The Very Best Of Mozart

Naxos’s two-disc collection, The Very Best of Mozart, includes a generous selection of music by the prolific eighteenth century Austrian composer. The only works that are presented complete are the pieces in a single movement, and the album is made up mostly of individual movements from larger works. The set includes a variety of pieces from the many genres of which Mozart was a master, including symphony, opera, church music, serenades, orchestral music, keyboard music, and chamber music. 

The tracks are taken from CDs from Naxos’ archives. Most of the performances are serviceable and the sound quality is adequate. The program notes don’t list the performers but instead point the listener to Naxos’ website for full information about each track. --Allmusic.com, December 2010

Arias for Guadagni

GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER 2012

“Through his effortless line, countertenor Iestyn Davies revivifies Guadagni's Orphic powers...Whether drawing out sustained notes or knitting together filigreed coloratura, he is a paragon of gallant taste: poised, cool, elegant...Jonathan Cohen and his ensemble Arcangelo capture the rapid, unexpected twists of the younger Bach's radical imagination...this [is] a refreshingly ambitious and superbly realised recording.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2012 *****

British countertenor Iestyn Davies is one of the fastest rising stars on the concert and opera circuit. Following his highly acclaimed recording of Porpora cantatas, he returns for a second solo album with Hyperion, a selection of arias written for Gaetano Guadagni. Italian-born Guadagni was the first ‘modern’ castrato, famed all over Europe for the lyric purity of his voice and his powerful, naturalistic acting style.

Not only did he enjoy a close artistic relationship with Handel, who nurtured Guadagni’s voice to fit the alto roles in his English oratorios, but he effectively created the role of Orpheus in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, an opera he thoroughly made his own. Here, Iestyn Davies is joined again by the renowned period-instrument band Arcangelo, directed by Jonathan Cohen.

Bainton: Orchestral Works

“The BBC Philharmonic under the sympathetic baton of Paul Daniel seem to enjoy the experience, and the engineering is as ripe as accommodating as we have come to expect from Chandos.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2008

“Delius with a splash of Eric Coates. Bainton is worth knowing, and is strongly espoused in these premiere recordings by Paul Daniel and the excellent BBC Philharmonic.” --BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“All four works were composed prior to Bainton's permanent move to Australia in 1934, by far the most ambitious being the Concerto fantasia for piano and orchestra which won Bainton his second Carnegie Award. It is cast in four movements, launched by a solo cadenza destined to reappear at salient points throughout the work's half-hour course. Margaret Fingerhut's limpid pianism proves tailor-made for such a gorgeously lyrical, tenderly poetic and subtly integrated offering, which bids farewell in the sunset glow of a somewhat Baxian epilogue.

Bainton himself was the soloist for the 1921 world premiere of the Concerto fantasia in Bournemouth, where it shared a programme with the extremely fetching Three Pieces for Orchestra (1916-20). These grew out of incidental music for two Shakespeare productions in Ruhleben Camp near Berlin, where Bainton was held during the First World War, and are followed here by another most attractive triptych, the Pavane,Idyll and Bacchanal that Bainton wrote in 1924 for amateur groups but which requires a high level of technical expertise.

Unheard for the best part of a century, the four-movement suite The Golden River (1908, but revised four years later) derives its inspiration from a short story by John Ruskin and packs plenty of touching and colourful invention into its 16-minute span.

The BBC Philharmonic under the sympathetic baton of Paul Daniel seem to enjoy the experience. Excellent sound.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Debussy: Nocturnes; Ravel: Daphnis Et Chloe Suite No. 2, Pavane; Scriabin

It seems that at some point DG made some of its best recordings with the Boston Symphony and a wide variety of guest conductors: Abbado, Tilson Thomas, Steinberg, Bernstein, and Jochum. The performances collected here are wonderful. The BSO has always been acclaimed in French repertoire, and at this point in his career Abbado had not yet turned into the fussy micromanager that he is now (at least most of the time). And Scriabin also is French, to the extent that he’s anything at all.

This version of the Nocturnes is certainly the best by this orchestra, and one of the best by anyone. Consider the opening of Fêtes: perfect tempo, ideal transparency of texture, and bright trumpets that provide power without stridency (sound clip). These qualities grace the two Ravel items equally, and work equally well. The Daphnis Second Suite, alternately poetic and exciting, with its chorus parts intact, also ranks with the best on disc.

