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8 interviews, and over 450 reviews of classical CDs, SACDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in this 528-page issue! |
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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. |
| Most Popular Music Reviews |
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Erich Leinsdorf is a conductor who enjoyed considerable fame and respect during his lifetime, but only 19 years after his death seems almost forgotten. Very few...
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 Sometimes the greatest expectations lead to the greatest disappointments. The Honeck/Pittsburgh recording of Mahler’s First was extraordinary (Merlin Patterson called it in Fanfare 33:5 “probably one...
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As a record reviewer, I have to fight the urge to claim that every CD I like is an important album. That’s because now and then,...
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 “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...
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 “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...
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 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...
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 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...
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 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...
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 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...
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 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...
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 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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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 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...
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 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...
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 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...
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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...
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 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...
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 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,...
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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...
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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...
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 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...
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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...
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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...
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 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
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 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...
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 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...
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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...
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