This is an odd coupling. The notes don’t help explain the collation of these disparate works except for the conductor’s rather vaguely argued affection for both pieces. Brahms comes out of it best as Pasternack gives the great work due weight, although the performance loses energy in the development section of the first movement. Bartók is a different matter. The Miraculous Mandarin was the final stage work of one of the key composers of the 20th century. It is set in a brothel, where thugs use an attractive young girl to draw men in to murder and rob them. The music is remarkable and the composer uses all his skills in conjuring up the lurid world described. Feverish strings rush us forward into the score, and the composer’s trademarks of sliding trombones and exotic percussion are employed to great effect. However, the piece had a rocky start…. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

It’s heartening to see major labels still signing largely unknown talent. In a well-planned and intelligent program to showcase his eclectic virtuosity, Chen raises the curtain with Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata, music which supposedly came to the composer in a dream in which it was played by the devil. The work begins with sweet simplicity and becomes more fearsomely difficult as it progresses. By the end, Chen’s virtuosity is like shards of light refracted through a brilliant prism. The first major work is the famous chaconne from JS Bach’s D minor Partita. For all its structural formality, this sublime movement harbours as wide an array of emotions as any Romantic violin piece, ranging from joy to solemnity and grief. Chen maintains the shape in one great arc but also remembers… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Dance forms are the order of the day in this recital replete with waltzes, polkas and tangos.

Elizabeth Watts caught international attention when she won the Song Prize at the 2007 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and her star has risen steadily since, particularly in art song and 18th-century repertoire. This release – her second solo disc – is a testament to her talent in both of these specialties, bringing a lieder singer’s sensibility to a selection of Bach’s most beautiful and best-loved vocal music. Watts’s warm, focused soprano has an unforced beauty to it, particularly in its luscious middle register. Her diction is excellent, her phrasing graceful, and she demonstrates scrupulous attention to the text – assets honed in recital and which also make her an elegant Bach singer. That said, it’s not until the second half of this disc that she really shines, the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

We’ve been blessed over the past six months with two fine recordings of Mozart’s 20th and 27th piano concertos together: first Kissin’s with the Kremerata Baltica for EMI and now this one, by Dame Mitsuko Uchida. Her reputation as a great interpreter of Mozart is built solidly on an impressive discography, including the complete sonatas (earning her a Gramophone Award) and concertos (with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Tate). Decades after her previous recordings of the latter she has begun a new cycle with the Cleveland Orchestra, this time choosing to direct the works herself from the keyboard. Her first effort in the new series, concertos 23 and 24, won Uchida her first ever Grammy Award this year. This, the second instalment, is just as good. Her tone is elegant and fluent… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The Cyrus CD6 SE CD player had been our favourite for some time, until last year that is, when the brilliant Audiolab 8200CD blew us away. That doesn’t make this group test a foregone conclusion, though, oh no. Not only does it represent a fierce struggle for the Cyrus to regain its belt, it also introduces two new challengers that hope to throw a spanner in the works. Ok, so “new” might not quite be the best phrase with which to describe the Roksan Kandy K2, which looks identical to its’ previous CDS model, but underneath the hood it’s undergone some quite hefty revisions, and as the previous model received a solid four stars, the portents look good. The Marantz… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Artists of Kempf's calibre should be treasured.

This documentary could just as easily have been called “monomania”. It is a character study of obsessive Steinway technician Stefan Knüpfer, a virtuoso among piano tuners. He prepares the instruments for the actual virtuosi, responding with inexhaustible patience to their often nebulous requests. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, for instance, wants a piano with two contrasting soundworlds for a recording of The Art of Fugue – an effect Knüpfer attempts to realise, in a rather Chaplinesque episode, with the help of removable sound absorbers and glass sound mirrors. Knüpfer’s mishaps continue when Lang Lang announces that the piano tuned especially for his solo concert is better suited for chamber music. Comedy duo Igudesman & Joo draw a welcome spark of levity from the technician, whose implacable earnestness does grow a bit dull at times. In fact, the film’s only shocking moment is when we learn Knüpfer has a family. What? A life away from Steinway?  Knüpfer is not the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Yundi – he left the ‘Li’ behind on his move to EMI – is the “other” Chinese classical pianist. A rival to Lang Lang, Yundi has a less hysterical fan base (although it is similarly vast) and a more sophisticated European sheen to his sound. Chopin is Yundi’s composer of choice, and this CD is devoted to a live all-Chopin concert given in Beijing in May of last year. The bonus DVD contains the complete concert, plus two extra nocturnes. There is no gainsaying the poise and evenness of Yundi’s technique. One example may be found in the fast scale passages towards the close of the Grande Polonaise Brilliante Op 22: they are beautifully clear. The pianist throws himself with gusto into the tumultuous first movement of the Sonata in B-flat minor, bringing light and shade to his attack so the rapid repeated chords never descend into a bang-fest. The real test of this… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

What comes across most vividly in the Scottish pianist’s recordings, particularly in Impressionist repertoire, is a deep and joyous engagement with the sonorities of his instrument. Here he offers up some of the most fluid and vibrant Ravel I’ve ever heard, superior to Louis Lortie’s and to the earlier Hyperion survey by Angela Hewitt. Gaspard de la nuit is the true test of technique for any Ravelian. While Osborne doesn’t quite attain the mirage-like perfection of Martha Argerich’s reading, his Gaspard is impeccably played, bringing darkness and mystery to the fore. Le tombeau de Couperin is faster and livelier than that of Anne Queffélec (whose interpretation he acknowledges as an influence) but loses none of the delicate refinement or lilting dance character. As for the other famous works on the disc: in Pavane for a dead princess, Osborne shows just the right amount of restraint and eschews the tendency – much lamented by Ravel – to play… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Athough not yet 40, American composer Jennifer Higdon started late on a musical career but is now in hot demand. This 2008 violin concerto, written for and dedicated to her ex-student Hilary Hahn, won Higdon the Pulitzer Prize. The committee called it a “deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity.” High harmonics from the soloist introduce the playful first movement, followed by a lyrical and tonal slow movement that rises to a bracing climax before subsiding. The finale gives Hahn plenty of fireworks to play with. It resembles the final movement of Barber’s concerto. She is equally brilliant here, her clean, clear tone perfectly centred throughout. Her fast passagework is immaculate and, beyond technical matters, she brings every phrase to life. On disc Hahn has always coupled a lesser-known concerto with a concert favourite (Bernstein/Beethoven, Schönberg/Sibelius) and does so again here. She is light and lean in the Tchaikovsky, matched all the way by Petrenko’s detailed accompaniment. The effect is… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Sibelius’s Fourth is, for me, the most enigmatic symphony ever written. Both the second movement scherzo and finale trail off elliptically. Inkinen and his New Zealanders capture the intense bleakness of the first movement (described by one commentator as “groping in utter darkness in order to avoid the abyss, aided only by the occasional shaft of weak sunlight”). In the slow movement, the temperature drops to absolute zero – the subatomic particles simply stop vibrating – and here, these forces are up with the best. In the finale, perhaps the strangest movement of all, Inkinen cleaves to the glockenspiel (instead of chimes), whose silvery sonority is, on the face of it, the most incongruous instrument Sibelius could have chosen: it can sometimes remind you of The Nutcracker, or even worse, Der Rosenkavalier. Not here, thank heavens! I’m not quite as taken with the Fifth, although it has many… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in