As for the Poem of Ecstasy, a work you either love or hate, it proceeds in a seamless arch of opulent excess, from mysterious opening to the concluding blast of sound. DG’s remastered sonics are very good–not state of the art for today, perhaps a touch dry, but a slightly lean sonority suits the music well, even the Scriabin (especially if you have a low tolerance for schmaltz). A great collection. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Schubert: Piano Sonatas No 16 & 21

“her performances are characteristically thoughtful – too much so for my liking. Pires’s approach is more high Romantic than late Classical, constantly oscillating between loud and soft, fast and slow, with the sort of artful phrasing that, instead of suggesting the music’s architectural scale and emotional anguish, ends up limiting them. She is at her most persuasive in the central movements of D845 and the Scherzo of D960” --Financial Times, 9th February 2013 ***

“Pires has recorded Schubert's B flat major Sonata D960 before, as part of a series of Schubert discs for Erato in the mid-1990s, and in terms of timings the two performances are often strikingly similar...What remains unchanged is the patience with which Pires allows Schubert's music to unfold so naturally that nothing seems forced or contrived.” --The Guardian, 21st February 2013 ****

Schreker: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

"This sequence of six pieces presents a good cross-section of his output, demonstrating Schreker’s development ... Schreker had a wonderful sense of fantasy, a feeling for colour, and impressive mastery of the orchestra. The textures are lush and overheated. Sinaisky draws seductively beautiful playing from the BBC Philharmonic, heightened by gloriously rich Chandos sound, and the whole disc serves to advance Schreker’s case." --The Penguin Guide - 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings 2011-12

Sumptuous late-Romantic music performed with tremendous passion and intensity by Sinaisky and the BBC Philharmonic in resplendent Chandos sound. More than any previous interpreters, Sinaisky succeeds in harnessing the ebb and flow of Schreker’s musical invention with greater conviction, finally persuading the sceptics that this composer deserves serious consideration alongside his Viennese contemporaries Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Berg. --BBC Music Magazine Critic's Choice

The BBC Philharmonic’s playing is warmly expansive, and the recording captures every nuance of the ever-changing textures --The Guardian

The Trio Sonata in 18th-Century France

London Baroque presents a disc charting the Trio Sonata in 18th-century France - a musical environment undergoing rapid changes following the death of Louis XIV in 1715.

In 1725 François Couperin published his Apothéose de Lulli, advocating a fusion of Italian and French styles, and the following year saw the collection Les Nations, which included L’Impériale recorded here.

Jean-Marie Leclair and his colleague (and great rival) Jean-Pierre Guignon took the idea one step further. Both were fêted violinists as well as composers, and wrote music mainly for their own instrument in an often virtuosic style.

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was not known as a performer, and composed a large number of small-scale works aimed at wealthy amateurs.

Bach: St Matthew Passion, BWV244 · Final performing version, c. 1742

“The thread of intensity is achieved largely by the focus and roundness of the Dunedin Consort's palette, the thrusting legatos (when called for) and the welcome presence of a strong, directed bass-line. No recorded St Matthew Passion…comes without its blemishes but few parade such a compellingly fresh and raw realism.” --Gramophone Magazine, April 2008

“From the word go, the Dunedin Consort draws you in. The instruments are perfectly balanced, the playing is soulful, there are subtle swells, and the lilting tempo strikes a happy medium between pace and sobriety.” --Charlotte Gardner, bbc.co.uk, March 2008

“One-to-a-part Bach infiltrated the St Matthew Passion with Paul McCreesh in 2002. I described him then as 'provocative and compelling', and John Butt is no less so. Of his eight remarkable singers (plus two unison sopranos for the opening chorus' crowning chorale) several are barely out of college, but they match spine-tingling tone with astonishing maturity.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2008 *****

“Having swept the board with their Awardwinning Messiah, John Butt and the Dunedin Consort and Players proceed headlong into the summa of dramatic religious masterpieces. One imagines, however, that this highly singular approach has been marinating in Butt's mind for years. This is a reading (the first to draw on the 1742 performing version with its re-allocation of continuo instruments) where scholarly and musical penetration is indivisible in the strength of the approach and the unswerving commitment of the 'players'.

