Arias for Anna De Amicis

“[Gheorghiu] certainly has the requisite glittering coloratura technique. In accompanied recitatives, especially those for Giunia...Gheorghiu hints at the fiery temperament for which her predecessor was famed...In sum, a recital of mixed pleasures, longer on virtuoso brilliance than on imagination and involvement.” --Gramophone Magazine, February 2012

 

“The recital is a tour de force, extremely demanding of Teodora Gheorghiu's technique...In the excellent recording, there is no suggestion of shrillness or thinness of tone as she takes on high Cs or a top D. Gheorghiu is more than a soubrette, for in its middle notes her voice has a warmth and a fullness...Her singing on this CD should spread her name, for there is some stunning vocalism.” --International Record Review, January 2012

“It's stylishly presented and excellently accompanied by the Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset; a slight letdown, though, comes with young Gheorghiu hersel. Her appealingly bright, agile soprano lacks polish...For the music itself, the disc is worth exploring, even if its interpretation tends to be undercooked.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2012 ***

Mozart, Schubert & Stravinsky: Piano Duos

“Stravinsky's Rite of Spring prompts several adjectives: brutal, revolutionary, relentless, terrifying...But elegant? Urbane, seductive, sensuous? This astonishing performance is all that and more. Few orchestral accounts equal the colouristic range on offer here...This is keyboard sorcery near the levels reported of Chopin and Liszt.” --BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2014 *****

“the audio experience has its own fire and majesty as these two old friends pitch in and strike sparks...an electrifying live recording.” --The Times, 31st October 2014 ****

“Barenboim's instinct is to sing out, to play to the very back of the hall...[Argerich] acts in a way as a moderating influence on Barenboim's flights, thanks surely in part to her years of experience as a chamber musician...These two-piano bodges always draw from critics the cliche that one misses the orchestral colouring of the work...This shattering performance sweeps away all such notions.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2014

A reunion of the two classical superstars after more than 15 years.

THE concert highlight from Berlin's fully packed Philharmonie on the occasion of the "Festtage der Berliner Staatsoper 2014"

“Stravinsky originally wrote the Rite of Spring in a two-piano version and one of the first performances was given privately by the composer and Claude Debussy. […] Argerich and Barenboim […] surely possessed even better technique than Stravinsky and Debussy and their commitment could hardly be exaggerated”. (The Guardian)

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

“[Lindberg] loves this music, knows it inside-out, and drives his players hard in a thriller of a performance full of high romantic emotions... The coupling is the suite from Swan Lake, and it’s definitely well-enough played to merit yet another copy of this music in your collection.” --MusicWeb International, 4th October 2013

“Lindberg's enjoyable interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Fifth is offset by a stylish and elegant approach to the suite from Swan Lake. The Arctic Philharmonic produces some really refined playing.” --BBC Music Magazine, January 2014 ****

Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony was the first symphony Christian Lindberg ever heard, at the age of ten. Nine years later it was the first he performed as a professional musician – in the brass section of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Having embarked on a successful conducting career, the trombonist-turned-international-soloist has since had the opportunity also to conduct the work, most memorably at the Mariinskij Theatre in St Petersburg, the city where the composer himself gave the first performance in 1888.

With his Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, based in the Norwegian city of Bodø well north of the Arctic Circle, Lindberg has now recorded this symphony, which has become one of the composer's best-loved works. Especially the hauntingly beautiful second movement has gripped audiences, while the work's very clear exposition of the idea of 'ultimate victory through strife' especially during World War II made it a staple in the concert halls. The symphony is here coupled with the equally popular six-movement suite from the Swan Lake, the first of the composer's three great ballets. The suite was compiled and published after the death of the composer, but provides a faithful reflection of the atmosphere, colour, melody and, above all, rhythmic invention that made Tchaikovsky such a master of music for the dance.

Music and Lyrics of the late Middle Ages

This programme focuses on the subject of becoming and fading, love, everyday life and death from the point of view of men in the late middle ages. Following the cycle of the seasons, an atmosphere of happiness and melancholy dominates the compositions which range from the boisterous spring song to the gloomy Geisslerlied.

Not only the music, but also the recitations of contemporary letters, read by Klaus Hemmerle (actor at the National Theatre Stuttgart), reflect the life awareness of people living at the transition to the Renaissance.

