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Welcome to Fanfare, the Magazine for Serious Record Collectors. If you are not yet a Fanfare subscriber, you may browse a generous sampling of recently published articles on this site. New articles are added daily. Subscribers may view the complete contents of these issues in the Archive. New: Our contributors lead interesting lives. Read their biographies by clicking on the author's name in each article. |
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James Tenney (1934–2006) is a seminal figure in American music, and one—like Henry Cowell—who will probably take quite a while to figure out, given his diversity...
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 Igor Raykhelson (b. 1961), according to his friend Yuri Bashmet, “possesses a superb mastery of both classical and jazz idioms.” With such a high recommendation, I...
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| Most Popular Music Reviews |
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 First issued as Hyperion 66477 (16:3), this disc was compared unfavorably with one under Stephen Darlington issued a little earlier (12:3). Now it is available at...
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Waltraud Meier is better known to us as a Wagnerian soprano on the opera stage than as a Schubertian mezzo in the recital hall. In the...
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 The American String Project is an annual festival that brings together prominent string-players to form a 15-member orchestra—five first violins, four second violins, three violas, two...
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 This disc—the penultimate volume in Graham Johnson’s traversal of Schumann’s songs on and for Hyperion—will be self-recommending to those who have been following and collecting this...
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Hard to believe though it is, the last time JoAnn Falletta and I spoke was four years ago for an interview and feature piece in 27:4....
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I remember very precisely,” says pianist Cyprien Katsaris. “When I was three and a half, my parents bought a piano for my sister, who is a...
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 In this era of bargain boxes, here is the best of all possible bargains. Virtually everything Stravinsky ever wrote (not the one and two-piano transcriptions of...
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 Haydn is generally thought of as a composer of symphonies and string quartets, if not the father of both genres, and while there are a number...
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James Tenney (1934–2006) is a seminal figure in American music, and one—like Henry Cowell—who will probably take quite a while to figure out, given his diversity...
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 Igor Raykhelson (b. 1961), according to his friend Yuri Bashmet, “possesses a superb mastery of both classical and jazz idioms.” With such a high recommendation, I...
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 This book is part of the series “Unlocking the Masters,” and is my first exposure to this collection, though Alan Swanson recently reviewed Tchaikovsky: A...
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 Xaver Scharwenka (1850–1924) was one of the most celebrated pianists of his day, with a broad reputation in both Europe and North America. As a composer,...
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Several decades ago, when I, then the Boston Globe jazz critic and an ex-clarinetist, was listening awestruck to Buddy De Franco, the manager of the Boston...
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In the late 1980s, at a fund-raiser in Boston for drummer Ed Blackwell, then ill with kidney disease, the master of ceremonies proclaimed Blackwell the greatest...
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Aap Ke Kassam (1974) and Raja Rani (1973) are films with serious undertones. However, in true Indian fashion, the darker dramatic elements don’t totally dominate, but...
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Chinna Gounder is a 150-minute 1991 movie that holds justice as its central concept. Intimately bound up with the idea of Panchayat (Indian local government bodies...
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 Matt Haimovitz has made a name for himself over recent years by consistently searching out alternative venues and contexts for the presentation of classical music, most...
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 The first CD in this series of reissues devoted to Oskar Fried (1871–1941) was released in 2006 and reviewed in Fanfare 29:2 by James Miller; I...
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 Although Schubert’s last opera, Fierrabras , was completed in 1823, it was not performed until 1897, long after his death. In the plot Fierrabras, a Moorish...
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 This rather strange offering provided me with my first experience at actually seeing the much-hyped Valery Gergiev conduct. ( Gramphone called him “the world’s most powerful...
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 The American String Project is an annual festival that brings together prominent string-players to form a 15-member orchestra—five first violins, four second violins, three violas, two...
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The Votapeks are a husband and wife team who have very nice pedigrees from Juilliard, and currently work out of Michigan State University. This program is...
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 This is one of several repertoire-based clarinet recital discs that have appeared in recent months, and has to be rated rather high among them. As annotator...
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 This remarkable set, culled from the archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the early years in which Glenn Gould emerged as a major classical pianist...
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 My colleague Henry Fogel wrote in Fanfare 27:1 about another “Great Recordings of the 20th Century” release featuring Christoff’s Mussorgsky: “He captures everything that Mussorgsky put...
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 The current spate of vocal recitals focusing on singers of another era brings a new winner with French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky’s homage to Carestini. The name...
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One can glean a fair idea of the wide stylistic range of this collection just from the first two tracks, Ola Gjeilo’s frankly chant-inspired Prelude
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 Be not put off by the notion of a bluegrass mass. Carol Barnett’s version ranges from the simple to the difficult and requires an ensemble of...
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 This instrumental ensemble has no conductor, although some reviews of early music in the past have characterized the director of a few musicians as a “conductor.”...
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Composers who worked in Venice in Monteverdi’s time make up this program of solo madrigals, arias, and guitar pieces. The unfamiliar names need some introduction. Domenico...
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The name of the label is NM Classics (for Netherlands Music); this disc, labeled NM Special, is essentially a sampler—there are no program notes, no texts,...
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 Music in the Loft is a series in Chicago (celebrating its 15th anniversary) that reminds me a little of New York’s Barge Music—it presents concerts in...
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