And 'players' they are – except that Butt argues here for a new dramatic understanding of the Matthew (note the curious de-sanctification) where the work challenges the notion of 'parts' in an opera, towards various 'voices' which reflect the listener's absorption of the conflicting positions – both biographical and emotional – of the main protagonists and the most far-flung thresholds of human experience.

This is achieved using the main singers, from the eight principal voices, in different contexts. Hence, as Butt explains in his illuminating note, the Evangelist may rally us to lament as an allegorical 'Daughter of Zion' in the opening chorus before darting in and out of the story in recitatives, chorus, aria and chorales, mixing up the past and present, first person and third person, in a web of intense and coherent narrative and reflection.
All of this presupposes a one-to-a-part troupe where all these subtle character combinations can be perceived. With such a spectacularly clear and balanced sound from Philip Hobbs, these ambitious perspectives are powerfully realised; refreshingly, too, Bach's 'novel in sound' is presented in a small inter-reliant ensemble without the need for tiresome dog- matic mantras on historical rectitude. Indeed, often so entwined are the textures that singers' vowels are shadowed by instruments in a closeknit rapport of exceptional immediacy.

For those steeped in both recent and old schools, this performance will resonate with both, though it is not always so easy to summarise how. The thread of intensity is achieved largely by the focus and roundness of the Dunedin Consort's palette, the thrusting legatos (when called for) and the welcome presence of a strong, directed bass-line.
Such responses are relatively superficial because Butt's St Matthew is truly original in spheres resonating beyond established parameters.

As his story-teller, Nicholas Mulroy brings his own striking naturalness of delivery, clarity of diction and honesty. At the start of Part 2, especially, there are moments of disarming reportage, such as the encounter with the High Priest where the Evangelist conveys a sickened response to Christ's humiliation and a gutting catch in his voice at the emptiness of Peter's denial. Yet it is Mulroy's identification with the outstanding Christus of Matthew Brook which raises the stakes in this performance. The timing between the two and the realism of the musical choreography is both remarkably patient and animated.

The only downside of a single-part St Matthew is that, while the singers – in Butt's words – 'become familiar to us as the piece progresses', this only works to advantage if they have the tonal and musical range to sustain such an extended and exposed vision. For all the stylistic nuancing and deft ensemble work of the sopranos, their arias rarely lift themselves beyond the generic. 'Ich will dir' sounds unsure and snatched and 'So ist mein Jesus gefangen' fails to demarcate the almost cosmic mystery ('moon and light have set in their anguish') alongside the admirable discipline of the crowd's graphic interjections.

No recorded St Matthew Passion comes without its blemishes but few parade such a compellingly fresh and raw realism, one so strongly identifiable by its wilful clarity of intent that it asks new questions about what this great work can say to us.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Beethoven & Hummel: Piano Trios

“…these are really impressive and vibrant accounts that bring out all the abrupt contrasts that so shocked the works' Beethoven first audiences… If you prefer these pieces on period instruments, you're unlikely to find them better done… Beside Beethoven, Hummel's G major Trio is small beer, though its scherzo-like- finale is fun, and Staier wittily invokes the piano's built-in percussion effect for the concluding chords.” --BBC Music Magazine, February 2008 *****

BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice - February 2007

“This bold juxtaposition of Beethoven and Hummel resurrects a real-life musical rivalry… Equally bold are the timbres displayed by this vividly imaginative trio of period instrumentalists.” --Gramophone Magazine, March 2008

Fauré: Cello Sonatas

One has a powerful sense of Cecile Licad and Alban Gerhardt's compelling grasp of architecture...[in the Andante of No. 1] Licad's melting lines are wonderfully voiced, and we have a choice of finales - one at Faure's own controversially slow tempo, and one at the performer's preferred, faster tempo. In the Second Sonata, Gerhardt captures the first movement's exalted energy.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2012 ****

Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - April 2012

“They make a particularly fine duo here, working emotionally in unison, sensing the music’s contours with like mind, breathing as one...their feeling for moments of drama and repose is held in ideal equilibrium, and their pointing up of Fauré’s individual harmonic shading is judged instinctively.” --The Telegraph, 13th January 2012 *****

“Alban Gerhardt's account of Fauré's two cello sonatas, both late works, repay careful listening. Like the works themselves, his playing and that of the pianist Cecile Licad is full of subtleties, the half-tones and inflections that make the chamber music of Fauré's final decade so elusive and fragile. Nothing here is forced or made to conform” --The Guardian, 19th January 2012 ****

