Reviews

Burkard Schliessmann is one of the compelling pianists and artists of the modern era… a unique interpreter, never afraid to find a new expression and always searching for the heart of the music and the composer’s inspiration.

Hayden has foregone some of the proven avant-garde ways of ensuring a certain visceral accessibility of musical tone. With its obsessive faithfulness to its own particular manners and mechanisms, Becomings seems impelled by a particular paradox, achieving a very intense kind of detachment, which it sustains throughout. So much remains to be learned about what Becomings itself has to say. Fortunately, these remarkable discs make it possible for us to do just that.

Has the power to leave the listener both stunned and stimulated, at least when played with such needle-sharp articulation and maximal clarity of textural layers as on these Métier discs.

Organist Carson Cooman plays all of this music with sublime musicianship and a clear affinity to Marian Sawa’s highly communicative idiom. The recording is excellent … entirely convincing and natural sounding. There are few enough contemporary organ composers who have such a distinctive personal voice. Marian Sawa is most certainly among their number, and one with plenty to say and plenty of musical substance.

[Ferneyhough’s music] is intricate, ultramodern, and nigh impenetrable. It is dominated by atonality, processes, and dense, concentrated ideas that evolve seemingly of their own accord. Most of all, it is highly virtuosic. [The performances] are arresting: they undulate, hum, blaze, and explode with life. This is an important album.

The pieces on this album demonstrate vividly the range, variety and often enormous power of [Sawa’s] compositions. Spectacular… majestic. The music is wonderfully played by Carson Cooman.

Froberger’s music – in this splendid rendition by Gilbert Rowland – reveals huge variety and baroque beauty. Clever, ingenious and melodious engaging and attractive works.

A composer with a natural knack and ear for the organ…. the composer would have admired the dedication Cooman has placed into producing such a strong rendition of his multiple works. For anyone wanting something unique, there are many musical surprises to be found at Sawa’s door.

A seriously playful disc, conveyed in considered, committed performances, and captured in close, generous sound. There’s a lot of humour here, and deeply considered musical utterances too. There’s a certain raw directness about some of his playing that gives his accounts a rewarding authenticity, and a sense of vivid, unhurried storytelling.

Everything here is a gratifying listening experience and the untainted enjoyment of Gray’s participating pupils is palpable.

This highly desirable release offers valuable additions to the chamber music repertoire in committed, instinctive performances. Recording quality and booklet content and presentation are exemplary.

Ucbasaran has a sterling technique that surmounts all the challenges posed by Liszt’s technicolor keyboard writing. But she is also an artist who fully embraces the true magic of the featured Liszt virtuoso pieces. Ucbasaran celebrates all those elements, and to magical effect. Enthusiastically recommended.

Both the instrument and the playing are beautiful. Neither Skærved nor Athene Recordings could have presented this any better than they have.

Sometimes intricate, frequently oblique, and always provocative music. These are fiercely committed readings, recorded with clarity and presence, making for a release worthy of attention from all adventurous and inquiring listeners for its dedicated and impressive music-making.

White’s views are provocative and refreshing: he wants opera to be critical, to create a space for utopian thinking, to make a difference to the world… there is so much to admire in what the composer tells us of his ambition. The music is crisp, emphatic in its lines, strongly punctuated, severely fragmented, sharply pointillistic, high-modernist in orientation. A group of superb young vocal talents [give] assured, fine-voiced mastery of such difficult vocal writing, so commendably accompanied by the instrumental duo’s highly charged performance.

A very well-chosen collection of music from the 20th and 21st centuries. Gemini is a superb ensemble, and Ian Mitchell’s clarinet playing is highly imaginative and beautiful. Warmly recommended.

The lovely 1629 Amati violin, featured in this latest volume of the intriguing Great Violins series from athene, seems an instrument with an ideal depth of subtlety and sonority to bring this music to life. Skærved’s easy virtuosity and his obvious deep love of this instrument facilitate relaxed and wonderfully eloquent performances of the music.

Devotees of the organ will relish the rich tones of Cooman’s St. Michael Antiphonies, the St. Patrick Silhouette, and his Autumn Sketches. Here is a modern voice, rooted in the past but with hope in the future.

Hayden’s music will appeal to more adventurous listeners… ambitious and demanding.. a comparable stylistic terrain to Ferneyhough.

Scores of incredible complexity… outstanding interpretations. Electrifying.