Classical Recordings

Ellen Ballon was a Canadian piano prodigy who made her New York debut at age 12. She eventually settled in England but returned home when World...

The name of Domencio Alberti (not to be confused with his contemporary Giuseppe Alberti) has been immortalized by the phrase “Alberti bass,” referring to the use...

Eyvind Alnæs (1872–1932) suffered the fate of many 19th-century composers in countries whose cultures regarded classical music as a commodity governed exclusively by the marketplace. Private...

This is an interesting release of orchestral rarities, with at least two works of striking character that deserve to be heard more often. The first of...

Dutton appears to be a latter-day Lyrita, based on its numerous recordings of obscure English music including the by now perhaps overexposed Richard Arnell. This is...

In this CD of world premiere recordings, the Vaughan Williams work is the one that has attracted most attention. Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilog preceded by...

This is a CD that sneaks up on you: A little-known composer. And artists (Jacobien Rozemond, violin; Doris Hochscheid, cello; Frans van Ruth, piano). And label...

A son of Hendrik Andriessen (1892–1981), Louis (b. 1939) was to become the musical radical in the family; his older brother Jurriaan (1925–96) was also a...

Dominick Argento delivers a vivid account of this Bible story. Completed in 1973, it is an early contribution to a genre—the large-scale choral work—in which Argento...

Grażyna Bacewicz is the most important female Polish composer of the 20th century. Granted, that triple-qualification of “most important” makes it sound like she isn’t important...

There are unfathomable mysteries—what was it like before the Big Bang? There are unending mysteries–whatever happened to D. B. Cooper? There are unanswerable mysteries—given all options,...

Advent marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, but it signaled the beginning of the end of John Eliot Gardiner’s year-long Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. These discs...

Kuijken gives us Vvolume 9 of his series devoted to presenting one cantata for each Sunday and holy day of the year. With this collection, dedicated...

Four of Bach’s sacred cantatas for solo soprano have survived, but this is the first time all four have come to me on a single disc....

Takeshi Nakano’s notes to Opus Kura’s release of performances from an earlier era of Bach’s violin concertos contend that such readings, far from being unauthentic, embody...

Mirare’s new Bach Magnificat comes with three bonuses. First is its unexpected discmate, the wonderful but still relatively unfamiliar “short” Mass in G Minor. Next are...

According to his obituary, Bach composed five passion settings. We must be eternally grateful that he bequeathed two— Saint Matthew and Saint John —to his fastidious...

A Saint Matthew Passion on just two discs? Well, no. This is not a recorded performance of Bach’s magnum opus but rather a recorded lecture about...

One of these days, I’m convinced, we’re going to get a Bach recording made by a single, multi-tracked singer, whose voice will have been electronically altered...

Since the motets are the only works by Bach that remained continuously in use after his death, one would think that we should know how to...

A long time ago, when I was starting out on my journey through the repertoire, I came upon a 10-inch Columbia LP with the title

Some impressive pianism may be found here, both from Piers Lane and prior to that from Eugen d’Albert. The latter was a virtuoso pianist and transcriber,...

This is a reissue of six separate discs Jean Guillou recorded for Dorian in 1987 (1 and 6) and 1990 (2–5), issued separately in 1990 and...

Jerry Dubins reviewed this set in Fanfare 33-5, giving it a rather lukewarm reception. My view is decidedly less favorable, and Fearless Leader Joel Flegler has...

Robert Schumann turned to the unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of Bach toward the end of his life, around the end of 1852, and finished providing piano...

Now in his early 70s, New York City native Robert Baksa has been following his own muse for many years. For much of that time, as...

If ever there was a CD to put on at the end of a trying day, accompanied by a glass of wine and one’s favorite slippers,...

Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799) lived in tumultuous times. He began as an extremely French composer in the great querelle between his nation and the Italians, then furled...

This label promised us three discs of Ludovico Balbi’s manuscript of 1594 ( Fanfare 31:4), so the second installment is no surprise. The source, ACFMR 16,...

This is a fully filmed version of Bluebeard’s Castle . (It’s entitled Duke Bluebeard’s Castle on this release, just in case you go seeking it somewhere...

Eloquence continues to transfer everything from LP that has not been released or is not currently available on CDs. At what point does this degenerate into...

Bartók’s Viola Concerto has always been a treat for the musicologists: so many “realizations” to argue about; so many papers to publish! Fortunately, it is a...

The Two Romanian Dances is major Bartók: an Allegro Vivace lasting a full five minutes, and a Poco Allegro of four. In dazzling performances, Nicolas Bringuier,...

Zoltán Kocsís has been the music director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic (previously the Hungarian State Symphony Orcehstra, probably best known as Janos Ferencsik’s orchestra for...

Dutton continues its irreplaceable campaign of historical restitution with this highly anticipated release offering world premiere recordings of significant works by three English 20th-century composers who...

As I noted in an earlier review of Stanley Bate’s Viola Concerto ( Fanfare 32:6), the composer “ran afoul of British arts administrative culture that began...

Paul Ingram reviewed the initial DVD release of this cycle from the 2007 Ruhr Piano Festival in Fanfare 31:5. The condensed version: “Barenboim gives every phrase...

Ronald Brautigam has been rightly praised in these pages and elsewhere for his many recordings, mainly on the fortepiano, of Beethoven, Haydn, and other composers. If...

Toward the end of his life, the renowned stage director Walter Felsenstein commented that “the other films were basically stage performances adapted and arranged for the...

You owe it to yourself to hear the Auryn Quartet perform the late Beethoven quartets. True, the group’s approach is not to every taste. The disc...

To start with the good news: The Swiss duo offers civilized, cultured playing, technically fluent, and alert to crucial dynamic nuances. It doesn’t take long, though,...

And here it is, right on schedule, Daniel Müller-Schott and Angela Hewitt’s second volume of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano, concluding the project. Like most...

This is the second in a projected complete series of Beethoven sonatas by Timothy Ehlen, a professor at the University of Illinois whose playing has been...

Pristine Classical’s Paul Paray series continues to fill gaps left by Mercury’s official reissues. This second installment is just as revelatory as the first, which coupled...

At 44:55, this would be the second fastest of the 72 recordings I own of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony (only Scherchen is quicker), and while I have...

DaCapo Austria has adopted the recent renumbering of Schubert’s symphonies and lists the “Unfinished” as No. 7, but Fanfare policy calls for it to continue to...

I’ve written about this series of Beethoven symphonies in Fanfare 31:3 (Nos. 1–2 and 7–8) and 32:5 (Nos. 5 and 6); each time, I felt compelled...