“From every standpoint, Gerhardt's accounts of the sonatas seem exceptional, with their assured technical mastery and uncanny depth of insight...none of [the] rival accounts will readily eclipse these sonorously authoritative new performances...Magnificent cello playing from Gerhardt, empathetically supportive accompaniments from Licad and a wonderfully natural and atmospheric recording to boot.” --International Record Review, January 2012

“[Gerhardt] has the command of a very fine virtuoso...[Gerhardt and Licad] sound free as air, intellectually confident, full of verve, with niceties of balance and intensities never an issue; a convincing frame of colour, movement and sound in place for every movement...obviously the one to get. May it win friends for some excellent and still undervalued music.” --Gramophone Magazine, April 2012

Berlioz: Herminie, Les Nuits D'ete; Ravel: Sheherazade

“In her mid-forties, this voice has become richer and even more expressive, and he works on this disc suit her to perfection. She not only pronounces the words, she feels them...Her Nuits d'ete reilshes hues both light and dark, and if she'd been around to sing Berlioz's Prix de Rome cantata Herminie in 1828, who know, he might have won gold instead of silver!” --BBC Music Magazine, October 2012 ****

“[Gens is] alive and vivid, giving a passionate account of the wonderful Sur les Lagunes. Elsewhere, she seems to me in too much of a hurry.” --Sunday Times, 9th July 2012

“warm, sensitive, the lyrical French soprano par excellence...Gens bring [Herminie] to life as sympathetically as any of her operatic portrayals...It is unusual to encounter a recording of Les nuits d'ete in which the colouring is so consistent throughout...Gens has in her sights a purer kind of poetry.” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2012

“As you might expect, Gens's singing has sharpened its musical perceptions still further and acquired even more shades of colour since [her] earlier recording. No one today delivers French song with the combination of tonal beauty and verbal nuance she does, and each number of Nuits d'Eté offers a miniature masterclass...Pure ravishment.” --The Guardian, 21st June 2012 *****

Górecki: Symphony No. 3, Three Olden Style Pieces

"Get this disc, turn out the lights, start listening, and remember why you can't live without music." --American Record Guide

Zofia Kilanowicz on Naxos has also obviously become immersed in the word-settings. In the work’s closing section, with its hint of a gentle but remorseless tolling bell, Wit achieves a mood of simple serenity, even forgiveness. The Three Pieces in Olden Style make a fine postlude, the second with its dance figurations, the third with its fierce tremolando violins, like shafts of bright light, suddenly resolving to a very positive ending. All in all, this seems in many ways a ‘best buy’. --Penguin Guide, January 2009

"What impresses me most about this performance is its sprituality" --Gramophone Magazine

"as though his Polish forces had special insights denied to foreigners" --CD Review:

"this disc seems a clear first choice" --Classic CD

Schmidt: Symphony No.4, Intermezzo from 'Notre Dame'

Franz Schmidt was an inconsistent composer. The symphony, on the other hand, is a masterpiece, and it has been well treated on disc.

Schmidt wrote four symphonies, Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for piano left hand and orchestra and a piano concerto for the left hand, these last, with various chamber works, for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the 1914-1918 war.

Beethoven: Violin Sonatas No 4 & 7, Variations

“Fortunately, the players don’t seem in the least bit fazed by the accumulated layers of musical history, and they give admirably dramatic performances, with all the urgency and passion Beethoven’s two minor-key violin sonatas demand.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2006 *****

“Beethoven’s fiery dramatics sound more audacious than ever…Fantastic playing, and a fascinating release.” --The Times

“…performances of unusual verve and spontaneity.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2006

 “The novel feature here is that Daniel Sepec's violin is one of a set presented to Beethoven in 1800 by Prince Lichnowsky. Made in Salzburg around 1700 and restored to its original condition, its whereabouts were unknown until 10 years ago, when it was presented to the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. In Sepec's hands it has a sweet, expressive tone, an important element in these remarkably imaginative, stimulating performances. Andreas Staier plays a Graf pianoforte from the 1820s, of a type Beethoven was familiar with, though not at the time he wrote these sonatas. But if it has a smoother sound and wider dynamic range than earlier instruments, it's still able to present Beethoven's keyboard textures with perfect clarity. Staier's enthusiastic approach occasionally swamps the violin – but one can easily imagine the young Beethoven doing the same.

