Music Reviews: Classical

This beautifully designed and annotated set appeals to seasoned classical collectors and newbies alike with its gripping performances of three of the master symphonist’s most compelling works in outstanding sound and video.  Amidst all the tinsel and seasonal levity, give this set serious consideration.

When it comes to classical music, brass instruments have experienced, or, to put it more precisely, endured, a long march towards respectability over the past half century or so. Brass instruments played an increasingly prominent role in orchestral works by Bruckner or Mahler, but they really were not vouchsafed much solo literature until the latter half of the twentieth century. It was the French virtuoso Maurice Andre who first wielded his piccolo trumpet during the... Read More

There’s a certain romance about audio and vinyl from Japan. For equipment there is a well-deserved reverence for the build quality and commitment to excellence from the engineers, and for vinyl records we’ve long been fascinated by boutique audiophile pressings from the island nation, particularly I’ve long held a steadfast love for King Records’ “Super Analogue Series” of Decca classical reissues.Classical vinyl reissues from Japan have unfortunately dried up over... Read More

Ryuichi Sakamoto once again sits down at a Yamaha piano in NHK’s Tokyo studio. Microphones and cameras are set up as normal, just like the other times he’s played here. He performs 20 compositions, alone as usual by now. The result, Opus, was at least the third time this decade that he filmed (and saved) a solo piano performance.Yet these sessions in late 2022 were the composer’s final performances of the repertoire that over nearly five decades built, cemented, and... Read More

Musicians from Handel to Jackson Browne to Philip Glass to The Beach Boys, to name but a few, have had water on their minds, which is not the same as having water on the brain. True, Glass only got as far as the beach, but that's close enough. Add bassist/composer Stephan Crump to the list. He's recorded two albums with the Rosetta Trio, an unusual grouping of bass and two guitars. Here, he's composed a sixty seven minute long suite for an... Read More

Anton Bruckner’s (1824-1896) Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, premiered in 1881, is the composer’s most popular “early” symphony, with numbers 7, 8, and the incomplete 9 being the usual headline works. It was also his first major success as a composer, before which Bruckner's renown was mostly as an organist and counterpoint instructor. Bruckner dedicated this work to Austro-Hungarian royal, Prince Konstantin, who was a major financier of cultural life in Vienna... Read More

Harry Belock blew a huge wad of cash on Everest Records, trying to "surpass" Capitol Records both in recording technology, and in quality of repertory. But, to quote John Maynard Keynes, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So, here's a priceless moment in time, forever frozen in amber; or rather, frozen on 35mm magnetic film.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, Nonesuch Records is reissuing several of its albums on vinyl for the first time, among them one of the greatest recordings by the Kronos Quartet, which happens to be marking its 50th year as an ensemble.The album is Black Angels, the label’s 6th Kronos album, released in 1990 and still among the most jarring and important in the entire Nonesuch catalogue and in the Kronos discography.Nonesuch and Kronos made a perfect... Read More

One of my favorite classical records of the last few years is Impex Records’ stunning reissue of violinist Jascha Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky’s Beethoven Op. 1 trio on RCA (LSC-2770). This often overlook record originally released on the much-maligned RCA Dynagroove label has been brought back to life, sounding worlds away from the compressed original.I had secretly hoped the label would be dipping its toes back into the RCA classical waters, but I think... Read More

So now, let me tell you why High Definition Tape Transfer’s stunning first-release downloads, based upon Jerry Bruck’s experimental session tapes from more than 50 years ago, is a “Must Buy” recommendation if you love the music of Gustav Mahler. (However, the same holds true, even if all you want is to hear your stereo system sounding as though it is worth all the money you have put into it!)

[Note: “Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.” Therefore, to open up this YouTube video in another window, please click HERE.]In 1973, Joni Mitchell wrote the song “A Free Man in Paris,” which, at the time, I found somewhat confusing. The confusion remained until I later learned that Mitchell had written the lyrics from the perspective of her friend David Geffen, the legendary music agent and promoter. So, it was not Joni herself who was... Read More

Many a western themed orchestral work ("western" as in cowboys), as well as probably some "eat beef" television commercial music keyed off of Antonín Dvořák's bold Symphony No. 9 (originally called Symphony No. 5 but not getting into that here). The Czech composer began writing it shortly after arriving in New York City on September 26th, 1892, but the set's annotator Alexander Moore makes clear that while the symphony is from the new... Read More

Chasing the Dragon returns with another superbly recorded classical music "warhorse" performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, U.K., this outing conducted by the orchestra's current musical director Anthony Inglis, with Leader Katerina Nazarova playing a Del Gesu violin valued, the annotation says, at 7 million pounds. The venue for this "Scheherazade" was Henry Wood Hall, an unused church turned into an orchestral rehearsal and recording... Read More

Two new LPs from Yarlung Records offer great sound and even greater performances.

Recorded during the same 2011 and 2012 Zipper Hall, Los Angeles sessions that produced the remarkable percussion record “Smoke & Mirrors” (Yarlung 17255-195V), “Earth & Wood” is another sonic spectacular recorded directly to tape using a single AKG C24 stereo microphone (with Elliot Midwood mic amplification). The one-mike recording technique required “just so” placement of both it and the seven member Smoke and Mirrors Percussion Ensemble that performed the... Read More