Jonathan Blumhofer
Missy Mazzoli’s scoring is generally airy and virtuosic, yet Dark with Excessive Bright doesn’t seem to add up to more than the sum of its parts.
Read More
Quatuor Diotima evince a thorough command of György Ligeti’s style, as well as a breathtaking grasp of the demands he makes on the instruments.
Read More Quatuor Diotima evince a thorough command of György Ligeti’s style, as well as a breathtaking grasp of the demands he makes on the instruments.
Read More
Pianist Beatrice Rana, joined by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and conductor Yanick Nézet-Séguin, plays the daylights out of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor.
Read More
Two takes on the orchestral music of Prokofiev — one impish and unpretentious, the other revelatory.
Read More
Even if this isn’t the most interpretively satisfying of Daniel Barenboim’s traversals through this repertoire, it is a deeply revealing one that draws on a lifetime of experience with this music.
Read More
Guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan new release is arresting for how natural the transcriptions sound: it’s as though they’d been intended for this instrumentation all along.
Read More
A trio of reviews of recordings that include sadly neglected pieces by Dvořák, pianist Mitsuko Uchida’s phenomenal Diabelli Variations, and a haunting, arresting round-up of new music by the Departure Duo.
Read More
For balance and virtuosity, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra plays Rued Langgaard’s “Klippepastoraler” for all it’s worth. That just doesn’t end up being very much.
Read More
Classical Music Commentary: Top Classical Performances and Recordings of 2022
What a great year 2022 was for classical music recordings: the canon, new music, neglected music – all of it was well-represented and from all comers.
Read More