Staier and Sepec take us a long way beyond the concept of historically informed playing as simply avoiding anachronism. In the first movement of Sonata No 7, Sepec introduces expressive portamenti, as well as the kind of rubato where he momentarily lags behind the piano's rhythm. In the following Adagio, Staier makes highly expressive use of spread chords, and throughout the CD there are instances of subtle tempo variation and added dynamics, for example the beautiful shaping of the main theme in No 4's second movement. In the Variations, Staier makes full use of the Graf's range of sonorities, including a remarkable percussive surprise! Yet these 'authentic' features all stem from a clear view of the music's expressive qualities and result in performances of unusual verve and spontaneity.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Richard Strauss: Symphonia Domestica, Metamorphosen

“…Wit's account of the Symphonia domestica is richly spacious to match the recording although in no way lacking in forward momentum. …the tender writing for the child's "Wiegenlied" in the third section is especially touching, and the "Liebesszene" of the Adagio has all the Straussian erotic passion one could wish for. The Metamorphosen too is well played, with much refinement of texture and no lack of feeling...” --Gramophone Magazine, January 2010

Staatskapelle Weimar, Antoni Wit

Richard Strauss’s orchestral music includes several works with autobiographical significance, including Ein Heldenleben (Naxos 8554417).

Scored for large symphony orchestra, the Symphonia domestica depicts the delights and vicissitudes of married life with Strauss, his wife, child and other family members deftly portrayed in a variety of situations, including a ‘cheerful quarrel’ in which the father has the last word!

In contrast, Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings is Strauss’s heartbreaking meditation on the destruction of German culture during World War II.

Dowland: Music for lute

The Latin phrase "Semper Dolens, Semper Dowland" was the motto of Elizabethan era Lutenist John Dowland. The phrase is cited by historians of music as the reason why John Dowland's last name should be pronounced to rhyme with "No-land" and not "Now-land." If it were pronounced to rhyme with "Now-land," it would not fit the rhyme scheme.

The phrase translates to mean "Always mourning, always Dowland." This is very appropriate as John Dowland was famous for being in a constant state of melancholy. This melancholic nature is very easy to hear in his music, particularly the Melancholy Galliard and the galliard If My Complaints.

Vieuxtemps: Violin Concertos No 1 & 2

“At 40 minutes, the First Concerto has its longeurs...But it's beautifully shaped by Martyn Brabbins, with a warm resonant sound to the recording, and Chloe Hanslip's entry doesn't disappoint. There's a lovely depth to her tone in the dolce first theme, and the acrobatics which Vieuxtemps puts her through...are meaningfully phrased with a variety of tone and dynamics.” ..BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 ****

“rhythmically taut, meticulously executed performances...few will be able to resist Hanslip's deliciously coquettish handling of the rondo movements of both concertos.” --Gramophone Magazine, July 2012

“Hanslip brings a wealth of neatly sculpted phrasing to bear to the E major, her feminine sounding wistfulness warmed with just enough tremulousness to vest the music with a particularly satisfying sense of characterisation.” --MusicWeb International, June 2012

Black Swan Fantasy

A charismatic pianist, with a special unique and as well vituous style.

Nikolai Tokarev was born in Moscow in 1983 and is from a musical family. His father is a concert pianist, his mother a cellist. He began musical training in 1988 at the renowned Gnessin Music School in Moscow, graduating in 2001 with distinction. From 2004 to 2006 he studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He then engaged in postgraduate studies in Düsseldorf with Professor Barbara Szczepanska at the Robert Schumann College of Music.

Zador: Five Contrasts, Children's Symphony

The performances on this disc are excellent. The Budapest Symphony Orchestra MÁV plays with great spirt and finesse under Mariusz Smolij. Zádor was, as you might expect, a superb orchestrator. He did it for a living, after all, and by this I don’t mean he resorted to a gratuitous excess of color standing in for musical inspiration, but rather a knack for finding the right sound to convey the musical message. These players seem to appreciate this aspect of the music; the playing has soul, however subjective that may sound, while the engineering is excellent. Get to know this music; it’s worth your time. --ClassicsToday.com

Eugene Zádor was a remarkable colourist and orchestrator whose Hollywood film work was extensive. He described himself as a ‘middle of the road extremist’. The Aria and Allegro is a beautifully crafted work brimming with rhythmic energy. Five Contrasts for Orchestra demonstrates his rich sound world at its most vibrant; film noir jostling with a bigbooted country dance. The lighter A Children’s Symphony is one of his most popular pieces – communicative, witty, accessible. We also hear two small and captivating evocations of his native Hungary.

