Latest News: Classical, Recording of the Week
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Recording of the Week,
Sublime Schubert from Paul Lewis 31st October 2011
Following his ten-year immersion in Beethoven and critically-acclaimed recordings of Schubert’s three great song-cycles with tenor Mark Padmore, the British pianist brings unrivalled poise and intimacy to the Piano Sonatas D840, 850 and 894 and the Impromptus D899.
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Recording of the Week,
Franz Liszt 24th October 2011
Chris rounds up some of the many releases issued to commemorate the bicentenary of the Hungarian composer’s birth this week, including a song-recital from Diana Damrau and Helmut Deutsch, the Piano Concertos from Stephen Hough and the Bergen Philharmonic, and selected piano works from Lise de la Salle.
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Recording of the Week,
The Decca Sound 17th October 2011
A beautifully-documented 50-CD box charts the extraordinary history of the record-label, spanning six decades and featuring artists including Herbert von Karajan, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, András Schiff, Emma Kirkby, and Alicia de Larrocha.
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Recording of the Week,
Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts from Paul McCreesh 3rd October 2011
With a massed choir of English and Polish singers and an orchestra which deploys as many authentic nineteenth-century instruments as possible, McCreesh plays up not only the sound and fury of Berlioz’s super-sized Requiem but also the astonishing range of textures which the young composer summons.
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Recording of the Week,
Handel – Agrippina & Germanico 26th September 2011
Bulgarian soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska is the scheming anti-heroine on René Jacobs’s terrific new recording of Agrippina, Max Cencic stars in Gluck’s Ezio and Vivaldi’s Farnace, and Sara Mingardo takes the title-role in the serenata Germanico, rediscovered in Florence in 2007.
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Recording of the Week,
Wagner’s Flying Dutchman starts PentaTone’s 10th anniversary celebrations 19th September 2011
The first in a projected cycle of Wagner’s ten major operas from Marek Janowski and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin stars Albert Dohmen in commanding form as the accursed sailor looking for love, Matti Salminen as a first-rate Daland, and Ricarda Merbeth as a stentorian Senta.
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Recording of the Week,
Schubert's Schwanengesang from Padmore and Lewis 12th September 2011
Padmore’s bright, light tenor is often hauntingly beautiful in Schubert’s ‘swan-song’, combining with Lewis’s imaginative and insightful playing in a performance of great musical integrity which is a worthy successor to their superb Winterreise and Schöne Müllerin.
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Recording of the Week,
Gergiev and the LSO conclude their Mahler cycle 5th September 2011
The Russian conductor’s painstaking attention to tiny issues of orchestral balance and uncharacteristic willingness to allow the music breathing-space make for a tremendously moving Ninth Symphony.
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Recording of the Week,
BIS - Maxim Rysanov, Sibelius and a special offer 29th August 2011
The Ukrainian viola-player persuasively appropriates works for cello by Tchaikovsky and Schubert, Okko Kamu conducts Sibelius’s suites from The Tempest, Tapiola and The Bard, and BIS’s mighty Sibelius Edition crosses the finishing-line with a collection of orchestral fragments and works with organ.
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Recording of the Week,
Sublime Ravel from Ibragimova and Tiberghien 22nd August 2011
Following their outstanding series of Beethoven sonatas from the Wigmore Hall, the Russian violinist and French pianist offer utterly absorbing accounts of Ravel’s complete works for violin and piano, plus Guillaume Lekeu’s Violin Sonata, composed at around the same time as Ravel’s first essay in the genre.
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Recording of the Week,
Gustavo Dudamel 15th August 2011
The young Venezuelan conductor proves himself to be ‘a great musician with sound musical instincts ‘ in live recordings of Bruckner, Sibelius and Nielsen with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.
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Recording of the Week,
Brahms/Schoenberg from Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker 8th August 2011
Rattle conducts Schoenberg’s orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor, plus the Chamber Symphony No. 1 and Accompanying Music to a Cinematographic Scene.
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Recording of the Week,
Lucia from the Mariinsky 1st August 2011
Natalie Dessay brings fragility and neurosis to the title-role, contrasting powerfully with Gergiev’s red-blooded Donizetti à la Verdi, Piotr Beczała’s ardent, ringing Edgardo and Vladislav Sulimsky’s black-voiced Enrico.
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Recording of the Week,
Benjamin Grosvenor 18th July 2011
Fresh from his BBC Proms triumph last week, the eighteen-year-old British pianist makes a hugely impressive debut on Decca with a programme which includes Ravel’s formidable Gaspard de la Nuit and music by Chopin and Liszt.
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Recording of the Week,
Rossini’s William Tell 11th July 2011
Gerald Finley is the sharp-shooting Swiss hero on Antonio Pappano’s absorbing account of Rossini’s opera, with John Osborn sounding effortless in the taxing high role of Arnaud, and Malin Byström an expressive Mathilde.
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Recording of the Week,
Bach Motets from Herreweghe 4th July 2011
The Belgian Bach scholar and conductor and Collegium Vocale Gent return to works which they first recorded back in 1981, bringing crystal-clear textures, impeccable intonation and excellent ensemble to the six motets.
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Recording of the Week,
Sublime Vivaldi from Nathalie Stutzmann 27th June 2011
The French contralto sings and conducts her chamber ensemble Orfeo 55 (formed two years ago) with passion and panache in a celebration of the ‘Red Priest’’s roles for female characters – many of them originally portrayed by castrati.
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Recording of the Week,
Beethoven’s Fidelio from Abbado and Kaufmann 20th June 2011
The German tenor is mesmerising from his very first note, whilst Nina Stemme is scarcely less compelling as his heroic wife Leonore in this exhilarating live concert recording from last year’s Lucerne Festival.
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Recording of the Week,
Byrd’s Complete Consort Music 13th June 2011
The Gramophone Award-winning viol consort Phantasm brings sweetness and sensuality to the English composer’s fantasias, In Nomines and pavans and galliards on Linn Records.
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Recording of the Week,
Vaughan Williams’s The Garden of Proserpine 6th June 2011
Paul Daniel and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra make a splendid case for Vaughan Williams’s early setting of poetry by Algernon Charles Swinburne for solo soprano, chorus and orchestra, coupled with In the Fen Country.
