Classical Reviews/Ensemble

Over 400 reviews of classical CDs, SACDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in this issue!

Latest Music Reviews

Here is an interesting cross section of contemporary American quartets. All four were written and premiered in the past eight years. They share a harmonic language...

This is rare chamber music in several senses: the obvious one, that it is seldom played or heard on discs, but also that violin and cello...


Recent Music Reviews

This album contains 16 traditional folk songs and dances from a small area of Europe, arranged for flute and guitar. If that appears to be the...

The brass band tradition in Great Britain is one that goes back more than two centuries. Created as a form of communal music-making, these bands—which are...

These recordings were made in 1961, after the Melos Ensemble had maintained a steady core membership for the first 11 years of its existence. As a...

The first duo in Alexander Hülshoff and Friedemann Eichhorn’s collection of fantasies written in collaboration by Adrien François Servais and violinists Joseph Ghys, Hubert Léonard, and...


More Music Reviews

Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva for organ and orchestra presents the best of him. It is variously brilliantly virtuosic and deeply meditative, and speaks—more to the point,...

First off, the Spanish Art Guitar Quartet is made up not of Spaniards but of Germans—Germans who feel a special affinity for Spanish music, though. Their...