Reviews

The notably-gifted Australian-born pianist Antony Gray continues his valuable traversal of the complete solo piano music of Camille Saint-Saëns. This second set of CDs maintains the high standard of insight, technical command and recording quality. A landmark in solo piano repertoire recording history. A remarkable and valuable achievement, comprehensively recommended.

Convincing performances. This collection of chamber music provides snapshots of Polish music at thirty-year intervals from the turn of the last century to after World War II.

Everything on this disc has a feeling of being warm and sensitively interpreted, displaying Fialko’s considerable talents to very good effect in music that produces very considerable feelings of pleasurable enjoyment.

This is clearly music about which Schliessmann has thought carefully, and which he wants to present in a way that today’s audiences will find congenial, meaningful, and salutary. The very fine re-release on the Divine Art label only confirms the difficulty of knowing just how to react to it. Certainly this recording shines some new and different light on a very-well-known piece, a cornerstone of the keyboard repertoire.

“Hughes’ pieces come to seem like musical distillations of the sites’ sights, sounds, and smells. That the material is so vivid is easy to explain when his output includes operas and original live scores to classic silent films in addition to chamber, orchestral, and piano works. For anyone coming to the composer’s music for the first time, Music for the South Downs serves as a great place to start, given the evocativeness of its writing and its picturesque qualities.

A change of pace for the artist who is known for her performances of avant-garde and contemporary music. Her performance is impassioned and shows off more of her technical virtuosity coupled with her fine sense of line and lyrical interpretation. It all sounds so effortless in her hands that it entrances the listener. Highly recommended.

Ed Hughes’ compositional style is unique and thoroughly personal. Much ‘new’ music has close connections with the idea of place, and this is certainly true with Hughes’ music. Elements of folk music, the merest touch of jazz in some of the rhythms, and melody lines on the outer fringes of tonality pervade Hughes’ musical style. With Hughes, every time you listen, you discover something new, surely a treasure-house of musical inspiration.

It has that required aristocratic distinction mixed with a feeling of spontaneity as Chai reveals the work’s full beauty coupled with much forceful brilliance.

In some ways, the new disc is actually a better tribute than the earlier one [DDA 25210]… a way for the uninitiated to hear some music written by the person who is being lauded. All the performers perform with sensitivity and a sense of suitable deference to the person whose accomplishments the CD is designed to celebrate.

A solo piano recital that’s illuminated with quiet fire and spirit that shows how cultural clichés are about to be smashed. This is a true hot, new find.

The first and greatest masterpieces ever written for the instrument. Technically demanding and exhilarating: the cellist on these recordings, Marina Tarasova, takes a radically different approach, one which is inspirational and which infuses the works with vitality and spirit.

The technical finesse of Clarke’s choral writing and her ability to ‘home in’ on the expressive essence of the text(s) at hand makes for an emotional empathy which communicates directly to listeners. It helps when the contribution of the State Choir LATVIJA, under Māris Sirmais, is so attuned to this music. [This recording] underlines the stylistic extent of her music as well as its versatility over a range of texts from the Medieval to the present era.

Witchery from complexity: lyricism and ecstasy; pell-mell power and centred peacefulness, most skilfully played. The booklet is most beautifully composed and executed with colour photographs of the South Downs and extended insights by the composer into the witchery of his music.

Marina Tarasova is an absolutely first-rate cellist, sensitive to the dance forms underlying these remarkable compositions but equally aware of the extent to which Bach built upon and enlarged those forms rather than simply following them slavishly. It is clear from the very beginning that this will be a very personal interpretation… convincing on its own terms… emotionally satisfying in a way that more-straitlaced performances are not. Tarasova allows both the notes and their foundational heartfelt communication to flow with considerable beauty and an impressive level of technical precision.

A fascinating collection; the pianist is to be congratulated for his imagination in assembling such an interesting program. Performance is not lacking in any aspect… his stunning technical agility refuses to be suppressed. All of this sounds forth in full glory on the Steinway D.

This is an auspicious and impressive beginning to a series devoted to Saint-Saens’s piano music. All [the pieces] are well crafted, and many are technically quite demanding.

Jenny Q Chai shows her mastery in a sweeping performance; the music comes alive and breathes a freshness few performances are able to capture. There is not a whiff of academia in her playing. Her Fazioli sounds forth with power and all the color one could wish for.

A varied program ranging from sacred to secular, dissonant to melodic, and complex fare to children’s rhymes where spirited handclapping is the order of the day. She’s not in a rut. See what you think of her 4-movement Requiem. I rather like it.

Reeves couldn’t have asked for a better interpreter. Blue Sounds, with its playing distinguished by fluidity, authority, and musicality, shows the connection between him and Reeves to be especially strong. Blue Sounds appeals for many reasons beyond Hicks’s sterling treatments. What makes the three pieces particularly fascinating is to witness the way Reeves reconciles the spontaneous personal expression of blues (and jazz) with the meticulous through-composition of classical writing.

An Impressionistic visit and tribute to the 260 square miles of chalk hills in England’s southeast. Audiences already familiar with the area may find a number of touchstones here with which to identify [and] pleasant enough material for those who do not know the geography. Certainly all the performers treat the music with respect and play it with care and understanding.