Rachmaninov: Preludes & Melodies

“[Bax] has technique to burn but also has the unteachable ability to tug at the heart strings...In the transcriptions, Bax pays particular attention to the intricate weaving of separate voices, and is truly affecting in his own arrangement of Vocalise. This is one of the most intelligent and engrossing Rachmaninov recitals of recent years.” --Classic FM Magazine, September 2011 *****

 

“With this intricate and enterprising recital, the wondrously gifted Alessio Bax fulfils, in his own words, a long-cherished dream...he finds all of the composer's dark-hued melancholy, playing with an impeccable sense of vocal line and with an intense and stylish rubato...if his Op. 23 Preludes lack the classic quality of, say, Lympany or Osborne, his vividness and personality weaven their own intoxicationg spell.” --Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2011

“He writes in the sleeve notes of a long-held desire to record Rachmaninov and [in the Vocalise] you feel he totally understands the composer's unique harmonic world. It's worth acquiring the CD for this track alone.” --The Observer, 31st July 2011

Música de España

Igor Markevitch was a leading conductor, known for brilliant performances, especially of twentieth century music. He was also a composer who attracted some interest in his own day. He was known for his performance of the Russian repertory and twentieth century music. He had a quick temper, reflected in his music in sharp emotional shifts, yet the music was meticulously prepared and nearly always followed the composer's directions with exceptional care. In the late '90s, his recordings came back into demand in re-release, and even his compositions were finding a small but interested market and were praised anew for their originality.

Mozart: Clarinet and Oboe Concertos

"This recording seems to me of a quite special excellence. The sound is beautiful... The soloist are strong musical personalities, as they need to be, not just expert players, and Anthony Pay's performance strikes me as outstanding." --Gramophone Magazine

Best of Grieg

Barbara Bonney · Anne Sofie von Otter · Mikhail Pletnev · Berliner Philharmoniker · Herbert von Karajan · Göteborgs Symfoniker · Neeme Järvi

This generous 2CD compilation of the most popular and beautiful music by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) Here bringing their unique artistry to a diverse selection of masterpieces by Norway's beloved Romantic are such outstanding interpreters as Anne Sofie von Otter, Herbert von Karajan and Neeme Järvi, featured in some of Deutsche Grammophon's most acclaimed recordings.

Emile Waldteufel: Le Bal de Paris

Regarded as the Johann Strauss of Paris, Emile Waldteufel wrote some 300 dances (more than half of them waltzes) for French society balls and private functions. Although his music has been criticized for its lack of melodic and rhythmic variety compared to Strauss, it is generally less ceremonial-feeling than that of Waldteufel's Austrian counterpart, with smooth, singing themes epitomized by his popular Les Patineurs.

Waldteufel was born to a family of musicians; his Bavarian mother was a pianist, and his father was a violinist and dance composer. The family moved from Strasbourg to Paris in Waldteufel's early childhood, and while young Emile studied piano privately, he did not enroll in the Paris Conservatory until he was 16 (Massenet was one of his fellow students). There his emphasis remained on the keyboard, but he dropped out before receiving his diploma. Waldteufel supported himself as a piano tester for the manufacturer Scholtus, while also giving lessons and playing at private soirées.

With his father's orchestra popular in high society, Waldteufel managed in 1865 to land an appointment as court pianist to Napoléon III; he began conducting state balls the following year. He had already written a few dances (he published his first waltz at his own expense in 1859), but he became much more active as a composer from this time, especially after his service in the Franco-Prussian War. Manola, from 1873, was his first international success; he works from later in the 1870s are still recorded with some regularity, and his greatest hit, Les Patineurs (The Skaters), came in 1882. His later pieces are less enduring, but during the last phase of his career Waldteufel performed in London and Berlin besides presiding over the most fashionable and important balls in Paris, notably the presidential balls. He retired in 1899, coincidentally the same year that Johann Strauss II died; Waldteufel lived until 1915.

C.P.E. Bach: Sanguineus and Melanchilicus

“More than half a century separates the earliest and the latest of the works here. The C major Trio Sonata was one of Bach's earliest compositions, written at the age of 17 more or less under his father's supervision, and the D major Quartet was composed in the last year of his life, while he was Music Director in Hamburg. The remaining items date from his time at the court of Frederick the Great. The C minor Sonata is extraordinary, a programmatic work 'portraying a conversation between a Sanguineus and a Melancholicus' who disagree throughout the first two movements, but the former's outlook prevails in the finale. The talented Florilegium players bring out to the full the bewilderingly diverse character of this sonata.

