The March 2020 Gramophone issue reviews the Dante Quartet’s Stanford: String Quartets, Volume Three recording with a rave for the whole set: “Hats off, folks: the completion of the first full recorded cycle of Stanford’s string quartets deserves a moment of acknowledgment. … the more you listen to this music, the more distinctively Stanford’s own […]
The Strad Magazine Reviews Janet Sung, Simon Callaghan, Britten Sinfonia, and Jac van Steen’s recording, The Deeper the Blue…, in the February 2020 issue: “this enterprising programme focuses intentionally on music more celebrated (rightly or wrongly) for its stylistic flavours and colours than for its architectural rigour.… Indeed, it is Janet Sung’s deft ability to […]
Gramophone Magazine names Kathleen Ferrier In New York the February 2020 Reissue/Archive Editor’s Choice! “A treasure, to be sure. Four years before Bruno Walter’s celebrated, indeed classic Vienna recording (1952) with Kathleen Ferrier, the man who conducted the world premiere of Mahler’s pantheistic symphony with voices takes his newest discovery from the Edinburgh Festival to […]
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ BBC Magazine Review “Janet Sung shines in the lyrical episodes of Vaughan Williams’s Violin Concerto, most especially in the beautiful Adagio – Tranquillo central movement. … Kenneth Hesketh’s richly colourful and evocative orchestral soundscapes… complement Sung’s by turns gleaming harmonics, bird-like song and yearning lyricism. … Sung and the Britten Sinfonia play Ravel’s lush […]
TWO SOMM releases have been named MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year! We also have to share this wonderful quote from critic Nick Barnard: “I am glad to be able to include a disc from SOMM again this year – their recordings, repertoire and performances are always a delight.” “Mark Bebbington has an astonishingly wide […]
“A treat for fans of English music: two piano concertos by two ladies, Dora Bright (1862-1951) and Ruth Gipps (1921-1999). Bright’s writing in the concerto is highly Romantic, gesturing towards Schumann and Brahms, but the material is undeniably English. … [Samantha] Ward is a fine player… finding just the right flow for the appealing melodies. […]
“Mr Karpeyev has chosen a fine programme of works demonstrating great variety of style and tempo, some energetic from the start, others introspective, others showing brilliant scalar passages, some with folk-song character, others with a simple melody above a homophonic accompaniment. An unexpected delight on this disc is Roy Douglas’s piano-solo arrangement of the ‘Popular Song’ […]
“This double CD is the World Première recording of the last of Charles Villiers Stanford’s nine operas. It contains a narrative element strikingly similar to Puccini’s Turandot. … With the attractive tonal colours of Stanford’s music, in particular his orchestral and choral writing, it provides a fascinating and enjoyable experience. … Performances are excellent, especially […]
“The main event on this intelligently programmed disc is Bax’s Sonata in E-flat minor (1921). The white-hot intensity in the music may be a response to the loss of life in the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916, and Bebbington catches the music’s anger and grief superbly in playing of enourmous range and power. First-rate sound […]
A second “sparkling” review for Leon McCawley and his Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Volume Two; this time in International Piano Magazine: “There is an abundance of joy in McCawley’s sparkling acciaccaturas of the D major Sonata (No 59), maxilmally contrasted with the central Largo e sostenuto, a dignified post-Baroque sarabande. He is expert at finding underlying […]