Jonathan Blumhofer
This new recording of Charles Villiers Stanford’s”Requiem” by Martyn Brabbins, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), and the University of Birmingham Voices, is beautiful and often memorable.
An album that does admirable justice to one of the most prolific, significant, and increasingly long-lived composers of a remarkable generation.
Randall Goosby’s sophomore album proves that the violinist is the real deal.
This is an album of top-notch orchestral playing. Yet the real star is Karina Canellakis.
In place of coherent, in-depth analysis, the author has provided us with a series of short profiles on various individuals, some of them familiar, others less so. The tack presents problems that can’t be overcome.
The best items in this all-Mozart album are the concertos.
Violinist Maria Ioudenitch seems to know how to get directly at the expressive core of this fare without devolving into showboating or histrionics.
In both performances tempos are fleet but not rushed. The big moments – from the hellish apex of the first movement’s development to the screaming climax of the Scherzo and the cathartic resolution of the finale – pack heavy punches.
While one is willing to grant a 27-year-old conductor some benefit of the doubt, there’s little here to suggest that the Great Nordic Hope of Classical Music isn’t simply out of his depth.
Music Documentary Review: “Music Under the Swastika” — Uncomfortably Timely
The road to ultimate destruction is lined by spiritual apathy, intellectual carelessness, and moral equivalency.
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