 If the Sonata for unaccompanied flute was written for Frederick, as seems likely, he must have been quite skilled, able to cope with some virtuoso passagework. Ashley Solomon's performance is most persuasive. How far Carl Philipp developed is shown by the late quartet, an attractive composition which, besides promoting the keyboard (fortepiano here) from a mere continuo to prominent solo status, is already in the style of the Viennese classics in form, and links the first two movements. The whole disc is strongly recommended.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Penguin Guide - Rosette Winner
Radio 3 Building a Library - Highly Recommended - September 2005

Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas

A refreshing selection, starting with the A minor Sonata (Kk175) and its evocations of the guitar to remind us that all Scarlatti's maturer years were spent in Spain. And how apt to follow it with the extended C major Pastorale (Kk513), in which the composer returns in imagination to his homeland at Christmas time when (as Howard Ferguson's helpful note tells us) shepherds come down from the hills with their pifferari. Avoiding the over familiar, and always with a smooth progression of keys for the listener who wants to listen to the whole recital straight off, Schiff subsequently proceeds (except for the solitary G major Cantabile, Kk144) with pairs of adjacent works in the same key (major or minor) as if in support of Kirkpatrick's belief that Scarlatti himself conceived them for performance in this way.

Schiff makes no attempt to pretend that his instrument is anything other than a present-day grand piano. Nor does he ever allow you to forget that Scarlatti had a heart—as do some worshippers at the shrine of period style. But his tone and texture are as translucent as his ornamentation is deft. Incidentally, he plays all repeats, in slower tempo sometimes adding little extra embellishments of his own the second time to enrich the text—as in the searchingly chromatic B flat Sonata (Kk544). He is never more confiding than in the E minor Andante (Kk402), even making its companion in E major (Kk403) more thoughtful than some players might in view of its allegro marking. I also much enjoyed his romantically imaginative response to the strongly atmospheric Kk516 in D minor. Always the emphasis is on what lies behind the notes rather than mere keyboard play, though it goes without saying that Schiff's nimble fingers never fail him in more extrovert prestissimo or allegrissimo contexts.

The recording, made in Walthamstow Town Hall, allows you to feel that you are sitting right at the player's side rather than far away in the stalls. But its full, close warmth is achieved without any loss of clarity. All in all a welcome change from the harpsichords which have largely taken over Scarlatti in the CD catalogue up till now.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [3/1989]

Benda: Harpsichord Concertos

Georg Anton Benda (1722-1795), who was attached to the Berlin court initially under Frederick Great, made his mark as an innovative opera composer. However, there’s little if any innovation on display in these harpsichord concertos, which are considerably less developed in style than the contemporaneous work of Mozart or either of the Haydn brothers. Aside from the virtuoso quality of some of the keyboard writing, these concertos display some typical galant mannerisms along with the Baroque tendency to sustain a single mood during a movement, if not throughout the whole piece. But within that constraint there is a lot of variety among these four works.

The most dazzling is the F major concerto, with brisk toccata-like writing that recalls Domenico Scarlatti. The F minor concerto is turbulent, and although I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a “Sturm und Drang” piece, it does have a sense of struggle that presages Beethoven. The B minor concerto has its share of struggle as well, but it relaxes into a slow movement with a lovely melody. The G major concerto is the sunniest and in many ways the simplest of the lot. One idiosyncrasy is Benda’s tendency to end movements abruptly, which happens at one point or another in nearly all these works.

The performances are delightful. The harpsichord and the string orchestra are well balanced, picked up fairly closely but with a nice sense of hall ambience in the surround program. The 1992 harpsichord is bright without being strident, assertive without being harsh. CPO’s prominent pick-up conveys some of the sounds of its mechanism, enough to add a percussion effect in vigorous moments. Sabine Bauer’s solo work is alert, brisk, and playful, reveling in the music’s more challenging passages. La Stagione Frankfurt comprises only 13 players but never sounds stressed or scrawny. The music itself won’t make any “Essential Classics” lists, but the disc is a pleasurable listen all the way through.

