Soundbite 60 Reviews

Here we write a short précis of a CD or DVD giving you a concise summary in a sixty-word soundbite.

Saint-Saëns
A winning collection of Saint-Saëns favourites – Danse macabre is animated and spooky, the Carnival – ‘The Swan’ and other animals – is vividly characterised and attentive to detail and...
January 24, 2007
William Schuman – Symphonies 3 & 5
Powerful, evocative and rigorous, the Third of William Schuman (1910-92) is one of the great American symphonies, dedicatedly wrought by Schwarz and his Seattle musicians. The Fifth is concise and...
January 6, 2007
Tchaikovsky Orchestral Suites
Tchaikovsky’s delectable Suite No.3, its finale – the marvellous Theme and Variations (often played separately) – offering a microcosm of the composer’s genius, is crammed-full of beauty and ingenuity. Maazel...
January 5, 2007
Petrushka & The Miraculous Mandarin
A hard-edged account appropriate to Stravinsky’s clear-sighted revision, Dohnányi presenting a graphic and lucid realisation rather than a fairy-tale narrative. The lurid story that Bartók’s score depicts is also objective....
January 4, 2007
The Firebird
With reproduction of vividness and depth, Dohnányi’s painstaking conducing combined with the VPO’s colourful, expressive, lucid-textured, rich-toned and dramatic playing makes for a very recommendable, often-magical Firebird (played in its...
January 3, 2007
Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony
An ardent and impulsive account of the now-so-popular Second Symphony finds Paul Kletzki’s meticulousness melding seamlessly into his Slavic projection of Rachmaninov’s darkly passionate score, the Suisse Romande Orchestra responding...
January 2, 2007
Sir Hubert Parry
He of “Jerusalem”, Parry (1848-1918) can be heard as being second in line to Brahms. Yet Parry has his own distinction; witness the winsome and ardent D major Sonata –...
January 1, 2007
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) was a giant among conductors; his unvarnished and trenchant performances have easily stood the test of time. In this collection of string-orchestra pieces – from Beethoven’s titanic...
December 31, 2006
Bartók & Lutosławski – Concertos for Orchestra
Two twentieth-century concerto-showpieces both popular and exacting. Paavo Järvi’s scrupulous and refined approach finds his Cincinnati musicians both virtuoso and sympathetic. The vivid recording can be overly-clinical and lack depth;...
December 30, 2006
Valentina Igoshina
Russian pianist and prize-winner Valentina Igoshina (born 1978) makes her Warner Classics debut with two oft-recorded masterpieces. She impresses with her poise, sensitivity and vitality. A lack of fantasy undermines...
December 29, 2006
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