Jonathan Blumhofer

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Concert Review: Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra Plays Prokofiev and Berlioz

July 23, 2025
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Mother Nature provided singular and poetic assistance during Sunday’s afternoon outing at Tanglewood.

Book Review: “Mark Twain” — The Life of a Champion of Liberating Irreverence

July 18, 2025
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At its best, Mark Twain emerges in this biography as much a live wire as ever: brash, outspoken, and overflowing with exasperating contradictions.

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