Jonathan Blumhofer

Classical Music Album: Kevin Puts’ Orchestral Works — Plenty to Admire, Even Love

October 19, 2025
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This is a terrific compendium of new music of the best sort: the kind that’s brilliantly written, expressively direct, played with assurance, and engineered with clarity and warmth.

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Classical Music Album Review: Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi Celebrate the Music of Arvo Pärt

September 28, 2025
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Arvo Pärt’s ubiquity in concert halls and on disc for much of the last fifty years suggests that he’s got plenty to say to our cultural and historic moment.

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Classical Music Album Review: Composer Havergal Brian — A Less Than Robust Musical Harvest

September 27, 2025
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Across his career, British conductor Martyn Brabbins has used his bully pulpit to bring to light all sorts of deserving, unfamiliar repertoire, including the music of compatriot Havergal Brian.

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Arts Remembrance: In Memoriam, Christoph von Dohnányi (1929-2025)

September 13, 2025
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Christoph von Dohnányi was a rare breed: a truly great artist whose mind never rested and whose standards never settled.

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Classical Album Review: The Complete Dunbar/Moore Sessions

September 8, 2025
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Baritone Will Liverman is emerging as a musician with a capital “M,” one whose thoroughgoing approach to the craft is singularly illuminating, inviting, and affecting.

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Classical Album Review: Anna Clyne’s “Abstractions”

September 6, 2025
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That composer Anna Clyne is a gifted miniaturist is evident in “Abstractions”, a set of five movements offering musical commentary on the works of five contemporary visual artists.

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Classical Album Review: “Shostakovich Discoveries” — Music That Fell Through the Cracks

August 26, 2025
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This collection of ten items by the Soviet-era great manages to be more than a parade of mere curiosities.

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Classical Album Review: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Orchestral Works

August 24, 2025
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This fine album demonstrates that the music of neglected, mixed-race English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is well worth resurrecting.

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Classical Album Reviews: Price & Dvorak Piano Quintets and Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues

July 27, 2025
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Pianist Yulianna Avdeeva’s recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes & Fugues is a testament to that rarest of syntheses: a total identification of a musician with her repertoire. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács Quartet release an album that, on so many levels, is simply a joy.

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Classical Album Reviews: Jordi Savall Conducts Schumann and Bruckner and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s “The Planets & Earth”

July 25, 2025
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What business has a period orchestra got playing the music of Anton Bruckner? And why can’t conductors and orchestras just leave Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” alone?

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