Classical Recordings

Charles Bordes is France’s best kept musical secret, though with this album his delights are secret no more. Bordes is remembered, if at all, as one...

The intriguingly named, unreasonably photogenic pianist Alessio Bax proves himself here to be an ideal Brahmsian. The disc’s sampling of Brahms’s early, middle, and late piano...

Eyeballing Ates Tanin’s reasonably complete Gilels discography compiled in 2006 and viewable online at doremi.com/DiscGilComp.html, you might come away with the impression that Emil Gilels recorded...

This is an absolutely splendid reissue of Neveu’s May 1948 performance of the Brahms Concerto. Those already familiar with this version don’t need to be told...

This is the same recording reissued by the same label, Acanta, but with a different spine number, that was reviewed by Mortimer H. Frank 25 years...

Ginette Neveu, born on August 11, 1919, had reached only the age of 26 when she recorded Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Walter Susskind and the...

The Tokyo String Quartet, founded in 1969, is disbanding in 2013 as a result of the retirements of longtime members Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura, the...

Here are Brahms’s two quintets for solo instrument and string quartet, each rendered in a version for five strings. They are quite different animals, however: The...

This reviewer might be excused for heaving a heavy sigh of “here we go again” at receiving yet another recording of Brahms’s three violin sonatas, especially...

Klaus Tennstedt was a marvelous conductor, particularly early in his American career, of Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms in addition to Mahler, which to my mind always...

Twenty-thirteen is the big 4-0 for British pianist Leon McCawley; born in 1973, usually a watershed moment in the lives of artists and the rest of...

David Braid was born in North Wales in 1970. He has studied in both the U.K. and in Poland. This is the first disc of his...

Britten’s Ceremony has been recorded many times, and almost as often by a four-part mixed choir as by the original treble chorus. Initially, Britten had a...

I was sent this CD to audition, and review if I liked it, because I gave such a glowing review to this label’s issue of the...

This is Nicholas Phan’s second recording of Britten songs, this time beginning with The Heart of the Matter , Peter Pears’s 1983 revision of an earlier...

Of all Bruckner’s numbered symphonies, the First needs the greatest help from the podium. The music’s drama regularly exceeds its scale, so the conductor must impose...

Ivor Bolton’s Bruckner cycle, of which this is the seventh installment, has been a competent and occasionally absorbing affair, but never an exceptional one. Bolton himself...

István Kertész recorded this performance of the Bruckner “Romantic” Symphony in October 1965, early in his tenure with the London Symphony and seven years before he...

Some videos are so satisfying musically that the picture can be a distraction. That is the case here. Not that the images are uninstructive. The video...

This Bruckner Seventh is quite simply the most beautiful, organic and fluid I have ever heard, a Wagnerian journey in seamless melody so intuitively warm as...

In his earlier years, I was an admirer of Herbert Blomstedt’s art. My first exposure to him was at concerts with the Detroit Symphony in 1979-80,...

In our shrinking and digitally cross-fertilized world, it is hard to recall there was once a time—not so long ago—when the symphonies of Bruckner were essentially...

Busoni’s contrapuntal geste calls for chiaro playing, which the savviest pianists—the late, great Paul Jacobs, say, or David (now Sara Davis) Buechner—evince with uncluttered flair. From...

No one should be surprised, seeing these composers paired on one disc, to find that the program concludes with Monte’s Super flumina Babylonis and Byrd’s completion...

Journeys In Sound is two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alan Miller’s second documentary about John Cage. The first, I have nothing to say and I am saying...

The classic 1959 John Cage and David Tudor recording of Indeterminacy was originally issued on two LPs by Folkways, and is still available on CD from...

By and large, I’ve liked Casella’s symphonies but not loved them. This CD, on the other hand, contains works that I enjoyed both emotionally and intellectually;...

A search of the Fanfare Archive turns up only a few short overtures and marches by Charles-Simon Catel. A search of the ArkivMusic.com database turns up...

Francesco Cavalli’s La Didone (1641) is one of the earliest relics of operatic history. To put it in perspective, the opera was written more than 50...

Shura Cherkassky, according to the liner notes, was sometimes a difficult man to accompany, as he would often change his mind on phrasing or tempos between...

This disc by the woman who was in 2011 the young winner of the first prize at the Montreal International Musical Competition, starts promisingly enough with...

Khatia Buniatishvili, a pianist unknown to me, is here presented in a generous cross-section of Chopin’s music. Taking her playing on its own merits, without reading...

Subtitled Music from Aston Magna , this disc is the latest of a number seeking to revive the music of Louis-Nicolas Clerambault (1676-1764). One presumes that...

Back in 35:5, I very favorably reviewed an MSR CD of the chamber music of James Cohn, and ended by stating my longing for recordings of...

This album brings to two the number of available recordings of Mouton’s Missa Dictes moy toutes voz pensées , and supplies us with still more motets....

Carson Cooman (b.1982) should be very familiar to Fanfare readers, as he is one of our critics, and I find his writings consistently lucid and informative....

In 60 years of life, Arcangelo Corelli composed comparatively little, yet his reputation and the influence he wielded on the art of violin playing loomed large....

The pieces heard here (actually nine tientos and one discurso) are among 69 such works of Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1583/84-1654) that were published in 1626,...

Three of the four suites from Les Nations began life as Corelli-influenced sonades relatively early in their composer’s career, during the 1690s. Relabeled as overtures in...

Let’s not beat around the bush here—this is a marvelously entertaining program of (for the most part) still-neglected American modernist music, performed with gusto. Others will...

Antoine Dauvergne (1713-1797) was a mere name in a lexicon until the release of his Concerts de simphonies with Concerto Köln on Virgin Veritas some years...

Every so often—perhaps inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s eponymous poem—I contemplate things that might have been, and quite frequently my contemplations involve music: What would Beethoven’s...

The liner notes for this CD of Debussy Mélodies start by saying that Pelléas et Mélisande is known worldwide, but asks “is it common knowledge how...

If Guido Cantelli were alive as I write this, he would be 92 years old and probably regarded as one of the greatest maestros of the...

Presumably, Arthaus Musik is issuing this Blu-ray version of Pelléas et Mélisande recorded at the Zurich Opera House in 2004 as a part of their rebranding...

It was exactly one year ago, in issue 35:4, that I reviewed an integral set of Debussy’s works for solo piano on Centaur performed by Larissa...

The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Nocturnes were originally issued by Decca London, the Images and Martyrdom pieces by Philips. In fact, the...

Since winning the silver medal at the 1985 Van Cliburn competition, the French pianist Philippe Bianconi has enjoyed an active international career and, along the way,...