Approach Magazine From June 2015

Wilco Evolving from a rough-and-tumble alt-country act into a mature and eclectic indie rock ensemble, Wilco have become critical favorites and cult heroes on the back of a stylistically diverse body of songs from founder Jeff Tweedy.

Wilco Evolving from a rough-and-tumble alt-country act into a mature and eclectic indie rock ensemble, Wilco have become critical favorites and cult heroes on the back of a stylistically diverse body of songs from founder Jeff Tweedy.

Firma Melodiya presents concert recordings of J.S. Bach's compositions performed by Grigory Sokolov, arguably the most intellectual of all modern Russian pianists. At the age of 16, he became a winner of the 3rd International Tchaikovsky Competition and has been an active concert performer for more than forty years. There are just few musicians now who are described as "He lives for the sake of music. Only music". Sokolov's biography is not rich in external events as he is not a public figure. However, those who have heard him in concert or on records will never be able to forget his play. Sokolov prefers deeply considered "music of mind" to virtuosic lustre. He is mostly known as an interpreter of Bach's works, late Beethoven and Brahms. "He is often compared with Gould. But Sokolov has a Bach of his own. He is more of a philosopher", a critic wrote about his performance in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. But unlike the Canadian intellectual genius of pianism, Sokolov has preferred concerts to recordings. "The biggest gap is the one between the microphone and a man", the musician believes. The Goldberg Variations, Bach's most complicated cycle from the performing point of view, was recorded by Grigory Sokolov in concert in 1982. The album also includes Partita in C minor and English Suite in A minor recorded in various years.

Over the past 40 years Philippe Herreweghe has been working with some extraordinary soloists with whom he has had very fertile and stimulating dialogues, both musically and personally. Philippe Herreweghe: "It seems important to give these musicians the opportunity to express themselves on the label PHI in works they are particularly fond of." This is the case of the present recording. Christine Busch, leader of the orchestra of Collegium Vocale Gent, recorded the Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin by J. S. Bach - a work she admires, and she has been playing since her childhood. Philippe Herreweghe: "Christine Busch inspires by her technical perfection, her strength, her humility, her sense for poetry, as well as by her qualities needed to serve the greatest of all composer."

Rosanne Philippens is considered one of the greatest violinists in the Netherlands. Her open and communicative style of performance won her first prizes at competitions including the Dutch National Violin Competition (Amsterdam Concertgebouw 2009) and the Freiburg International Violin Competition (2014). Rosanne has the honour to play on the Barrere Stradivarius (1727) from the Elise Mathilde Foundation, the violin that Janine Jansen used to play for the past fifteen years. "Rosanne Philippens’s brilliantly focused, expressive sound is coupled with an inspired programme of music by and for virtuoso violinists of the Romantic period. An absolute joy from start to finish." (BBC Music Magazine, 5 stars)

Recording of the Month, Gramophone Magazine, September 2016. Award-winning violinist Christian Tetzlaff, together with pianist Lars Vogt, offers an exciting program of Violin Sonatas by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). This new release continues a successful series of recordings of violin chamber works by the duo. Johannes Brahms’s Violin Sonatas are among the greatest masterpieces in 19th-century chamber music. Brahms wrote these sonatas between 1878 and 1888,at the height of his creative powers. With these powerful works Brahms brought the genre of violin sonatas into a new dimension. Included is also Scherzo movement from the F. A. E. Sonata which Brahms contributed to a composite sonata with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich in 1853.

GRAMOPHONE Magazine Editor's Choice - February 2016. Critical acclaim for Jonathan Plowright's two previous discs in his series of Brahms’s works for solo piano includes distinctions such as ‘10/10’ on the website Classics Today and top marks in Diapason as well as ‘Instrumental Choice of the Month’ in BBC Music Magazine. On his third disc Plowright presents the listener with two seemingly contradictory aspects of Johannes Brahms: the deeply serious, emotionally charged, but also meticulously constructed late Piano Pieces of Op. 118 and their precursor Op. 76 appear side by side with the unapologetic extroversion and scintillating verve of most (if not all) of the 16 Waltzes Op. 39, and the flamboyant Variations on a Hungarian Melody. Brahms’s fascination with Hungarian gypsy music stemmed from his friendship with the violinist Eduard Reményi, and found an outlet in several works, among which the Hungarian Dances are probably the most famous.