BBC Music Magazine Choices,
BBC Music Magazine - April 2017 Choices
Andrew Davis's magnificent account of Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony on Chandos takes the BBC Music Magazine palm this month (regular readers may remember how much it impressed our own David Smith a few weeks ago!).
Another recent Presto favourite (one of our Top 10 Discs of 2016, in fact!) also receives a mention in despatches - Lisa Batiashvili's luminous accounts of the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky violin concertos with Daniel Barenboim on Deutsche Grammophon. (You can read Katherine's exclusive interview with Lisa about the disc here).
Recording of the Month
'Davis's journey through the sequence is quite briskly paced, but never in a way that's perfunctory. He also gets a superlative response from the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Leader Alexander Kagan's violin-playing is a masterclass in emotionally charged rapture..In both works the recorded orchestral sound is gorgeously warm, detailed, and naturally balanced.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Choice
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream - incidental music
London Symphony Orchestra & The Monteverdi Choir, Sir John Eliot Gardiner
'Gardiner delivers A Midsummer Night's Dream with exemplary brio and polish...The interplay between spoken and instrumental sections is smoothly engineered and the young actors keep things moving...But it's Mendelssohn's lyricism that wins out overall.'
Available Formats: SACD + Blu-ray, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto Choice
Tchaikovsky & Sibelius Violin Concertos
Lisa Batiashvili (violin), Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim
'It's a performance [of the Tchaikovsky] that eschews hyperbole, focusing instead on poetic intimacy...This remarkable partnership of musical minds also excels in the Sibelius, the glacial opening passage in the first movement being especially hypnotic.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera Choice
'This very fine showcase launch shows where she's peerless: as a bright, light lyric soprano of impassioned musicality in the Tchaikovsky numbers and above all Rachmaninov's 'Vocalise', matchlessly phrased.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Choral Choice
'Ireland's 'Ex ore innocentium' brings the boy choristers into the spotlight, and they grasp their moment with a confident display of crystalline tonal quality, an informed awareness of textual meaning, and the ability to vary dynamics convincingly.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chamber Choice
'Sometimes it's like listening to two people excitedly bouncing ideas off each other; at others it's like a love duet, or even the kind of intense parting conversation in which every word counts to an almost painful degree...few [versions] get so close to the complex truth of this music.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental Choice
Leighton: Complete Organ Works
Stephen Farr (organ), with John Butt (organ), Nicky Spence (tenor), Chloe Hanslip (violin)
'Farr's Leighton odyssey is an ear-opener...[Leighton's] is a gritty compositional style, supremely aware of the direction of travel...Most of all, it's down to Farr's unswerving authority, scrupulous phrasing and rhythmic flair - at once alert, incisive yet fluid...A revelation.'
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
