tue 08/07/2025

Classical CDs

Classical CDs Weekly: Brian Elias, Stravinsky, Palaeolithic Bone Flutes

Brian Elias: Electra Mourns Psappha/Nicholas Kok, Britten Sinfonia/Clark Rundell (NMC)Bombay-born British composer Brian Elias has been active since the 1960s. A slow and fastidious worker, his 1992 score for the Royal Ballet’s The Judas Tree is...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Kleiberg, Legrand, Aida Garifullina

 Ståle Kleiberg: Mass for Modern Man Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Choir/Eivind Gulberg Jensen (2L)There's a reference in the sleeve notes to Norwegian composer Ståle Kleiberg’s use of “a highly distinctive form of extended tonality.”...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Joubert, Mahler, Simon Thacker & Justyna Jablonska

John Joubert: Jane Eyre April Frederick, David Stout, English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Somm)This is the second Brontë opera to have come my way in the past year; Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights is now joined by this involving adaptation...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Eisler, Janáček, Ravel

Eisler: Hangmen Also Die and other film scores Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Johannes Kalitzke (Capriccio)Holed up in Los Angeles, Schoenberg never wrote a Hollywood film score. Unlike his pupil and fellow exile Hanns Eisler, whose music for...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Gražyna Bacewicz, Stravinsky, Nathan Williamson

 Gražyna Bacewicz: Chamber Music Diana Ambache and friends (Ambache Recordings)This is an easy disc to love. Gražyna Bacewicz’s music is consistently good, often exceptionally so, and it's gratifying that new recordings on Hyperion and Chandos...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Laurence Crane, Martinů, Prokofiev

Laurence Crane: 6 Trios, 2 Solos and 1 Quintet The Ives Ensemble (RTF Classical)It's a rare pleasure to discover a contemporary composer whose work speaks with such effortless clarity. You'll know within a few seconds of Laurence Crane’s Trio for...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Harald Genzmer, Mendelssohn, Nicholas Phan

Harald Genzmer: Music for Trautonium Peter Pichler (mixture trautonium) (Paladino Music)The trautonium is described here as “the instrument of a lone man”. In this case, one Oskar Sala, who spent his long musical life associated with this...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Chopin, Glass, Alec Frank-Gemmill

 Chopin: Mazurkas Ivana Gavric (Edition Classics)Ivana Gavric suggests that Chopin’s Mazurkas are “short, poignant, diary entries”, and her performances remind us how the greatest composers are never constrained when writing miniatures. As with...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Haydn, Vaughan Williams, Johannes Pramsohler

Haydn: Sonatas and Variations Leon McCawley (piano) (Somm)Haydn's keyboard music needs this sort of persuasive advocacy. Four sonatas and a set of variations is a lot to pack in to a single disc, but the composer’s inability to waffle on is his...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Bruckner, Poulenc

Brahms: Serenades 1 & 2 Gävle Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martín (Ondine)You know within seconds that this release is going to be good: droning string fifths introducing the catchiest of horn solos, the tune echoed in some style by a winningly...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Alnæs, Granados, Kelly, Mompou

Eyvind Alnæs: Piano Concerto & Symphony Håvard Gimse (piano), Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Eivind Aadland (Lawo Classics)Eyvind Alnæs’s C Minor Symphony, written in 1897 after his return to Norway from studying in Leipzig, hints at great things,...

Read more...

Classical CDs Weekly: Bach, Sibelius, Temple University Wind Symphony

Bach: Solo Sonatas and Partitas Jeroen de Groot (JDG Records)Dutch violinist Jeroen de Groot recalls watching footage of Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations as a teenager, amazed by the brazen idiosyncrasies of Gould's pianism (“That...

Read more...
Subscribe to Classical CDs