None of these pieces has been recorded before. One of Zádor’s major works, Christopher Columbus, is on Cambria coupled with the Studies for orchestra. Zádor’s music is hugely approachable, and exciting, as befits a Hollywood orchestrator. He was great friends with Miklós Rózsa and shares that communicative spirit and sense of colour (in fact he was Rózsa’s own orchestrator).

Leo: 6 Concerti di Violoncello

18th-century Neapolitan composer Leonardo Leo was best known for his operas and sacred music, but he also contributed some finely crafted, idiomatic, delightfully inventive instrumental works, including these six cello concertos from the late-1730s. The melodic writing shows the engaging style of a savvy opera composer, and likewise the slow movements exude an emotional range on the level of the period's more sophisticated arias. In this re-issue from a 1984 session, we hear cellist Anner Bylsma at the peak of his Baroque-cello interpretive powers, his cello's voice out-front, with big, singing tone, his style extrovert yet fully in the spirit of Leo's congenial solo writing.

And while the writing can be quite challenging for the soloist, these works aren't just show-off pieces spotlighting the cello, with the orchestra serving a secondary role. Indeed, the orchestra generally is a true partner, its function tightly integrated with the soloist's--and Leo further sustains our interest by varying structural and harmonic details from movement to movement and concerto to concerto. And speaking of orchestras: at this time Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra was among a handful of top period-instrument ensembles, and its contribution here is solid and sure, energetic and vibrant, even if the rhythmic precision and clarity of articulation isn't what we expect--and hear--20 years later from world-class groups such as Les Violons du Roy.

Also, the recording ambience, the domain of a Toronto church, is distractingly resonant, the sound characterized by an "artificial", processed quality that gives the instruments a larger-than-life presence. Still, this is very good playing of some very entertaining music that's well worth hearing, especially if you'd like a nice alternative to the late works of Vivaldi.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Rachmaninov: Music for Two Pianos

Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe (pianos)

“Who would have guessed, when Naxos entered the CD market with buckets of budget-priced recordings by no-name instrumentalists and provincial Eastern-European orchestras, that 20 years later they would be offering the likes of this disc, featuring two of Britain's most distinguished and widely recorded pianists in the major two-piano works of Rachmaninov? The result is an hour and a quarter of first-rate music-making, and probably the finest single-disc version of the suites that I have heard.” --Fanfare

French Impressions

Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk

“Denk identifies the use of colour as being key to the Frenchness of these pieces, and Joshua Bell is certainly not short of timbral variety in this exquisitely played recital. It even beats his compelling Franck disc of 20 years ago. The playing is more relaxed and Bell's delicious use of portamento is achingly beautiful. He is sensitively accompanied by Denk, who has a wonderfully deft touch, captured in excellent sound.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2012 ***** 

“Joshua Bell plays with fire and finesse, with Denk a powerful ally. Franck's dark-light violin sonata, mysterious, ardent and far more than the sum of its parts when played as majestically as here, forms the centrepiece of this seriously beguiling disc. A first essential purchase for 2012.” --The Observer, January 2012

“Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk, a notably well-matched team, give idiomatic performances of these three sonatas...They're especially adept in maintaing the flow of the musical narrative and, with it, the music's emotional flux....Bell is especially impressive in the moto perpetuo finale - not only thrillingly precise but full of colour and variety, too” --Gramophone Magazine, March 2012

“You’d be hard pressed to find a version of Ravel’s Sonata which offers as much fun as this one; you can visualise Joshua Bell winking as he negotiates the second movement’s insouciant smears and pizzicato notes...This is a great performance [of the Franck], especially in the steady Allegretto of the last movement...Sony’s sound is immaculate.” --The Arts Desk, 4th February 2012

Lyapunov: Symphony No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 2

The recordings are magnificent; no lover of Russian Romantic by-ways can afford to be without this... The Second Piano Concerto is a Romantically inclined pianists dream… its succulent themes and star-dust decoration could hardly be spun off more beguilingly than by Howard Shelley. --Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’

Sinaisky elicits lovable phrasing from the BBC Philharmonic… Yet another testament, then, to the right team for Chandos to use in its extensive Russian repertoire. --BBC Music Magazine

 “Sergei Lyapunov has always been a shadowy figure, his derivative yet distinctive voice drowned by his more celebrated compatriots and even by his contemporaries Taneyev, Liadov and Arensky. Yet hearing the First Symphony in a performance of this calibre you're reminded of the way Lyapunov's melodic appeal is complemented by brilliant craftsmanship.

