Reviews

The considerable demands on the soloist are superbly realised in this recording. Terrific performance by Elizabeth Hilliard, which is wonderfully controlled in terms of vocal colour and dramatic urgency (even at reduced dynamic levels) – a triumph for both composer and performer.

The [Buckley] work, and its performance on this CD, represents a tour de force in contemporary Irish vocal music. It is significant to have this neglected figure [Ina Boyle] and her music included on this CD. Her ability to capture a mood with short gestures is clearly in evidence here, as is her operatic leaning.

The “12 Suites” establish for us Mattheson’s idiomatic immersion in the baroque of his time but also a definite originality. The music comes alive thanks to Gilbert Rowland’s apposite and enthusiastic performances. The set will appeal to anyone who revels in baroque harpsichord. I for one am glad to hear and in the future re-hear these unknown gems!

Meticulous and committed performances of four works, all highly advanced harmonically and expressive. There is beauty and character to these works. Raftery shows himself as a gifted exponent of high modernist chamber art. I come away from this program impressed and rewarded. Anyone with a liking for the intimacy of the chamber form and the sophistication of the classic modern expansiveness should readily take to this music as I have. Very recommended.

A delight… bracing, regretful, haunting, magical… in sum this is very worthwhile music. The Adams work alone is worth the price of admission. Yet all of it fascinates and pleases. And you will be helping Parkinson’s UK! So go for it.

If today [Szymanowski’s] music is not as frequently performed as it might be, the masterful quality and expressivity of the oeuvre as a whole demands a serious immersion. Barbara Karaskiewicz combines virtuosity and interpretive acuity to be a near ideal exponent of a series of breathtaking Szymanowski works. . I would be hard-pressed to imagine a better single CD that brings to us all that makes Szymanowski’s piano music important and movingly alive.

[The composer] never let go of the unique flavour that marks his writing. He always favoured the modernists and held a high regard for the French impressionists. Soldano is very at home with this repertoire, revealing a connection far beyond what academic understanding alone can forge. It’s a real pleasure to hear this music presented by an artist who clearly believes in its revival.

Their playing has been utter perfection, with a pianistically Zen oneness to all articulation, dynamics and phrasing. It always takes a few minutes of wonder at the technical beauty of their performance before you can relax into what the composer has actually intended to say. All the more reason to laud this substantial seven-CD set as the pinnacle of their lifetime’s work. It’s a beautiful set, brilliantly assembled and as inspired as anything they have ever done. Goldstone & Clemmow’s final recording project is definitely an item to collect.

[The Soloists] are solidly supported by the good pianist Nigel Foster. The 19 songs on this recording were chosen from a total of three hundred. Roe always lets the chosen text flow into the composition. She creates settings aligned to the subjects of her texts and also uses unusual subjects for her songs.

There’s not much point talking about the playing (world class) or the composing (ditto). What’s it like to listen to? With so many composers, it’s clearly a varied listen. An interesting album, a blend of jazz, film noir soundtrack, classical and ambient.

This is a repertoire from the top of the pianistic canon, requiring not only the mastery of the workshop, but also the exceptional knowledge and sensitivity – these qualities Barbara Karaśkiewicz owns. [A] very successful album.

Polish pianist Barbara Karaskiewicz shows that she can master all of the heterogeneous aspects of Szymanowski’s styles… a perfect technical and stylistic maturity. The recording is characterized by a full and wide sound…. [and] has a natural glow without application of additional effects.

The Italian pianist Alfonso Soldano plays a highly entertaining program. The interpretations seem very natural and balanced, leaving in the music the charm that characterizes it.

Barbara Karaskiewicz makes the development of the composer from the romanticist to the expressionist clear and plays the four works on a high level technically, musically always correct, and highly sensitive.

The context adds a certain poignancy and significance to a recording that stands on its own as a finely executed program of chamber works. Mind Music is polished, expressive, and programmed coherently. More than that, however, it is a provocation to think more deeply about neurodegenerative conditions, the relationships between music and health, and the role of music as a social force.

[Parker’s] music, on the present evidence, is engaging, always easy on the ear. A fun disc, without doubt – especially in such expert performances as these.

This intriguing omnibus of [Raftery’s] chamber music presents a musical personality that is, at turns, somber, puckish, and alert to the voices of musical history… this is the music of a rather quirky, but intelligent and compelling artist. The performances are uniformly excellent.

Horrendously difficult technical passages, spectacular and jolly difficult. [In Thalberg’s Fantasie alone] there are horrendously complex pianistic configurations including fiendish octave passages, ‘sweeping arpeggios’ and extremely fast chromatic melodic patterns… it is utterly amazing. Interestingly, more than half of these ‘paraphrases’ are receiving their “first commercial recording”. Wright’s playing is superb. The sound quality of the recording is ideally balanced: every detail from the most intimate arabesque to the hammered octaves is clear and undistorted.

Irish new music is a significant yet relatively unknown facet of the European scene which is only now coming into its own… among its most vital practitioners, Rhona Clarke. The programme works well as a sequence – the trios separated by the heady evocation of Gleann Dá Loch and the sombre choral underlay of Con coro, then rounded off by the tranquillity of In umbra. The Fidelio Trio[‘s] expertise is second to none among present-day ensembles. Immediate sound, and a disc that does Clarke’s profile no harm at all.

Some of the music on flautist Richard Craig’s second Métier disc might simply be called post-everything. When there’s no tonality, no atonality, no melody and few pitches, what exactly is left? Quite a lot, as it happens – and therein lies the interest. Such technically complex, ‘post-everything’ music paradoxically brings us back to a primal, at times ecstatic state of Fauvist force. Craig owns the works here. The warmth of his tone along with a reverberant room sound, while taking nothing away from the compositions’ severity, succeeds in making them approachable.