Pianist

2 min. di lettura

Near the end of last year I attended an astounding recital by Arcadi Volodos. Oh, how it feels like half a lifetime away. Just a few months later, the world is a different place, and the doors to the Barbican and all our other culture palaces are fir

BBC Music Magazine

3 min. di lettura

Capriccio’s ongoing Braunfels revival is most welcome. The two-piano variations on ‘Au clair de la lune’ are full of delicious moments, while the Little Pieces are utterly charming. (OC) ★★★★ There’s more than a whiff of Brahms in Bruch’s wistful, R

Hi Fi News

1 min. di lettura

Harmonia Mundi HMN916115 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit res) Nebieridze is a young Georgian pianist and composer and his debut recording is full of contrasts. Rachmaninov’s unashamedly romantic Sonata No 2 (revised version) and Prokofiev’s determinedly m

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

69 …bars of snooziness. A survey has revealed that the first movement of Beethoven’s (above) Moonlight Sonata is the most popular piece of music for people to choose to fall asleep to. 7000 …hours of Gregorian chant, recorded by the nuns of the Abbe

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

These little gems exist for several instrumentations, but it’s the cello version that grabs me, especially through Shafran’s heart-melting playing in this 1957 recording. Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze possessed this art of writing directly int

Pianist

1 min. di lettura

Beethoven wrote several groups of bagatelles – short pieces without a fixed form – throughout his life. The seven Op 33 Bagatelles date from 1802, and, as we say a fond farewell to Beethoven’s big 250th anniversary year, we are delighted to feature t

Pianist

1 min. di lettura

This Adagio is the second (and final) movement of this incomplete two-movement work, which was believed to have been written before Beethoven left Bonn in 1792. If you are keen to learn the whole Sonatina, the first movement appeared inside issue No

Hi-Fi Choice

1 min. di lettura

2x CD and DVD Deutsche Grammophon AS EVER, THE masterly Sokolov plays with a commanding authority that is unmistakable. His playing is strong and assertive, but unselfconscious. Beethoven’s Sonata Op 2 No.3 is delivered with patrician nobility, while

Pianist

1 min. di lettura

Niels Gade composed a collection of ten Aquarelles Op 19 in 1852, following them up almost 30 years later with a second set, Op 57. They exemplify the Dane’s Mendelssohnian writing for the piano, which prizes a light and graceful touch. This Elegie i

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Plus each of our favourite percussion moments in orchestral music Editor Oliver Condy Triangle in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Deputy editor Jeremy Pound Bells in ‘Saturn’ from Holst’s The Planets Reviews editor Michael Beek Timpani in Bartó

Hi Fi News

1 min. di lettura

Hyperion CDA68291/3 (three discs; downloads to 96kHz/24-bit res) These recordings were made last June, after concert performances at the Helsinki Music Centre, Stephen Hough playing a Bösendorfer Vienna concert grand. He uses the composer’s cadenzas

Hi Fi News

1 min. di lettura

Scheherazade; Capriccio Espagnol; Russian Easter Festival Overture Oslo PO/Vasily Petrenko Lawo Classics LWC1198 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution) Petrenko recorded these three popular pieces last May at the Oslo Concert Hall after giving concer

Country Life

1 min. di lettura

Beethoven initially admired Napoleon and famously made him the dedicatee of the Third Symphony, but crossed it out in a rage on learning Napoleon had appointed himself Emperor The Fifth Piano Concerto (the ‘Emperor’) was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Sharon Bezaly is renowned – and revered by flautists – for her powerful, full-bodied tone and iconic 24-carat gold flute. The Israeli’s technical abilities have inspired reams of major works including those by José Serebrier, Sally Beamish and Christ

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein introduces favourite recordings from his collection  Yona Ettlinger played principal clarinet in the Israel Phil, made a number of great arrangements and was interested in Baroque music. This is the first concerto t

