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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.

Chopin - Journal Intime

Composer(s):
  • Chopin
Works: 
Journal intime: Mazurkas – selection; Ballades Nos 1 & 2; Fantaisie Op. 49; Nocturnes – selection; Fantaisie-impromptu, Op. 66; Trois Ecossaises etc
Performer: 
Alexandre Tharaud (piano)

 Alexandre Tharaud’s Chopin recordings, notably the 24 Preludes, have already established him as a leading interpreter of the composer, and this extremely personal recital more than adds to that impression. The ‘intimate journal’ is Tharaud’s own, rather than Chopin’s; he has compiled a sensitive and intuitive sequence of pieces, all of which he has played for many years and each of which holds some special significance for him.

Performance:
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Dialogue - East Meets West

Composer(s):
  • Anders Monrad
  • etc
  • Gang Chen
  • Kasper Rofelt
  • Mette Nielsen
  • Pernille Louise Sejlund
  • Rui Li
  • Siqin Chaoketu
  • Yao Hu
Works: 
Works by Yao Hu, Mette Nielsen, Rui Li, Pernille Louise Sejlund, Gang Chen, Anders Monrad, Siqin Chaoketu, Kasper Rofelt, etc
Performer: 
Chen Yue (xiao, dizi), Michala Petri (recorders)

Michala Petri has done great things for the recorder, helping to bring it back centre-stage after its 19th-century eclipse by the flute and clarinet, and here she takes the process on further.

Performance:
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Beethoven - Cello Sonatas Voume 2

Composer(s):
  • Beethoven
Works: 
Cello Sonatas, Op. 102 Nos 1 & 2; Variations on ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus; Variations on ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte; Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte
Performer: 
Daniel Müller-Schott (cello), Angela Hewitt (piano)

Daniel Müller-Schott and Angela Hewitt gave us some stimulating and insightful performances in their first volume of Beethoven’s complete cello works, though my positive impression of the disc was somewhat marred by a strange recording perspective which placed the cellist far too forward in relation to the pianist.

Performance:
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Ruders - Four Dances

Composer(s):
  • Ruders
Works: 
Four Dances in One Movement; Nightshade; Abysm
Performer: 
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Oliver Knussen

 Poul Ruders (born 1949) has tended to concentrate on orchestral music and opera, but his ear for sonority  on a smaller scale is acute and precise. His ability to conjure up a complete sound world with only a handful of instruments shines through in these pieces for reduced forces – it’s hard to believe that only ten players are involved in Nightshade, for instance.

Performance:
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The Forgotten Kingdom

Composer(s):
  • Various
Works: 
Le royaume oublié; La croisade contre les Albigeois; La tragédie Cathare
Performer: 
Montserrat Figueras (singer); La Capella Reial de Catalunya; Hespèrion XXI/Jordi Savall

The forgotten kingdom of the title, which geographically corresponded with the modern French Midi, was a realm of the mind as well as a physical landscape. Until Innocent III launched a crusade against the Cathar/Albigenisan heretics, Occitania was a place where many traditions and faiths could co-exist and fruitfully interact.

Performance:
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Howells - St John’s Magnificat

Composer(s):
  • Howells
Works: 
A Sequence for St Michael; By the Waters of Babylon; A Spotless Rose; Gloucester Service; Psalm 142; A Grace for 10 Downing Street; One Thing Have I Desired; Like as the Hart; Collegium Sancti Johannis Cantabrigiense; Salve Regina; Te Deum (Collegium Regale)
Performer: 
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge/Andrew Nethsingha; Timothy Ravalde (organ); with *Paul Whelan (baritone), *David Adams (violin), *Alice Neary (cello)

 If you are at all interested in Howells’s church music this disc is an obligatory purchase. What makes it special is the way in which the St John’s, Cambridge choir do more with a piece like the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis written for their own chapel than simply rattle it out mechanically for liturgical purposes. Here the emotion of the music feelingly and unapologetically wells upward to the surface, making raw and immediate the spiritual impetus of Howells’s writing.

Performance:
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Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin

Composer(s):
  • Schubert
Works: 
Die schöne Müllerin
Performer: 
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Helmut Deutsch (piano)
 This is easily the most searching and comprehensive account of Schubert’s first great song-cycle  that I have heard. Which is not to say that it is the most beautifully sung – that is Fritz Wunderlich; or the most agonised – that is Pears with Britten accompanying.
 
Performance:
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Offenbach - Vert-Vert

Composer(s):
  • Offenbach
Works: 
Vert-Vert
Performer: 
Thora Einarsdottir, Ann Taylor, Lucy Crowe, Toby Spence, Mark Le Brocq, Mark Stone, Anne-Marie Owens, Franck Leguérinel, Loïc Félix, Jennifer Larmore, Sébastien Droy, Franck Lopez; Geoffrey Mitchell Choir dir. Nicholas Jenkins; Philharmonia Orchestra/David Parry

 A beloved pet buried with due solemnity; a shy hero, Valentin, renamed Vert-Vert after that dead parrot who finds himself, and love, when he sings in public; a girl’s boarding school where two of its three pupils are married and the third is in love with Valentin/Vert-Vert and where the dancing master is secretly involved with the deputy headmistress; a regiment of moustachioed dragoons and a sexually ambitious prima donna.

Performance:
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Sullivan - Ivanhoe

Composer(s):
  • Sullivan
Works: 
Ivanhoe
Performer: 
Neal Davies, Stephen Gadd, James Rutherford, Peter Wedd, Peter Rose, Toby Spence, Matthew Brook, Leigh Melrose, Andrew Staples, Janice Watson, Catherin Wyn-Rogers, Geraldine McGreevy; Adrian Partington Singers; BBC National Orchestra of Wales/David Lloyd-Jones

 Ivanhoe was the grand opera everyone told Sullivan he should write, instead of Mr Gilbert’s Savoy frivols. Launched with immense expense at D’Oyly Carte’s new opera house, it sank after a season, unprofitable more than unpopular, and was never seriously revived. The main earlier recording, a semi-amateur performance (Pearl CDS 9165, 1989), was inadequate. This one, planned by the late Richard Hickox, is another matter. We can at last hear what Sullivan conceived – and it’s impressive.

Performance:
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Silvestrov - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

Composer(s):
  • Silvestrov
Works: 
Symphonies 4 & 5
Performer: 
Lahti SO/Jukka-Pekka Saraste

 Silvestrov’s music has evolved into a kind of endless keening nostalgia for the confidence, the melodic and harmonic riches, of the 19th-century symphonic tradition up to Mahler. Over the past decade or so this has come to seem a stance with limited returns. But not in the Fifth Symphony (1980-82), admired as one of his most significant works.

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