REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.150) - "...[Philip Thomson] plays to the music's virtuosic elements, albeit with great flair and gusto; he exploits the brilliance of passagework at every available opportunity....He brings great eloquence to both the `Consolations'...and to a disturbing piece for left hand alone, `Ungarns Gott: Magyarok Istene' (God of the Magyars)...."

Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 11: Transcriptions of Vocal

Classical Music

Guitar Recital: Franco Platino

BACH, J.C.: Sinfonias, Vol. 1

Classical Music

Classical Music

Moving music of late-Romantic spirituality by three great 20th-century English composers.

Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor, Stanford Motets Op. 38, and Parry "Songs of Farewell."

Haydn: Symphonies, Vol. 3 (Nos. 44, 88, 104)

HAYDN: Symphonies, Vol. 4 (Nos. 45, 48, 102)

HAYDN: String Quartets Nos. 36-38

Haydn: String Quartets Op. 20, Nos. 1-3, "Sun Quartets"

Classical Music

Messiah was written with Handel's usual speed in 1741 for performance in Dublin, some of it rehearsed briefly by inadequate singers in Chester, as he made his way to Holyhead to embark for the voyage. The first performance was given at the New Music Hall in Fish-amble Street, Dublin, on 13th April, 1742, in aid of charity. The first London performance took place in Lent 1743 at Covent Garden, but the work failed to please, in part because of reservations that some held about the suitability of such a sacred subject for a theatre. Messiah only achieved it's lasting success after performances in 1750 in aid of the Foundling Hospital, established ten years earlier by Captain Thomas Coram. At his death in 1759 Handel left a fair copy of the score and all parts to the Hospital, an institution that continued to benefit from annual performances of the work. The Scholars Baroque Ensemble: The scholars Baroque Ensemble was founded in 1987 by David van Asch with the idea of complementing the "a-capella" work of the vocal ensemble The Scholars. This group, consisting also of the soprano Kym Amps, counter tenor Angus Davidson and tenor Robin Doveton, has had worldwide success during the last twenty years. The members of THE Scholars Baroque Ensemble are all specialists in the field of Baroque music and play original instruments (or copies) using contemporary techniques, singers and players work together without a director to produce their own versions of great masterpieces such as the St. John Passion by Bach, the 1610 Vespers by Monteverdi, Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen by Purcell, the Messiah and Acis and Galatea by Handel, all of which are being released by Naxos. Concert performances by the ensemble have been highly praised by critics and audiences alike.

Dance Instruction.

Classical Music

Though Anne Sofie von Otter’s Gramophone Award-winning disc remains the clear choice for a single record devoted to Grieg’s songs, this new one runs it close. Bodil Arnesen is a young lyric soprano with just the right freshness for these open-air songs (as so many of them are) of spring and hope. She is entirely firm, has a healthy glow on the upper notes, shows a nice feeling for nuance, and knows how to make the voice smile. Some limitation is felt in the few darker songs, such as the second of Op. 48, “Dareinst, Gedanke mein”, which von Otter takes at a slower pace, introducing an unearthly pallor into the tone, and providing a more weighty reminder of the link back to Schubert’s Wanderers Nachtlied and forward to Strauss’s Ruhe, meine Seele. Then in the next song, “Lauf der Welt”, von Otter has a style at once bolder and more confiding: she communicates as though to a larger audience and so on a bigger scale, enlarging what one might call the vocal gestures of intimacy to match. Yet for home-listening, especially if you are playing at a good volume, I’m not sure that such large expressiveness isn’t just a little overwhelming: certainly the return, from that, to the soprano’s relatively miniaturist style is no hardship.

The choice of songs is fine, so too the programming, in which the sequence (not chronological) is sensible and satisfying. For a proper conspectus of Grieg’s songs it is necessary to have the Haugtussa cycle, which von Otter includes and Arnesen does not; there is compensation, however, in the charming Bjornson settings (Op. 21), the two songs of Solveig, and others such as The Princess and “With a primrose” which are among the best of all. Erling Eriksen accompanies sympathetically, the balance of voice and piano is well judged and the booklet provides useful and attractive companionship.

-- Gramophone [5/1997]

Percy Grainger recorded these selections on Aeolian "Duo Art" piano rolls between 1915-1929, and they are reproduced on a modern piano. Gerald C. Stonehill supplied the piano rolls used for this disc.

Granados, E.: 12 Spanish Dances

GLAZUNOV: Violin Concerto in A Minor / The Seasons

Classical Music

Includes fantasia(s) for organ by Johann Philipp Krieger. Soloist: Joseph Payne.

Sephardic Romances: Traditional Jewish Music from Spain

REVIEWS:
BBC Music (3/98, p.71) - Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) - "...The LSO brass players, who know that their reputation rests more on Sibelius and 'Star Wars', will have ventured into Renaissance polyphony anticipating some raised eyebrows. The result, while not a work of restoration, is classy and unusually revealing..."

DVORAK, A.: String Quartets, Vol. 5 (Vlach Quartet) - Cypres