- See more at: http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-12247/#sthash.ZhIIbj3g.dpuf

Schumann: Piano Music

". . . this is one of today's master pianists, and while his effortless virtuosity cannot fail to draw attention, it is used above all to realise a vision of the music which is unconventional but genuine. The "Etudes symphoniques" are strong and massive, and the principal tune of the "Arabesque" is caressed so sweetly that the notes flit by like shadows . . . 'fantastical throughout'." --BBC Music Magazine, January 2005

"Among the younger generation of concert pianists, few have a more vivid imagination than Mikhail Pletnev. The Russian artist also has the capacity to connect the contrasting moods of Schumann's "Etudes symphoniques" to create a work of overwhelming emotional depth. His playing here and in the impassioned Fantaisie is never routine, always rich in expression and subtle in shading. Pletnev's inspired music is complemented by Deutsche Grammophon's warm recorded sound." --Music Week (London), May 2004

"Anyone lucky enough to have heard the recital by Mikhail Pletnev that opened Lincoln Center's Great Performers series last fall knows he is the keyboard's reigning mystic. His new album, "Pletnev Plays Schumann," reveals him at his brooding best." --Daily News (New York), 27. March 2005

Busoni: Clarinet Chamber Music

The son of an Italian musician father and a German pianist mother, Ferruccio Busoni represented a remarkable synthesis of two differing attitudes to music at this time, while winning an outstanding reputation as a piano virtuoso. Busoni composed operas, including Turandot and Doktor Faust, a series of orchestral works, including a Piano Concerto that also uses a male chorus in the finale, and various pieces of chamber music. 

Concert Favorites

Sir Adrian Boult’s advocacy of English music perhaps overshadowed his protean abilities to secure stylish performances in a much wider range of repertoire. The English conductorwas born on April 8th, 1889 in Chester and died on February 22nd, 1983 in London.

Prokofiev & Ravel: Piano Concertos

“She is a wholly exceptional artist, the possessor of a fabulous technique, and her musical understanding is a very rare quality...Her playing of the Ravel Concerto is breathtaking...I am sure that this is just what Ravel wanted - it really crackles with electricity, her passagework as light and as brilliant as quicksilver...These concertos are very different works, but this young pianist has the measure of them both - in spades.” --International Record Review, April 2011

Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor was written in 1913 and dedicated to a friend of the composer who had recently committed suicide. It was revised in 1923, and this version remains one of the most technically challenging works in the standard repertoire. Following a highly successful tour of America as piano soloist, Maurice Ravel finished his Piano Concerto in G Major in 1931. The concerto is heavily influenced by jazz, which at the time was highly popular in Paris as well as the USA.

“The Prokofiev concerto can sound flashy and empty, but Vinnitskaya's more fantastical and demented view reveals its hidden depths. She rips through the fiercely tough first-movement cadenza like a force of nature...Exemplary, high-wire Prokofiev.” --Classic FM Magazine, April 2011 ****

“Anna Vinnitskaya has a dry, clear sound which I think [Prokofiev] would rather have admired...Gilbert Varga's direction is precise and detailed...I certainly want to hear more from this phenomenally equipped pianist.” --BBC Music Magazine, Febuary 2011 ****

“The opening whiplash of Ravel's "Piano Concerto in G major" portends the virtuosic fireworks to follow...But the concerto's real achievement lies in the final two movements, whose fantastical twists grow more unsettling by the minute.” --The Independent, 28th January 2011 ***

Ballet For A Lonely Violinist

“Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe, an impressive well matched husband-and-wife team, give a powerful account of the 1968 Shostakovich Sonata. This performance rises to its demands - extremes of tone and virtuoso intensity - the central Allegretto projecting an atmosphere of glittering ferocity. The Jazz Suite No 1 of 1934... takes us back to a very different Shostakovich: the wit may be sardonic but the mood remains light-hearted and upbeat. The Sonata, Auerbach's response to the events of 9/11, is on a far grander scale, with big, even melodramatic gestures. It's a well made piece, imaginatively cast for the two instruments and with some beautiful, inspiring moments...” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“…the centre of gravity of this recital is a magnificently eloquent and understanding performance of Shostakovich's Violin Sonata, which as the years pass comes to seem one of the greatest of his late works. …Gluzman and Yoffe infuse the music with an expressive glow that transcends its innate austerity.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 *****

Bach, J S: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6 BWV1046-1051 (complete)

“The excitement is palpable, reflected in smiling glances between the players, bodies swaying through musical suspensions, a sense of uninhibited joy… The playing is stylish throughout: ornaments are apt, all the more telling for their restraint; trills are paced to match mood, languid in slow movements, sparkling in allegros.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2009

