Jonathan Blumhofer
Night Triptych is an important disc, but also an inviting one that takes you to some fresh places well worth experiencing. Also, another success for harpsichordist Justin Taylor, and a well-earned one at that.
Nearly three decades after he left us, Bernstein’s music seems to be in good hands and anything but forgotten. And his larger musical influence strongly endures.
A winning reminder of Sir Neville Marriner’s impressive stylistic range as a conductor, a fine recording of a much-loved and -played Richard Strauss tone poem, and a striking, powerful presentation of the string quartets of James MacMillan.
Aspects of America, from the Oregon Symphony and its music director Carlos Kalmar, is at once superbly played, astutely programmed, and aesthetically necessary.
Jonathan Nott does right by Ligeti and Herbert Blomstedt does the same for Mozart. You didn’t know that Evgeny Kissin, the piano virtuoso, was also a composer? Join the club.
A triumphant disc from A Far Cry, some fresh thinking from Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Israel Philharmonic, and Thomas Hampson, a great purveyor of American song, focuses on Chicago.
Four new albums: the standouts include the finest Andris Nelsons/BSO Shostakovich collaboration to date and the Neave Trio’s wonderful new French Moments.
Conductor Aapo Häkkinen explores Robert Schumann’s writing for chorus;Andrew Manze caps off his three-volume Mendelssohn symphony survey with a glorious performance of the oddball Symphony no. 2.
Strong discs from Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Francois-Xavier Roth and his Paris-based period-instrument ensemble Les Siècles, and the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, an ad-hoc summer orchestra comprised of some of the U.S.’s finest conservatory musicians.
Garth Edwin Sunderland’s new chamber adaptation of this opera’s score, is, to date, the Bernstein Centennial Year’s best and most important recording.
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