Reviews

In a way this disc is iconic contemporary music of our times – challenging for performers and for listeners but not unfriendly. You feel that the music says something and that the players believe in it. The recording is first class and the highly professional presentation of accompanying booklet and photographs helpful and serious. All in all a deservedly high quality product delivered from the hands of top musicians

Despite its diatonic roots, the perpetual variation concept and 70s chromatic serialism make imposing demands on [the] listener’s patience and attention … but people who don’t care about such things could still appreciate the sheer virtuosity involved. You will certainly value this excellent performance.

Intriguing new collection of piano pieces. The [Farhat] sonata would sit comfortably alongside music by Bartok or Prokofiev. [Tafreshipour’s works] show a considerable depth to one of Iran’s and the modern world’s lesser-known, younger-generation composers.

Gemini make a fine noise: playing with great panache on this disc, and with a clear affinity with the composer’s craftsman-like idiom.

An interesting and substantial album… technically impressive.

Great music passionately played.

Ave Maris Stella, written in 1975, is a signature piece and a tour-de-force… a sphinx-like compositional enigma, brilliantly decoded by Gemini.

Ave Maris Stella is one of Peter Maxwell Davies’s greatest achievements, and one of the most powerful of all instrumental works. It’s a tough, thrillingly sustained musical argument, and a piece that’s as challenging for the performers as it is for the first-time listener, but the Gemini players seem to be totally on top of its thematic intricacies and finely honed lyricism.

One of [the composer’s] profoundest and most luminous works…it comes over here with an idiomatic ease and brilliance that make the work seem truly classical. Vintage Max indeed.

A fascinating contemporary canon… bombast and whimsy with the odd Lisztian flourish…. quizzical collections of acute angles and irregular shapes that Dullea colours beautifully.

Peter Maxwell Davies, the enfant terrible of British music back in the 1970s, has since become an established composer. Psalm 24 … is quite quiet music, gentle and beautifully arranged. Economies of scale… does have an affinity with Messiaen. [In Ave Maris Stella] the composer creates some remarkable and fascinating instrumental blends. The generally quiet (one might say almost subdued) mood of this recital draws listeners inward rather than pushing them away.

ALBUM OF THE MONTH. Soldano’s daring and lack of compromise, his indifference to conventional procedure, are mesmeric…. Inimitable. This is Rachmaninov ‘through a glass darkly’, leaving you awed and shaken by such an eloquent and anguished interpreter.

I like their Schubert. Every movement has been rethought for tempo, phrasing, and sound. They almost erupt into view, so striking and original is the music-making on this disc. Forceful, highly expressive style, filled with variety and color… the interpretations are so musical that I’d have to reach back to the Busch, Budapest, and Alban Berg Quartets for comparison.

These modern recordings are cleanly and most listenably played … the music is conveyed with impeccable fingerwork and an admirable sense of style. This series could and should run and run. Meanwhile, snap up these albums without delay and bask in some unfailingly delicious playing.

Characteristically eclectic but approachable; light, attractive lyricism and politely pointed drama, voiced here with appropriate delicacy and fluency by Philip Hartmann.

Mary Dullea catches all the moods very well indeed. Certainly the music on this CD will be unfamiliar to practically all listeners, but there are elements of interest throughout the disc… genuinely intriguing.

Roderick Chadwick takes listeners on a journey to and beyond Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux, Book 1, which he plays with considerable panache; Chadwick plays the {Szymanowski} sonata with strength and understanding. An interesting intellectual exercise with some very high-quality playing.

The excellent Roderick Chadwick [plays] delightful pieces.. the Szymanowski is imbued with passion and longing.

Sometimes the sheer quality of music-making makes a disc worth having. Zeynep Ucbasaran and Sergio Gallo are such a wonderful piano-four-hands team that their new Divine Art offering is a genuine pleasure. Ucbasaran and Gallo make a formidable piano-four-hands team, and the quality of their playing will be enough to endear this recording to pianists and to listeners.

The attraction of this disc lies in its concept (three pianos) and the quality of the performances (excellent).