Classical Recordings Pg. 3

Peter Breiner, an apparently indefatigable arranger/orchestrator, who has given us suites from Janáček’s From the House of the Dead and The Cunning Little Vixen , baroque-style...

This is now the third bite at the apple of the Debussy and Ravel quartets for the Talich Quartet. Their first recording, in analog sound, was...

No sooner had I finished reviewing a new Chandos Delius program, containing the composer’s Piano Concerto, than here came yet another disc, this time in Naxos’s...

The first two of Andrew Davis’s releases of Frederick Delius on Chandos—three if one includes the 18-year old recording for Teldec—have shown this conductor to be...

The music of Frederick Delius (1862-1934) has always been attractive to me ever since I first heard his masterpiece Brigg Fair , a work which could...

Thanks largely to efforts on his behalf by Thomas Beecham, John Barbirolli, Norman Del Mar, Vernon Handley, and perhaps one or two others, the works of...

The Delius Piano Concerto survives in its original three-movement form (recorded here), and a revised one-movement version that was shortened primarily by removing material from the...

I am not going to take up Fanfare space with a listing of the specific songs on these two discs because every song Frederick Delius wrote...

This, according to the album note, is the third and final release in a series of CDs featuring the bassoon music of François Devienne (1759–1803). It...

Before receiving this CD, I had never even heard of François Devienne (1759–1803). Rashly assuming that a few readers of this magazine may still linger in...

In Fanfare 28:6 I reviewed a release of this performance on EMI. It was digitally remastered by engineers who had no idea what the voices sounded...

Let me guess how this recording came to be. David Crown, director of the Choir of Somerville College, programmed Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem as a challenge for...

It is nice to have István Kertész’s Dvořák tone poems back with us. A whole generation of listeners grew up on these performances, recorded between 1963...

Let me begin with just one swipe at Hänssler Classic, a label whose marketing practices I’ve questioned before. This entire program could fit onto a single...

In addition to being the finest piano quintets written in the Romantic period, and perhaps ever, Dvořák’s A-Major and Brahms’s F-Minor quintets also happen to make...

I have always found Claus Peter Flor to be a very interesting, insightful, and exciting conductor, and he does not disappoint here. This is a very...

For record collectors of my generation, our introduction to the lesser-known works of Dvořák was through the recordings of István Kertész. In my case, it was...

Don’t get me wrong here, this new live recording of two over-recorded warhorses is basically very good. Throughout one can hear the care and time taken...

Critic Andrew Porter has called John Eaton the most interesting opera composer in America, and with good reason: This well-seasoned microtonal composer has done more to...

By all the accounts I have ever heard or read about him, George Enescu (1881-1955) was one of nature’s noblemen. Multitalented as a violinist and violin...

La vida breve is a gift to stage directors and design teams. Its deliberate ambiguities—where is the action taking place; is it all meant to be...

When it comes to the organ, I think it’s safe to say that César Franck is the most important composer since Bach, and here we have...

Here’s a pleasant surprise: a Japanese pianist, formerly unknown to me, playing French music in an authentic French style. Indeed, Ishiyama’s performance of the Franck

Bob van Asperen’s survey of Froberger’s complete keyboard works is not new, though it appears not to have been previously reviewed in Fanfare . The series...

This is a celebratory album in more than one respect. There is the 400th anniversary of Giovanni Gabrieli’s death, in 1612, but His Majestys Sagbutts and...

Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1554/7-1612) is enjoying the celebration of the quatercentenary of his death, but this is one of the few CDs that I have seen...

The Magnificat from John Eliot Gardiner’s well-regarded 1975 version of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610 was appended to Gardiner’s 1972 recording of Gabrieli, Bassano, and...

Hans Gál has been receiving some well-deserved, if belated, attention on disc lately. Just a couple of issues back, I reviewed a must-have recording by cellist...

Hornist and composer Jacques-François Gallay was born in1795 in Perpignan where he first studied music with his father. When he was 14, he successfully substituted for...

This disc presents a well-conceived and nicely balanced program of sacred music by a trio of Reformation-era composers who, for the most part, remain unjustly neglected:...

Alexander Courage’s lavish arrangement of numbers from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess features a violin part that sounds both brilliant and idiomatic. Jascha Heifetz transcribed some...

CPO here continues apace with its survey of Jan van Gilse’s symphonies. Details of the composer’s life and descriptions of his music can be found in...

The late soprano Gwen Catley, in her old age (the 1990s), complained of then-modern singers: “You cannot make out the words, neither their beginnings nor their...

The operas of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, once wildly popular, are virtually unknown today—this is the world premiere recording of this 1773 work—even though his most famous work,...

“I am sure you are introducing something completely new to the opera with this synthesis of a catchy melody with a new reckless harmony and a...

A hit in its first run in 1726, in London and elsewhere, Alessandro has had less success in our day. It is a demanding and lengthy...

The three main works on this program would furnish an excellent introduction to Handel’s choral music: the sensitivity of the Birthday Ode , the majesty and...

Tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims once described his mercurial colleague Stan Getz as “a nice bunch of guys.” The organ, it seems to me, is a nice...

I asked to review this set because I really like Handel’s Giulio Cesare, and I also happen to admire the singing of Ann Murray and Susan...

I wasn’t sure if this recording would reach me in time to include with this period’s reviews, but thankfully it did, and so I can not...

If the first half of the 20th century can lay claim to discovering the beauty and depth of Mozart’s operas, the latter half (and up through...

This is the first recording of Messiah I’ve ever reviewed for Fanfare, and there is a good chance that it may be the last, because I...

When we think of the Crusades, our romantic imaginations go to mounted knights in armor with white crosses on their breastplates on mighty chargers doing battle...

The title of this pleasing collection of early arias and instrumental music is Handel’s Italian Muse. Most of the singing is from the composer’s first Italian...

A number of decisions await the prospective purchaser of Saul. Leaving to one side for the moment the question of period instruments, perhaps the most interesting...

It would seem that Alison Balsom has become about as popular as a classical trumpet player can be. (I am leaving aside Wynton Marsalis for obvious...

Elsewhere, in reviewing a disc of French cello sonatas, I said of the cellist that he plays with a tone big enough to fill the Grand...

Since I have just ( Fanfare 36:3) anointed Martin Pearlman’s period-instrument Creation as the definitive recording—on my all-time Want List—one would think there is no hope...