For their debut album the Solem Quartet embrace the theme of night and day. Heading up the line-up of contemporary composers on this concept album, we have Thomas Adès, with Solem Quartet’s new commission of Four Quarters. Commencing with Nightfall, febrile violins denote ancient stars in distant galaxies with groaning cello and viola signifying earth. In Morning Dew, plucked violin strings…
Category: CD review
Memorials in music on the twentieth anniversary of September 11th
9/11 : 20 Memorials on the twentieth anniversary of September 11th Adam Swayne, piano British pianist Adam Swayne’s latest disc marks the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 – a date which is deeply, painfully etched on our collective modern memory – and seeks to demonstrate ways in which composers memorialise or commemorate disaster through works by…
Olena Tokar – the soprano with soul
With her album Charmes, Ukranian soprano Olena Tokar shows her love of female song repertoire from the 19thand 20th century. Women composers have historically been thin on the ground, but the ones who received public attention, either in their time or more recently, were, and remain, utterly fascinating. On the album, we have the feisty Alma Mahler, who threatened…
‘Historical Fiction’ Forshaw brings sax to the baroque.
Karine Hetherington from ArtMuseLondon caught up with composer and saxophonist, Christian Forshaw, and soprano Grace Davidson, shortly before the release of their latest album, Historical Fiction. Christian’s arrangement of Handel’s ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine’ has already attracted 36,000 views on YouTube and was featured on Classic FM. Christian and Grace, what are your earliest musical memories? C: Beatles and choral…
‘De Profundis Clamavi’ – Duncan Honeybourne, piano
This recent release by Duncan Honeybourne on the EMR label makes a persuasive and enjoyable case for lesser-known English composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Recorded in August 2020 at Potton Hall, between lockdowns, as it were, Duncan Honeybourne, by his own admission, feels this is his best work to date. While many of…
Heart songs: Elizabeth Llewellyn & Simon Lepper; Isata Kanneh-Mason
As soon as I read about ‘Heart and Hereafter’, Elizabeth Llewellyn’s debut recital album on Orchid Classics, I was excited and intrigued to hear it – for three main reasons. First, I had seen and heard her give a magnificent performance in the title role of Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller’ for English National Opera back in…
Despax plays his dream concerto
Brahms always preferred to let his music do the talking rather than explain the origins of his work. That said, it is certainly interesting to look at what was happening in Brahms’s life when he started to write his first large scale composition – his Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor. By then he had…
Clarinettist Sparovec and Odense Symphony Orchestra play Debussy’s Rhapsody
Debussy was never fond of the establishment. When he did accept a chair on the Board of the Paris Conservatoire in 1909, it surprised everyone who had regarded him as a musical rebel. But by that time he was ill, and was being prescribed exercise, morphine and cocaine. He might have been in a euphoric…
Fullana’s Obsession with Bach
Most of us will have heard Johann Sebastian Bach’s exquisite Partita No. 3 in E major for Solo Violin. My knowledge of solo violin repertoire however stops there. I was therefore very keen to listen to violinist, Francisco Fullana’s new album, in which he explores Bach’s solo violin work and its musical legacy. Many legendary…
John-Henry Crawford : Brahms and Shostakovich in Dialogo
Brahms’s Sonata for Piano and Cello No.2 in F Major must surely feature in the top ten most played pieces of chamber music of all time. I thought I had witnessed every interpretation under the sun of this romantic masterpiece – and then comes John-Henry Crawford’s version which totally disarmed me and made me fall…
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