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Archive for Gramophone Review – Page 2

Gramophone Reviews Nathan Williamson’s Colour and Light

“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 […]

Gramophone Reviews Peter Donohoe’s Mozart Piano Sonatas Vol. Two

“[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. … […]

Gramophone Reviews Kathleen Ferrier: In Celebration of Bach

“[This] is an important addition to Ferrier’s discography, and she is indeed marvellous in it, singing ‘Esurientes implevit bonis’ with that unique, indescribable tone and expressive sincerity that characterises her finest work. She also, one notices, exercises a steadying effect on some of her colleagues. … This is grand-manner Bach…Playing and choral singing are both enthusiastic… […]

Private Passions a Gramophone Editor’s Choice!

“First recordings of two sets of piano pieces by Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen (his charismatic muse and lover) adorn this latest helping of home-grown fare from the excellent Mark Bebbington. Cohen’s four Russian Impressions prove a charming find, the first two especially winning Bax’s approval. Bebbington lends them atmospheric and deftly affectionate advocacy, as he […]

Gramophone Reviews Emma Johnson & Friends

“Plenty of charismatic playing here, in a programme clearly planned to entertain. … This sequence was taken live from a concert in 2017 and the audience’s delight in it is audible… [a] splendid time…is clearly being had by all. … Johnson’s reimaginings of the two closing Strauss numbers are as frothy as a glass of […]

Gramophone is moved by “In Remembrance”

“As a chorister in the 1960s I can still remember the lines of the British Legion who would parade up to the village church and the war memorial to hear the names of the dead read out. My memories of those chilly, solemn November Sunday mornings are still vivid. They were occasions charged with deep […]

Parry Vol. 3 is Sarah Fox and Roderick Williams at the Top of their Game

“Gems abound on this third and final volume in what has been a most enterprising survey, and I’m happy to report that, as on previous instalments, Sarah Fox and Roderick Williams are at the top of their game throughout. … We are offered no fewer than nine settings of poems by Parry’s fellow student at […]

Elgar Orchestral Songs in November 2018 Gramophone

Explore “…Dutch baritone Henk Neven and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge… are excellently supported in turn by Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Liverpool-born Rudge is in refulgent voice for the darkly passionate Op 60 diptych of 1910, while it’s hard to imagine more sheerly beguiling renderings of either ‘The Wind at Dawn’ (1888) or ‘Pleading’ […]