefatory matter begins with an encouragement to use downloaded...

Talking with the 37-year-old pianist Jason Moran in the Keller Room of the New England Conservatory two days before his February 2, 2012, concert, In My...

There are, certainly, two ways of hearing this album: as being among the highest musical achievements of jazz in the 20th century, or of being a...

I know this CD just came out, but if you look up “eclectic” in a future music dictionary, they should have the cover of this disc—which...

This set is a repackaging of three CDs previously released by BBC Legends. The only thing that has changed about the original releases is that they...

The Juilliard Quartet was founded in 1946 by William Schuman, president of the Juilliard School. Violinists Robert Mann and Robert Kolf, violist Raphael Hilyer, and cellist...

Charangos are Bolivian instruments that can be played either like mandolins or guitars. Originally they were made from armadillo shells, but modern ones are made of...

This recital, issued in 2011, was recorded back in 1996; it was apparently first issued in 1997, but I don’t remember ever coming across it before,...

West Hill’s well-organized six-CD set represents the first release of most of these recordings, and if there was any question, they confirm that Glenn Gould was...

One of the cruelest statements to come from the sharp-tongued Bernard Shaw is “Those who can’t, teach.” Many of those who “can” prove to be the...

In music conservatories there is an old tradition that voice majors attend string classes to learn about phrasing, and string players go to voice classes to...

This was an odd disc to order and review. I probably misread the listing in the Naxos catalog, because my impression was that this was a...

New York City is a hard city, the city of Wall Street, daytime television studios, advertising agencies, corporate headquarters, great wealth, and grim poverty. This hardness...

The title of this CD is a German pun: As a noun, Macht means “power” or “might”; as the first-person singular conjugation of the verb

The purpose of this disc seems to be to focus on the Baroque lament, rather than, as the title suggests, the more common Lamentation settings of...

Ablaze Records is a fairly new label that is dedicated to, among other things, promoting the works of living composers. For its Millennial Masters series, the...

Several German-based companies—Cantus Classics, T.I.M. (The International Music Group) AG, and Membran Music—have over the years issued numerous boxed sets of historic recordings on various labels—Line...