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 Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in composition for her violin concerto. Though born in Brooklyn, she spent her first 10 years in...
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 This is the second of (probably) three discs of Hindemith String Quartets by the Amar Quartet. In reviewing Volume 1 ( Fanfare 36:5), I summarized previous...
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 Danish composer Vagn Holmboe began writing for the guitar late in his career, at the age of 70, and then continued to create works for the...
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 Steven Holochwost studied composition at Yale University and earned his doctorate at Rutgers University under the tutelage of Charles Wuorinen. Besides piano, he has studied saxophone....
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Arthur Honegger, you might say, was the Swiss Hindemith, as Walton was the English one. All three started out to shock and ended up being warm...
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“First recording on period instruments” the CD back tray card proclaims. As readers of my past reviews will know, I am receptive to performances of such...
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 The booklet and the insert give no hint, but the CD-text title names this “Volume One” of John Ireland’s sacred choral music. I hope it is...
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 Malmö, at Sweden’s southern tip and its third largest city, was an old industrial town falling to pieces until 2000, when the completion of a 10-mile-long...
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Danae Dörken was a noted child prodigy, winning competitions from age six. Now 21, she is a mature, experienced artist. In notes to this disc, she...
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Violinist Carla Santos and pianist Saul Picado (who go by the title of “Dryads Duo”) have bundled two early 20th-century sonatas, by Leoš Janáček and George...
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 British composer David Jennings was born in Sheffield in 1972. He studied at Manchester University with John Casken and is currently a member of the Lakeland...
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 Laura Kaminsky (b. 1956) is described in the booklet as a composer with “an ear for the new and interesting” whose works are “colorful and sharp-edged.”...
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 In 1623 Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger published his Libro secondo , a set of rather severe moralistic texts that seem at odds with the often frivolous and...
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 The titles give a clue— Autumnal, Requiem, Ophelia’s Last Dance —but it should be understood that these are all memorials, mostly to lost colleagues, friends, and...
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Rudolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831) is known today almost exclusively as the musician to whom Beethoven dedicated his Violin Sonata No. 9 (though he only learned of the...
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These famous recordings, available on and off for decades, have only been paired twice before on CD: a disc which appeared on the Strings label in...
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 Mention of a composer named Lawes brings to mind William Lawes (1602-1645), the favorite musician of Charles I, and a Royalist soldier who died in combat....
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 Der Göttergatte (The God Husband) is an early (1904) operetta by Franz Lehár with librettists Victor Léon and Leo Stein, the same trio that less than...
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 I still remember the adrenalin shock I received, back in the early 1960s, when I first put the scratchy MK LPs of the Liszt Transcendental Etudes...
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 If you happen to have acquired one or the other or both of the Iris Litchfield CDs reviewed in the last issue, and enjoyed the simple...
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 In Fanfare 36:3, I strongly recommended The Ensemble Violini Capricciosi’s first volume of the works for Pietro Locatelli, on Brilliant 94376, comprising the composer’s Trio Sonatas...
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 Once upon a time (1960, to be exact), choral conductor Clytus Gottwald created the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, a chamber choir whose specialty was music by that...
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Mahler’s First is now so much of a calling card that it has become almost a cliché, much like Beethoven’s Fifth. Moreover, it surpasses Beethoven’s Fifth...
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 The liner notes for this release begin with a rather contentious quote from Francis Poulenc: “Music buffs believe that the greatest living conductor is Toscanini; musicians...
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 Luisi’s Mahler Sixth is very similar to his Mahler First, which I reviewed in Fanfare 36:4. On that occasion, I wrote that “this is a middle-of-the-road...
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 This live recording was made toward the end of Dudamel’s whirlwind 2012 Mahler cycle in Los Angeles (all nine completed symphonies plus the Adagio of the...
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 If there were an award for the most adventurous and enterprising record company, CPO would take first prize. The number of dead and forgotten composers the...
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 La gamme et autres morceaux de simphonie was published by Marais in 1723, six years after his celebrated fourth volume of viol da gamba suites, and...
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 Here’s another type of CD that sends my blood pressure sky-high before I even put it on: zero liner notes about either the music or the...
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This performance has been previously released on a Dynamic DVD and was reviewed in Fanfare 33:4 by Barry Brenesal. The opera opened in 1786, the same...
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 This is a release that I find almost inexplicable. I do not mean that with respect to the music—Martinů’s three piano trios and Bergerettes are all...
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This is a weird and interesting album. Finnish composer Tauno Olavi Marttinen (1912-2008) studied music during the 1920s and ’30s, originally planned to be a concert...
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 Jules Massenet may be disparaged in some quarters, but it is impossible to fault him on lack of craftsmanship, as even so slight a work as...
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 One supposes that the Teatro la Fenice had this in their archives and someone, whether at the theater or at Dynamic, thought “since we have it,...
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 This is the first volume in Toccata’s series devoted to the string quartets of British composer David Matthews, who was born in 1943. The second volume...
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 As with most releases in the Naxos series on Maxwell Davies, these recordings were previously issued on Collins Classics, Worldes Blis in 1993 and the Piano...
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 Collins Classics, while it existed, was notable for its dedication to the documentation of the works of contemporary British composers, including an extensive catalog of the...
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 This appears to be the only CD devoted to the choral music of composer, pianist, teacher, and writer John McCabe. Fact is, ArkivMusic.com only lists 42...
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 Captain of the DFCS (Dead and Forgotten Composers Society), CPO has here resurrected another buried body, but one that was not yet fully decomposed, for only...
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 I’d gladly dwell on the finer points of these performances, if there were any. Thus far, violinist Tianwa Yang’s main recognition and acclaim, at least on...
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 This being the centenary year of Georg Solti’s birth, numerous videos by and about him are being released and rereleased. As with his chief rivals for...
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 Felix Mendelssohn’s first published quartet, No. 2 in A Minor, from 1827, is perhaps the best known of his six. Opening this splendidly engineered disc, it...
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 Although Mendelssohn’s “Hymn of Praise” bears the number 2, its proper place in the chronology of his symphonies is No. 4 (the proper order is 1,5,4,2,3)....
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 But for the lack of the proper tenor for a 1967 recording of Les Huguenots, this production and all subsequent recordings of this opera would probably...
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Why this production has been released is a mystery to me. It is sung in German, not the original French or commonly substituted Italian. The score...
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