Music Reviews
A grand collection of reviews. If you are a professional music reviewer and would like to contribute a review to this blog, please contact us.
Trumpet Treasures
Angelo Verploegen and Jasper van Hulten: The Duke Book (Just Listen Records) Jazz performance is sometimes compared to a tightrope walk. A dialogue between a horn player and a percussionist, with no piano, guitar or bass to provide the harmonic foundation, is like a tightrope walk without a net. On their recent album “The Duke […]
Old AND New – Another way of Looking at Things
Schumann, Mendelssohn and Schubert are seemingly sitting a bit forlorn between their ‘totally opposite’ Spanish numbers, who steal the show for all those, adventurous enough to open up their ears to modern times. Noelia Rodiles likes such combinations: “For me, this kind of pairing should be seen as the norm, rather than some kind of […]
Truly Exceptional Rachmaninoff performances by Fedorova
It took 18-year-old Sergueï Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff, working from early morning to late at night, no more than two and a half days to finish the original version of his First Piano Concerto by adding a middle and final movement to an earlier unfinished ‘concerto’ movement. It is modelled to Grieg’s piano concerto and, musical education […]
Unusual Repertoire that Merits wider Acknowledgment
Ole Bull, the other Norwegian composer from the town of Bergen, or, as Robert Schumann used to call him, the Norwegian Paganini, is for most music lovers and until this very day a hardly known mystery figure. We owe it to enterprising, though proudly nationalistic people like Morten Lindberg, the driving force behind 2L, that […]
Memorable Performance with Joyful Grandeur
Over the years interpretation of Baroque music has seen some considerable changes, moving from slow, almost dragging performances to the more recent agitated, almost aggressive versions, all in the name of Historically Informed Practice, with a wide variety in between. A notable example is Hermann Scherchen’s 1960 LP set of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. At the […]
Wytske Holtrop “Cello Frysienne”
What do the world-famous Dutch cellist, Anner Bijlsma, who passed away earlier this year, and his younger colleague, Wytske Holtrop, have in common? Both are closely linked to the same province in the Netherlands where Wytske’s cradle stood: Friesland. The next question then is: Do Friesians have something in their genes that produces cello players […]
Every downloaded bit of it is worth its value in Gold
Regretting that Myrios no longer releases Super Audio CD’s, many will be glad to learn that recordings will henceforth be available through downloadable digital files from Native DSD. And let me assure all classical music fans: Not only doesn’t it have any negative impact on the quality, you will also get the choice of higher […]
Two Audiophile DSD Jazz Reviews: First Meeting & Impromptu
Audiophile jazz listeners, take note! New music labels Just Listen and Sound Liaisons are recording and releasing the creative sounds of contemporary jazz from the Netherlands in DSD audio. Jazz music created and performed in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, France and Italy is widely reviewed in print media, books, and websites. But articles and news about […]
InterContinental Ensemble – Breathtakingly Good
How many will actually hear that these symphonies are played by only 9 musicians? Ernst Spyckerelle, responsible for all the arrangements, puts it this way, “How can we expand the repertoire for nonet, uncover the chamber music in orchestral pieces, while also working our own group sound?” And: “Making a musical arrangement is best compared […]
Lots of praise for WorthWeill Originals
Military bands are common, some are good, few are better. The Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy clearly belongs to the latter category, as listening to this new release will amply confirm. Run of the mill Oompah bands have their much-rewarded and appreciated social function in village life, but here we are dealing with […]
Modern? Contemporary? What does it mean?
What does “Modern” mean? What does “Contemporary” mean? In the world of Classical Music, composers and their works generally have to wait 50 years or more before acceptance occurs. All of the great masters “shocked” listeners with their works initially. Many of the works whose first recordings I bought as a young person are now […]
Melody Moore in “An American Song Album”
This album is a fine collection of songs by American composers, presented by soprano Melody Moore and pianist Bradley Moore. The repertoire includes Samuel Barber’s introspective Hermit Songs, Jake Heggie’s engaged cycles These Strangers and How Well I Knew the Light, Carlisle Floyd’s exploration of motherhood in The Mystery, Copland’s impressionist and oriental Four Early […]