Classical Recordings Pg. 5

Jerome Moross (1913-1983), described in the notes as being in the vanguard of the “new American music” of the 1930s and ’40s, is not a composer...

Issuing late recordings by famous singers is always a touchy situation, even if one is as famous as Fischer-Dieskau, but one would have a right to...

Three clarinet concertos, one from the late 18th Century, one from the mid 20th, and one from the opening years of the 21st. Chandos is recording...

You know how, sometimes, you take a chance on a recording of overly familiar music hoping (or at least thinking) that the recording will give you...

James Reel and Jerry Dubins were kind to the previous Mozart disc—Piano Concertos Nos. 11 and 12, plus the String Quartet No. 4—from these performers. My...

I am reviewing this disc only because one of the concertos it contains—No. 13—was advertised by Mozart himself as being optionally playable a quattro —i.e., by...

On this disc, Arthur Schoonderwoerd plays a fortepiano that sounds like a harpsichord in front of a small orchestra (six strings, winds, and timpani) on period...

In a recent review of an artfully engineered, great sounding period-instrument performance of Mozart’s 17th and 22th piano concertos played by Kristian Bezuidenhout with Petra Müllejeans...

I came to this recording, by a fine pianist, Alessio Bax, from listening to a period-instrument recording of Mozart. Perhaps that is why my first impression...

Helmut Müller-Brühl remained active until shortly before his death in January 2012. These Mozart divertimenti, recorded in mid-September 2011 may well be the last recordings he...

Karajan became artistic director of the Salzburg Festival in 1956. Though aspects of his personality, management, and conducting would draw controversy over the years to come,...

It’s nice to know that my favorite opera has been blessed with so many good recordings but there’s always room at the top for another one...

While serving as general director at the Paris Opéra from 2004 to 2009, Gerard Mortier’s efforts to “revolutionize” the house included ordering the destruction of sets...

This performance has been previously presented on a TDK DVD and was reviewed in Fanfare 29:5 by David L. Kirk. As Kirk wrote “This production isn’t...

The Revolutionary Drawing Room, a string quartet, shapes the Clarinet Quintet’s opening, hymnlike chords into a gently moving phrase—not solemnly, as some groups do, like entrance...

I’m sure the reader of this review will find what I am about to say odd, but having followed the music of Sun Ra and his...

Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa has appeared in these pages several times in repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Takemitsu. This, however, is her first foray on disc...

My initial reaction on seeing this CD was, “Oh no! Now it will be less likely than ever that Hyperion’s other leading pianist on its roster,...

There’s nothing whatever to recommend about this CD except that you not buy it. From the opening perfunctory and mechanical promenade to the banged-out final chords...

Colin Davis brings a fiery élan to “The Four Temperaments” that was lacking in his previous Nielsen disc (at least I thought so, in Fanfare

The eighth version of this remarkable Mass follows the first recording by James Fleetwood in 1954 ( Fanfare 10:4), Clytus Gottwald’s in 1973, Richard Taruskin’s in...

The great master of the classical piano repertoire, Artur Schnabel, was also a composer, but his knotty, dissonant creations are not what one would, intuitively, expect...

About three years ago I gave a favorable review to a recording of George Onslow’s Piano Quintet and Sextet as performed by the excellent Italian pianist...

Writing about Ferdinando Paer’s Leonora , Peter Maag, who revived the opera and led its first (and so far, only) recording had this to say: “While...

The third of the Palestrina Masses to be recorded in this series, this is the first recording of a Mass published in 1600. A similarly titled...

Unlike its predecessors, the fifth installment in CPO’s series of Panufnik’s symphonies and orchestral pieces contains nothing of the composer’s early work. The three works recorded...

Fratricide! Now there’s a winning subject for an oratorio. There is so much about this work that sparks my warped sense of humor I hardly know...

It has been just a little over a year-and-a-half since CPO introduced us to Dora Pejačević (1885–1923), a late-Romantic, Croatian composer, with a recording of her...

This is an ambitious attempt to restage Pergolesi’s 1734 Adriano in Siria , interleaved with a comic intermezzo in two parts, Livietta e Tracollo . It...

About a year or so ago I reviewed Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria , an opera seria by the Italian baroque composer and one of...

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) died so young that publishers attributed a great deal of music to him after his death. Inevitably, the list was later pared...

Persichetti composed Harmonium —a cycle of 20 songs set to poems selected from Wallace Stevens’s eponymous 1923 collection—in1951. It was the most ambitious work the 36-year-old...

Outside of Italy, Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003) is virtually unknown, an unfair situation given his significant reputation as teacher, intendant, and composer in Italy’s second modernist school....

To my eye, Palestrina, the opera by Hans Pfitzner, librettist as well as composer, premiering in 1917, is a particularly flawed dramatic work. A testament to...

Peter Philips (1560/61-1628) was a recusant Englishman who spent his adult life abroad. He was reared by Sebastian Westcote, the organist of St. Paul’s cathedral, but...

“Nor must I here forget our rare Country-man, Peter Philips, Organist to their Altezza’s at Bruxelles, now one of the greatest Masters of Music in Europe,”...

If you feel neglected, I once heard, just think of Whistler’s father. Well, here we are presented with Pohjola himself, and not his famous daughter. (If...

This disc is the result of a broadcast from Polish State Radio back in 2008 and is now made available after five years of resting in...

This CD is easy to review, but not for good reasons. Philippe Cantor, though having the right idea regarding Poulenc’s songs—crisp rhythms, energy, and a singspiel...

Poulenc has been unusually well served of late by a couple of recent releases purporting to contain his complete chamber works for winds. First to arrive...

Here is a terrifically lively disc of Poulenc chamber music favorites, starting off with the ever-popular Sextet, played by Pentaèdre and pianist Jalbert. They most definitely...

Conductor Stéphane Dénève, who gave us such excellent performances of Albert Roussel’s symphonies and other orchestral music with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Naxos, here...

Poulenc has been receiving a good deal of attention on disc lately, no doubt due to 2013 being the 50th anniversary of his death in 1963....

Considering that Toccata Classics specializes in bringing to light obscure repertoire, it is little surprise that they are not often involved in television tie-ins. In fact,...

Since I first heard them decades ago on a Vox box, I have been satisfied with the sometimes mild-mannered Prokofiev sonatas of György Sándor, who emphasizes...