Gramophone Awards 2011 Shortlisted - Baroque Instrumental

“Here Claudio Abbado is gambolling among the Brandenburg Concertos in this straightforward TV-style concert film, recorded in the classic 19th-century opera house at Reggio Emilia during an Italian tour in spring 2007. The orchestra is at first glance a curious gathering, mixing 'Baroque' players such as violinist Giuliano Carmignola and harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone with 'modern' names such as trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and 'un-Baroque' recorder-player Michala Petri. Furthermore, a look round the instruments reveals mostly modern models, some hybrids (for instance Jacques Zoon's wooden, multi-keyed flute) and a sprinkling of Baroque bows. Mind you, most younger players these days are well versed in Baroque style whatever they play on, and the tenor of these performances is firmly consistent with current ideas of what Baroque music ought to sound like.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This new recording of the Brandenburg Concertos exhibits all the virtues that one associates with Claudio Abbado: clarity, lucidity, balance, a sense of proportion, and, above all, an indefinable yet audible 'oneness' with the music. Dionysus is present in these performances, but he subsumed within their underlying Apollonian quality.” --International Record Review, April 2011
 

“Does the world need another set of Brandenburgs? Yes, when they are as freshly minted and as adventurously sonorous as this marvellous set...Abbado leads supple, imaginative readings; a great deal of the strong character is provided by his leader, violinist Giuliano Carmignola, and there is a brilliant harpsichord solo from Ottavio Dantone in the fifth concerto.” --The Observer, 13th March 2011

“the audio-only experience draws out a super-contented gestural world which had only intermittently communicated itself before...The hallmark of this set is the ambition to create lithe, beautiful and elegant statements in which witty, sophisticated dialogues are carried off within a heady textural landscape...The Fifth spins like a happy top...These are life-affirming live performances...which glide effortlessly on to the high table.” --Gramophone Magazine, June 2011

“Conducting J. S. Bach isn’t Abbado’s usual activity. But he buckles to it with joy, humanity and an Italianate slant that turns these cornerstone suites into outpourings of instrumental song. The players are the all-star Orchestra Mozart, with Giuliano Carmignola the demon lead fiddler, caught live in 2007.” --The Times, 12th March 2011 ****

Cambini: Sei Trii concertanti Op. 26

It is quite likely that Giuseppe Cambini influenced the Parisian milieu with his typically Italian originality. He is regarded as a pre-Romantic composer, not only because he anticipated the era of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin, but above all because of his search for expression. This is the “Italian-style Romanticism” that Boccherini had forestalled in his isolation at the Spanish court.

Cambini wrote 110 quintets, 149 string quartets, and a varied quantity of other works now generally neglected in spite of their contemporary popularity.

Britten: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra

“Steven Osborne and Ilan Volkov launch into the Piano Concerto's opening 'Toccata' at a headlong pace… For all the remarkable velocity, the playing has weight and incisiveness too, and Osborne's way with the two central movements is equally sure. Diversions... a beautifully devised single-movement set of variations presents Britten's inventiveness at its most elegant. Osborne and the orchestra do this neglected jewel excellent justice.” --BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

Gramophone Awards 2009 Best of Category - Concerto

“…throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“Osborne exults in Britten’s dazzlingly pianistic writing, and we get to hear the original 1938 version of the concerto’s third movement, a dazzlingly beautiful Recitative and Aria … a thrilling disc” --Sunday Times

“Commissioned as a 24-year-old to compose and perform a piano concerto for the 1938 Proms, Britten played safe. None of the edginess he might have filched from Bartók or Stravinsky, no Bergian angst: instead, the models are Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Ravel, and in these terms he doesn't miss a trick, at least before the finale's rather perfunctory final gallop. Most of the piece takes a genuinely fresh look at pianistic conventions, and Steven Osborne yields nothing to the great Sviatoslav Richter in the punchiness and fine-tuned filigree of his playing. No skating over the surface here, with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish SO adept at teasing out the music's symphonic subtext, as well as its piquant orchestral effects.

Britten replaced the original slow movement in 1945, possibly because it spent too much time in waltz-like regions already visited in the second movement. This disc adds it anyway, alongside two other scores for piano and orchestra.
Young Apollo (1939) was not heard for half a century after its premiere, perhaps discarded by Britten because its fanfare-like material was more effectively deployed in Les illuminations (also 1939). It's a quirky piece, difficult to programme, a euphorically unguarded response to Keats's vision of male beauty in Hyperion.

