Soundbite 60 Reviews

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

Varied Violin Concertos
Two hugely attractive ‘Cinderella’ violin concertos brought to life by Boris Belkin. Paganini’s daredevil concerto – Mehta a lively, spot-on accompanist – is packed with good tunes and pyrotechnics while...
December 28, 2006
Malcolm Arnold Wind Concertos
These diverse concertos of Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) delight with engaging melodies tinged by wit, irony and devilry. The flute concertos scurry and beguile, the clarinet one is stern yet with...
December 27, 2006
Rachmaninov Young and Old
An excellent introduction to Rachmaninov’s ‘late’ music – the symphony and concerto are masterpieces: music of gut passion, striking invention and colour, and orchestrated with wonderful sophistication. Kletzki finds the...
December 26, 2006
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
Extraordinary wide-ranging playing from a perfectionist! The miraculous Scarlatti sonatas are distilled for maximum colour and expression; the Beethoven enjoys weight, clarity, searching and wit; and Schumann’s fantastical opus –...
December 25, 2006
William Alwyn
David Lloyd-Jones’s William Alwyn odyssey continues. The colourful, suave Elizabethan Dances (1956-57) and the swinging, stirring Festival March (1951) both reflect post-war Britain leaving austerity behind. From earlier, The Innumerable...
December 20, 2006
Schoenberg
Anyone resisting Arnold Schoenberg’s music should find this release a fine bargain-introduction to the composer’s different sides – the radical Five Orchestral Pieces, the quirky ‘freely adapted’ Cello Concerto after...
December 18, 2006
Stephen Hough’s Spanish Album
Soler offers joyous welcome, Granados insouciant pleasure; Albéniz is mysterious and sultry, Mompou dreamy and refined. Longas lets the (Spanish) sunshine in. Debussy is the consummate painter and (Spanish) linguist,...
December 9, 2006
Debussy Chamber Music
This release is launched by Dwyer’s flute: a languorous ‘Faune’, sensitively transcribed by Sachs (around 1920), and has Syrinx ravishingly to itself. In the sonatas, the three that Debussy completed...
December 8, 2006
Haydn Arias & Cantatas/Arleen Augér
The centrepiece of this must-have collection is an orchestrated version of the substantial cantata “Arianna a Naxos”, here elegantly furnished with vocal embellishments and cadenzas; the remaining four works are...
December 7, 2006
Inextinguishable & Poem of Ecstasy
A symphony of immutable strength paired with an orgiastic symphony-manqué. Zubin Mehta revels in Scriabin’s colourful extremes and leads a tensile, driven and humane ‘Inextinguishable’, maybe too luxuriant in LA...
December 6, 2006
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