JazzTimes

1 min. di lettura

Tide Self-released Pianist Micah Thomas has been able to play what he’s heard since the age of two, but his debut, Tide, demonstrates that this is a prodigy who prefers conceptual purpose to technical dazzle. Now 23, the Columbus, Ohio, native cites

Hi-Fi Choice

1 min. di lettura

CD CD HLL CLAUDE DEBUSSY’S EAR for tonal colour was perhaps the most fastidious of any composer who ever lived. Just listen to the second movement of Iberia from Images with its delicate evocation of a warm summer night if you don’t believe me. Sir M

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Though the Coronavirus outbreak has scuppered most of this year’s Beethoven 250th-anniversary plans, Steinway has at least done its bit to help the composer blow out the candles in style. The company has built ten ‘Appassionata’ pianos (left), whose

Hi Fi News

1 min. di lettura

www.linnrecords.com; Linn CKD622 Mozart’s K459 (No 19) is a wholly extrovert work well suited to this young Swiss pianist’s manner, whereas K595, the composer’s last piano concerto, brings one or two doubts. Whether or not you feel this is an ‘autumn

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

I don’t suppose I was alone in eagerly waiting by the radio for Stephen Hough’s lunchtime performance from Wigmore Hall at the beginning of June. Yes, it was only a piano recital but, as the first broadcast since lockdown, it felt like so much more t

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

BBC Sports Relief on 13 March saw runners gather at Media City in Salford in a bid to ‘Beat Beethoven’ including, pictured above from left to right, newsreader Sophie Raworth, members of the BBC Phil, Radio 3’s Katie Derham and comedian Vikki Stone.

Hi Fi News

1 min. di lettura

Harmonia Mundi HMM902420 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit res) The two early Beethoven Symphonies here are each prefaced by short three-movement ones by CPE Bach, which prove far less conventional and extremely adventurous (for which they were disliked by

Hi-Fi Choice

1 min. di lettura

CD Onyx I WAS LUCKY enough to catch Ehnes and Armstrong playing the first four Beethoven violin Sonatas at London’s Wigmore Hall last October, and their playing was every bit as perfect live as their recordings. The two play as one, and seem in compl

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Piano Sonata No. 6 in A, Op. 82; Piano Sonata No. 7 in B flat, Op. 83; Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat, Op. 84 Steven Osborne (piano) Hyperion CDA68298 74:28 mins From first electrifying note-punch to last, with so much poetry and poignancy in betwe

Chat

1 min. di lettura

What do you get if you multiply the opus number of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by the year of its debut performance? Fit these numbers into the grid. One number doesn’t fit. This is the prize answer. 119 134 164 272 282 364 388 463 691 833 1781 4195 5

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Acclaimed as the ‘father of Czech piano music’, Radoslav Kvapil recently made a new recording in the cloister at Prague’s beautiful Brevnovský Abbey. The 86-year-old pianist performed four Mozart piano sonatas – K310, 330, 331 and 545 – in June and h

NPR

1 min. di lettura

Cape Weather celebrates the clean, hard lines of some of Los Angeles' most famous buildings in a video for its breezy "Telephono."

Pianist

1 min. di lettura

First published in 1885, this tender Prelude by German Romantic composer Carl Reinecke appears as the opening piece in his first suite of Five Serenades for the Young Op 183. Each suite comprises three to four pieces. We suggest sounding some of the

BBC Music Magazine

2 min. di lettura

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons BR Klassik 900185 53.48 mins If you want a testimony to what it was we lost when Mariss Jansons died, listen to this disc. In big symphonic works Jansons always had a flair for bringing out both the

BBC Music Magazine

1 min. di lettura

Eloquence 482 8544 (1958/62) 137:27 mins (2 discs) Thurston Dart was behind these recordings, yet the performance style, with violin vibrato in Les Nations, now appears dated. The Pièces de violes fare better, but the sound is restricted. ★★ Danaco