Classical Recordings Pg. 4

This Nelson Mass opens with a fine, brassy outburst and aggressive choral phrases, but the entrance of the soloists—chosen from the all-male choir—is weak and insecure....

The name of this ensemble looked so familiar to me I was sure I’d reviewed something by the Danish String Quartet before. But if I had...

A record label that has flourished for over 25 years in Iceland now has a distributor in the States. The name of the label is translated...

This is Volume 4 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s traversal of the Haydn sonatas with his bright, accurate Yamaha Grand. He has an easy flair that suits Haydn’s...

Colleague James H. North reviewed the first three volumes of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Haydn cycle, pronouncing the pianist’s performances in Volume 1 lacking in both individuality and...

I am not quite sure of her age, but the South Korean-born, Vienna-based pianist Dianne Baar is definitely very young—based on the photos included in the...

This is Volume 3 of the Kungsbacka’s Haydn piano trio cycle, a survey I’ve been following with great pleasure. As mentioned in my review of the...

More ear candy from the Kungsbacka! This is Volume 3. Hurricane Sandy is battering New York as I listen on a Walkman, in the dark, a...

The three concert performances on this disc derive from an annual chamber music festival entitled “Tensions [ Spannungen ]: Music in the Heimbach Hydropower Station,” which...

At last, a fine period-instrument disc of the Morning, Noon, and Night Symphonies! La Petite Bande produces robust sound from a string section with a complement...

As reported in many past reviews, Thomas Fey is the good-cop-bad-cop traffic director of Haydn symphonies. Some of his performances have been marvelous (No. 60 in...

Without warning, a new object—Planet X—appeared in the heavens: a mysterious entity intruding upon a vast ancient system. Hailed as a paradise by some, an expeditionary...

This program of Henze chamber music arrived just as his death was announced: October 27, 2012, at age 86. Wergo, the label of his publisher Schott,...

I was going to start this piece by remarking that if there were an American Music Hall of Fame, Victor Herbert, renowned instrumentalist, orchestra leader, composer,...

Conducting light music well is as much of a gift as conducting a Beethoven symphony well. It demands taste, sparkle, and energy. Eugene Ormandy had that...

Not knowing much about Herzongenberg, other than that he aggressively pursued Brahms’s approval without getting much of it, I dug into the Fanfare Archive and found...

The set of 12 suites published in 1695 in Nuremberg as Primiciae Chelicae , of which the first six are presented on this release, constitutes the...

Imogen Holst (1907-1984) was long known and respected as a conductor, arranger, and author of books on music. It is only very recently that her work...

Arthur Honegger’s music, except for two “representational” pieces ( Pacific 231 and Rugby ), is not very well known or appreciated. The composer, initially a member...

The most interesting item on this brand new release is the piano quartet by Salomon Jadassohn (1831–1902). Rather than repeat his life story here, I would...

Claudio Abbado was 32 when Romeo and Juliet was recorded in 1966; the other works followed within three years. The young conductor demonstrated an attachment to...

This is a good selection of motets because it hardly duplicates the last two such discs. On Orlando Consort’s collection of Josquin’s motets ( Fanfare

Christian Jost (b. 1963) is a German composer trained in Cologne and San Francisco. His music is consistently serious, in the long-standing manner of his countrymen:...

Paul Juon (1872–1940), named Pawel Fedorowitsch at birth, was Moscow-born to a Russian father and a German mother. In 1889, he entered the Moscow Conservatory where...

Among the principal Russian composers of the 20th century, Dmitri Kabalevsky was the Party man. I was astonished to read that in Zhdanov’s 1948 denunciation of...

Years ago I encountered a piece for sax quartet by David Kechley titled Stepping Out , and was charmed by its sweet spirit and catchy tunes...

Toccata has compiled works for violin by the young (b. 1981) Estonian composer, Mikhel Kerem, in performances by his friend and sometime fellow composition student Mikk...

In 34:6 I favorably reviewed a recording of Klughardt’s Piano Quintet on an MDG release featuring the Leipzig Quartet and Olga Gollej. I was absolutely enthralled...

The works on this CD date from the second period of Zoltán Kodály’s compositional career, when he was concentrating on orchestral music; his first period was...

The first work on the disc, Choral en Fa , essays majesty and awe in stentorian unfolding until, two thirds through, it ventures into strange harmonic...

Nikolai Sergeevich Korndorf (1947-2001) taught composition and orchestration at the Moscow Conservatory from 1972 until 1991, when he emigrated to Canada. Early in his career he...

Korngold’s String Sextet has enjoyed a number of recordings, one by the Dutch Caméléon Ensemble reviewed in 35: 4 by Jonathan Woolf and another, even more...

In 33:6 I reviewed and warmly endorsed a CPO set of Korngold’s three string quartets, plus the Piano Quintet, with the Aron Quartet and pianist Henri...

It’s sometimes hard to put yourself “in the audience” when watching a video of a past performance that once received rave reviews, and this was the...

This disc is titled Music for Chamber Orchestra , but Krenek uses large forces; the orchestra personnel list includes a string complement of 6/5/5/4/2, plus multiple...

Frank La Rocca is professor emeritus of composition and theory at California State University, East Bay, so he has time to concentrate on his own compositions....

On the welcome page of Frank La Rocca’s (b. 1951) website is a short quote from a prayer written by St. Augustine “Late have I loved...

I very much wanted to hear this recording because I’ve always been fond of the famous aria “Vainement, ma bien aimée,” recorded down through the century...

When this performance turned up on DVD in 2009, I noted (in Fanfare 33:1) that “an improbably favoring planetary alignment hovered over the Liège Opera House...

It may not be 100-percent accurate to call two of the works on this disc, the Lalo and the Magnard, rarities, for they have been recorded...

Fuga Libera’s compilation seems, like an ellipse, to have two foci: the emerging young violinist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky and the music of Édouard Lalo. The program opens...

The booklet notes to this release intriguingly link Mexican composer Mario Lavista’s Missa brevis ad Consolationis Dominum Nostrum (to give it its full title, composed 1994-1995)...

Musica Alta Ripa has framed two of Jean-Marie Leclair’s sonatas for two violins with two large-scale works, op. 6 and op. 8. In these, violinists Anne...

One often thinks of Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690) as mainly a composer of instrumental works, largely because of his contributions towards the development of the baroque sonata...

Things have come a long way since the days when anyone wishing to hear all of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage was forced to choose between LP...

Born in 1989, Nareh Arghamanyan is a young Armenian pianist who has been making a name for herself on the international concert circuit, including here in...

Both formally and affectively, Liszt’s works for piano and orchestra occupy a category all their own among romantic concertante pieces. Liszt cultivated the medium more assiduously...

For his two-disc Liszt release on the Tokyo-based Camerata label, Costantino Catena has assembled a fascinating program that resists the obvious at almost every turn. The...