CD Reviews
You can search through our extensive database of thousands of releases from Orchestral and Opera to Choral, Jazz and beyond.
Written by the expert critics of BBC Music Magazine and with over a hundred new reviews added every month, the archive dates back to the magazine's launch in 1992 and now includes over 20,000 reviews.
NB A few points to bear in mind when searching:
When looking for symphonies, concertos, etc., the numbers must appear as follows with a space between 'No.' and the number itself:
- Symphony No. 2
- Sonata No. 31
There is no need to include capital letters or accents in your search – the database is neither case- nor accent-sensitive.
Krasa: Brundibar
Composer(s):
- Krása
Works:
Brundibar
Performer:
Soloists; Chorus & Instrumentalists of St Ursula-Gymnasiums, Freiburg/Maria Veronika Grüters
Hans Krása was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, but his Weill-influenced children’s opera, performed here in a recreation of the version he made for prisoners in Theresienstadt, lives on through its humour and charm. George Hall
Performance:
Sound:
Dvorak: Rusalka
Composer(s):
- Dvorák
Works:
Rusalka
Performer:
Natasha Jouhl, Barbara Senator, Élodie Méchain, Mischa Schelomianski, Ana María Martínez, Larissa Diadkova, John Mackenzie, Brandon Jovanovich, Alasdair Elliott, Diana Axentii, Tatiana Pavlovskaya; Glyndebourne Chorus; London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jirí Bèlohlávek
This is not just a souvenir of last year’s Glyndebourne premiere, but a competitive recording in its own right, with a first-rate conductor and fine, unusually youthful-sounding cast.
Performance:
Sound:
Bartok: Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2
Composer(s):
- Bartok
Works:
Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2
Performer:
Thomas Zehetmair (violin); Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer
Another disc where the idiomatic orchestral playing is paramount: but Zehetmair matches Fischer in his feeling for the late-Romantic idiom, more overtly in the Second Concerto, and sometimes briskly, but always spot-on musically. Martin Cotton
Performance:
Sound:
Rautavaara - Before The Icons & A Tapestry Of Life
Composer(s):
- Rautavaara
Works:
Before the Icons; A Tapestry of Life
Performer:
Helsinki PO/Leif Segerstam
Before the Icons is a rather different work from the melismatic pieces which have made the Finnish modernist composer internationally famous, although it has just as strong a mystical theme as the Angel series or Cantus Arcticus. It derives from his early piano suite Icons (1955), depicting Byzantine religious images such as The Black Madonna of Blakernaya.
Performance:
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Bartok: Music for Strings
Composer(s):
- Bartok
Works:
Music for strings, percussion and celesta; Divertimento for strings; Hungarian Sketches for orchestra
Performer:
Hungarian National PO/Zoltán Kocsis
This latest instalment in Zoltán Kocsis’s highly acclaimed Bartók cycle features three works from the 1930s. Earliest of these are the Hungarian Sketches – a delightful sequence of piquant orchestrations of five short piano pieces composed before World War I. Unaccountably neglected both in the concert hall and on disc, it receives a thoroughly engaging performance.
Performance:
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Marilyn Crispell- David Rothenburg: One Dark Night I Left My Silent House
Composer(s):
- David Rothenberg
- Marilyn Crispell
Performer:
Marilyn Crispell (piano, percussion), David Rothenberg (clarinet)
If Rothenberg’s explanation that ‘on a couple of pieces Marilyn played a beat-up soundboard wrenched from an old baby-grand’ puts you off, think again. Crispell’s credentials as a technically accomplished, controlled pianist are as well-established as her reputation for musical honesty.
Performance:
Sound:
Salif Keita: La Difference
Composer(s):
- Salif Keita
The finale of the Malian pioneer’s decade-spanning ‘acoustic trilogy’ brings the engrossing experience of a musician totally at ease with his many talents.
It follows a cumulative trajectory like a well-planned concert, addressing his audience with directness from the start and moving from the vital to the intense, celebratory and heartfelt.
Performance:
Sound:
Massenet : Manon
Composer(s):
- Massenet
Performer:
Rojol, Acosta; Royal Ballet/Martin Yates; chor. Kenneth MacMillan
If you saw and loved them in the recently-issued Romeo and Juliet, you’ll find Rojo and Acosta irresistible in this long and complex Macmillan choreography. Another classy evening from the Royal Ballet. David Nice
Performance:
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Rossini: Il Barbiere Di Siviglia
Composer(s):
- Rossini
Works:
Il Barbiere Di Siviglia
Performer:
Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, Pietro Spagnoli, Alessandro Corbelli, Ferruccio Furlanetto; Royal Opera House Chorus & Orchestra/Antonio Pappano; dir. Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier (London, 2009)
The revival of Rossini’s comedy at London’s Royal Opera House in July 2009 has already passed into legend. Notoriously, American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato broke her leg during the first night, yet completed the show to huge acclaim.
Even more triumphantly, she returned to film this particular performance some nights later, singing and acting Rosina from a wheelchair in a staggering display of professionalism and, indeed, virtuosity.
Performance:
Sound:
Ferguson - Piano Sonata in F minor
Composer(s):
- Ferguson
Works:
Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 8; Discovery, Op. 13; Five Bagatelles, Op. 9; Partita for Two Pianos, Op. 5b
Performer:
Raphael Terroni, Vadim Peaceman (piano), Phillida Bannister (contralto)
The published works of Ulster’s Howard Ferguson number only 19; from 1959, aged 51, he had said all he wanted to say and apparently stopped writing altogether. The music itself, too, is the work of a composer who understood that less is more.
Performance:
Sound:
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This month's BBC Music choices
DISC OF THE MONTH
Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky Orchestra & Chorus/Valery Gergiev
'Gergiev's reading evokes a rapt quality and an authentic spirituality'
CHAMBER
Ireland: Violin Sonatas Nos 1 & 2; Cello Sonata
Lucy Gould (violin), Alice Neary (cello), Benjamin Frith (piano)
'Ireland's passionate Violin Sonatas are here given splendid advocacy'
CHORAL & SONG
Heggie: Songs
Jake Heggie et al
'Jake Heggie's own fluent piano playing supports world-class singers'
DVD
Brahms • Chopin • Scriabin: Piano works
Vassily Primakov (piano); dir. David Starobin
'Reveals Primakov as a serious artist with fabulous pianistic skills'
INSTRUMENTAL
Louis Couperin: Keyboard suites
Christophe Rousset (harpsichord)
'Rousset plays Louis Couperin with energy and dramatic flair'
JAZZ
Larkin's Jazz
Including Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller
'This four-disc set compiled by Philip Larkin authorities is a gem'
ORCHESTRAL
Bartók: Piano Concertos
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano); BBC Philharmonic/Gianandrea Noseda
'Exciting and dynamic accounts of Bartók's Piano Concertos'
OPERA
R Strauss: Scenes from Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten & Salome
Atlanta SO/Donald Runnicles
'Christine Brewer sails through these testing Strauss soprano roles'
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