Diversions is on a much grander scale, its style making even clearer those debts to Mahler which Britten had allowed to surface now and again in the concerto. The multifarious challenges to the single-handed soloist create moments of strong emotional depth and, as throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon. The recordings, made in Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall, have ample depth of sonority and vividness of colour.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Piazzolla: Adios Nonino

The brilliant Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla, who revolutionised the traditional tango through his use of jazz elements, counterpoint, extended harmonies and dissonance, has constantly appealed to wide audiences, as well as fascinating classical musicians. Here Astoria (string quintet, piano, accordion), led by Christophe Delporte, gives a delightfully lively rendering, capturing the rhythm and all the lyricism and charm of Piazzolla’s tango nuevo.

Radolt: Viennese Lute Concertos

Wenzel Ludwig Edler von Radolt’s collection of lute music entitled ”To my most true and confiding friend”, inclined both to the merry and to the sad humors, herewith in the company of other faithful vassals of our innermost sensibility’ was printed in 1701 in Vienna by J(oh)ann Michael Nestler and bears a dedication to the then‚ Roman King’ Josef I. Radolt was of Austro-Italian aristocratic descent. He was born and died in Vienna. According to his own account, he spent his life ”so allured by the beguiling countenance of most pleasurable music, as to dedicate the course of my life to her“. 

The ‘Most true and confiding friend’ is the only work of Radolt that survives today. Unusual in the part books are Radolt’s meticulous fingerings for the right hand that give us a precise insight into the style of lute playing current in the imperial city of the period. This extensive collection of 12 so-called ‘Concerti’ contains much that is remarkable about the Viennese Lute Concerto, a popular genre of the day comprising violins, lute and bass. The variety of scoring is striking, from four-part string writing with three obligato lutes of various sizes, to the relatively intimate combination of single violin, obligato viola da gamba (viol), lute and bass. In another concerto the composer suggests the addition of a wind instrument.

Veracini: Sonatas

“Veracini was part of a European constellation of virtuoso violinist composers which included Vivaldi, Leclair, Locatelli and Pisendel during the first half of the 18th century. John Holloway plays with all his customary understanding of Baroque style and is sympathetically underpinned by his excellent continuo partners.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

 Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - April 2006

“John Holloway's… playing is as intelligent and free-flowingly musical as ever, with each movement thoughtfully characterised, and he is backed by a first-rate continuo team who really come into their own in the almost orchestrally rich diversity of textures in the Op 2 sonata (the muted fiddle, pizzicato cello and lute-stopped harpsichord of the Andante moderato are a delight). A Baroque-violin must.” --Gramophone Magazine, April 2006

Albinoni: Double Oboe Concertos & String Concertos Volume 1

"...Simon Standage’s survey of oboe and double-oboe concertos on Chandos is top choice in this repertoire. Anthony Robson plays all eight solo concertos from Op 7 and 9 using a period oboe. His tone is most appealing and his phrasing and musicianship are second to none. Simon Standage provides alert accompaniments, also using original instruments, and creates bright, athletic string timbres. Catherine Latham joins him to complete the Collegium Musicum 90 sets of Op 7 & 9, including the works from strings. The artistic results are very lively and refreshing." --The Penguin Guide - 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings 2011-12

A Second Of Silence

The Knights are an orchestra of friends from a broad spectrum of the New York music world who cultivate collaborative music-making and creatively engage audiences in the shared joy of musical performance. This is the Knights second album for Ancalagon Records, and follows their 2011 Juno Award-winning recording of Mozart with Scott & Lara St. John. The album features music of Schubert, Satie, Glass, and Feldman, composers who either influenced or were influenced by the great playwright Samuel Beckett.

"The future of classical music in America." --Los Angeles Times

The starting point for this intriguing programme from young US ensemble The Knights is Morton Feldman's suggestion that part of the magic of Schubert is "that kind of hovering, as if you're in a register you've never heard".

Accordingly, The Knights have sought to intersperse works by Schubert amongst subsequent pieces reflecting that hovering characteristic, from Debussy's arrangements of two of Satie's "Gymnopédies" to Philip Glass's four-part "Company". It's a daring conceit which works beautifully, particularly the section which elides between Satie's "Gymnopédie II", Schubert's 3rd and Feldman's "Madame Press Died Last Week At Ninety", a sequence which seems to erase time within a single fluid flourish.