The opening motif is sufficiently brief to invite elaboration and to play a key role in music as coherent as it's heartfelt. The chromatic undertow as the music eases into the poco più tranquillo, its mix of sweetness and unrest looks ahead to Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, and if the themes are less memorable than in that towering Romantic masterpiece they're marshalled and directed with great compositional skill. Vassily Sinaisky and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra allow the long sinuous lines of the Andante sostenuto to unfold with an unfaltering tact and commitment, and in the balletic Scherzo, with its memories of Tchaikovsky, he realises all of the music's captivating grace and charm.

If Borodin is a key influence in the symphony then Liszt is central to the thinking behind the Second Piano Concerto. Lyapunov, after all, paid an eloquent tribute to Liszt in his 12 TranscendentalEtudes for solo piano, a magnificent if uneven creation, and not surprisingly the lavish and intricate pianism in the Second Concerto is a Romantically inclined pianist's dream. Certainly its succulent themes and star-dust decoration could hardly be spun off more beguilingly than by Howard Shelley. His relaxed mastery and enviably elegant style inform every bar of this most seductive work.

The recordings are magnificent; no lover of Russian Romantic by-ways can afford to be without this.”

Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

The Beauty of Baroque

“It's an intriguing and enjoyable programme...The English Concert provides suitable support throughout, from solo theorbo on Dowland's "What if I never speed?" to the trio of harpsichord, theorbo and viola da gamba with her delightful duet with counter-tenor Andreas Scholl” --The Independent, 10th June 2011 ****

“This is a charming recital that shows this popular soprano at her best...she has plenty of vivacity and fresh-toned sweetness. Guardian Angels, from Handel’s “The Triumph of Time and Truth”, is a highlight: a little-known but beautiful aria, sung here with poise and allure.” --The Telegraph, 7th July 2011 ****

 “In Dowland's Come again, sweet love doth now invite and What if I never speed?, she sounds like a sexier Emma Kirkby...The English Concert under its Music Director Harry Bicket provides the stylish orchestral and instrumental backing...You really hear the personality behind the voice - the 'Beauty of the Baroque' is, without question, a real artist.” --International Record Review, July/August 2011

“she keeps things light on this disc, and for the greater part only shows off her many splendid advantages. Indeed, her flirtatious performance of the famous lute-song Come again can rank as one of the most captivating on disc. The duets with Scholl are a delight too. De Niese's sheer joy in singing leaps off the CD and her emotional immediacy is hard to resist.” --Classic FM Magazine, August 2011 ****

Ginastera: Cello Concertos

"Zagrosek and the Bambergers, proven experts in the past century’s most demanding scores, give these concertos their all, with color, imagination, and precision." --Fanfare, September 2011

“The Argentinian Alberto Ginastera proves to be the winning ticket for cellist Mark Kosower… These electric and lyrical performances revel in the music's percussive rhythms as well as its reflective and mysterious melodic invention.” --The Strad

Alberto Ginastera was one of the most admired and respected musical voices of the twentieth century, who successfully fused the strong traditional influences of his national heritage with experimental, contemporary, and classical techniques. The two Cello Concertos are among his most innovative, brilliant and technically formidable compositions.

The First Concerto, the definitive version of which was premièred by Ginastera’s second wife Aurora Nátola in 1978, is notable for the provocative singing lines, Latin dance rhythms and virtuosity of its solo part, and the intense colours and abundant percussion of the orchestral accompaniment.

The Second Concerto, composed as a 10th wedding anniversary tribute ‘To my dear Aurora’, makes more prominent use of Argentine folk elements. It includes a brilliant depiction of the rising sun, percussion instruments portraying sounds of the jungle, and a celebratory rustic finale.