“This heartening recording features works for piano and orchestra by two long-neglected British composers… [Bright’s] piano writing is brilliant and subtle… the gem of the work is the haunting slow movement, its striking harmonies unfolding over a pedal-point fifth. … The pianist Samantha Ward sparkles and sings, bringing the work a helpful clarity and lightness […]
BBC Music Magazine‘s November 2019 issue features a five-star review for Alexander Karpeyev’s Composers at the Savile Club recording: “What do Elgar, Walton, Parry, Virgil Thomson, and Arnold have in common? Answer: they were all members of the Savile Club… Stylistically it ranges widely, from the sweepingly Brahmsian Prelude of Parry’s Hands Across the Centuries […]
Gramophone Magazine’s October 2019 issue profiles the Charles Villiers Stanford Musical Revival and features SOMM’s recent and upcoming recordings of his string quartets with the Dante Quartet and the upcoming release of Stanford’s opera “The Travelling Companion”. “The recording of The Travelling Companion gives us a unique opportunity to hear a side of Stanford’s musical […]
“It’s an attractive idea: a programme of chamber music by four mutual friends, Robert and Clara Schumann and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Two D minor piano trios anchor the programme – by Fanny and Robert – while salon pieces by Felix and Clara fill out the running time very appealingly, as well as providing brief […]
Gramophone‘s Richard Bratby features his top recordings of Beethoven’s Chamber Music in the September 2019 “Gramophone Collector” column and Krysia Osostowicz and Daniel Tong‘s Beethoven Plus, Vol. 2 is part of his collection: “In their ‘Beethoven Plus’ series on SOMM, violinist Krysia Osostowicz and pianist Daniel Tong have found another [way of renewing Beethoven] — […]
“The eclecticism and stylistic contrasts characterising the works on Nathan Williamson’s newest release reveal this pianist’s knack for conceiving intelligent and freshly minted playlists of relatively unfamiliar yet worthy repertoire. Indeed, the contents and running order would make for a most satisfying and stimulating recital programme, with or without intermission. … In all, a stimulating […]
“[Peter Donohoe] and SOMM’s recording team return to the Birmingham Conservatoire and to a Bechstein piano that sounds ideal in this music — beatuifully sonorous… Donohoe takes each work at face value, keeping shifts of tempo and impromptu ornamentation to a minimum but still playing with the sensitivity that was palpable in Vol. 1. … […]
“It’s an elegant idea, and it has paid off. … aside from being very winning in its own right, Kurt Schwertsik’s Unterwegs nach Heiligenstadt prepared the way for Op. 30 No. 1 so effectively that I genuinely found myself listening to the Beethoven with new ears. Matthew Taylor’s Tarantella Furiosa emerges compellingly… David Matthews’s Sonatina… […]
“For a few years in the 1840s, the Schumanns and Mendelssohns crossed paths in Leipzig. Both lived in the city only a short walk from each other. it’s easy to imagine them playing their new pieces to each other after dinner, discussing works-in-progress, criticising a first draft. That feeling of a shared musical culture comes […]
“It’s not just the sparkle she brings to Massenet’s somewhat timeworn drawing-room songs — though that alone is worth the price of admission — it’s the slightly-knowing false-innocence that she injects into numbers like Passionément and Souhait. Sally sings like someone who knows the meaning of life and the value of each moment. The mezzo […]