Nigel Kennedy

Nigel Kennedy - Walton: Violin Concerto & Viola Concerto (1987)  Music

Posted by tirexiss at March 15, 2024
Nigel Kennedy - Walton: Violin Concerto & Viola Concerto (1987)

Nigel Kennedy - Walton: Violin Concerto & Viola Concerto (1987)
EAC | FLAC (image+.cue, log) | Covers Included | 56:52 | 246 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | Catalog: CDC 7 49628 2

Like his teacher Yehudi Menuhin before him, the artist formerly known as "Nige" proves to be an uncommonly dab performer on the viola. He certainly has the full measure of the 26-year-old Walton's astonishingly mature concerto (unquestionably the finest of the composer's three), penetrating to its bitter-sweet core with devastating emotional candour. Similarly, Kennedy's bitingly intense reading of the yearningly lyrical Violin Concerto earns the warmest plaudits in its characterful involvement and edge-of-seat spontaneity.

Nigel Kennedy, Berliner Philharmoniker - Vivaldi II (2005)  Music

Posted by tirexiss at March 15, 2024
Nigel Kennedy, Berliner Philharmoniker - Vivaldi II (2005)

Nigel Kennedy, Berliner Philharmoniker - Vivaldi II (2005)
WEB | FLAC (tracks) - 370 MB | 01:08:58
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics

Nigel Kennedy created a sensation with his pumped-up Vivaldi on The Four Seasons, and this second volume of concertos with the strings of the Berlin Philharmonic offers more of the same: slapdash tempi, outrageously loud dynamics, over-the-top techniques, a pugnacious basso continuo, hammered exchanges between soloist and orchestra, and an aggressive pop/rock sensibility that speaks more of this star violinist than of the composer.
Nigel Kennedy - Inner Thoughts: Bruch, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Vivaldi, Elgar, Mendelssohn (2005)

Nigel Kennedy - Inner Thoughts (2005)
Max Bruch, J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms, Antonio Vivaldi, Felix Mendelssohn, Edward Elgar

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 394 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 184 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | # 0946 3 31049 2 1 | Time: 01:09:33

Medieval Baebes and other far greater shocks to the bourgeoisie have come along. Wild adventures placed under the rubric of performances of Vivaldi's Four Seasons are commonplace. Yet Nigel Kennedy continues to roost atop the classical sales charts in Europe, and even to command a decent following in the U.S. despite a low American tolerance for British eccentricity. How does he do it? He has kept reinventing himself successfully. Perhaps he's the classical world's version of Madonna: he's possessed of both unerring commercial instincts and with enough of a sense of style to be able to dress them up as forms of rebellion. Inner Thoughts is a collection of slow movements – inner movements of famous concertos from Bach and Vivaldi to Brahms, Bruch, and Elgar.

Nigel Kennedy - Vivaldi: The New Four Seasons (2014)  Music

Posted by Designol at Oct. 4, 2022
Nigel Kennedy - Vivaldi: The New Four Seasons (2014)

Nigel Kennedy - Vivaldi: The New Four Seasons (2014)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 344 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 151 Mb | Scans included
Classical Crossover, Contemporary | Label: Sony Classical | # 88875076722 | Time: 01:01:21

If anyone has earned the right to mess around with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons it is Nigel Kennedy, the violin world’s Marmite violinist. Remember how fresh he made this music sound on his recording of a quarter-century ago? This latest version offers a ferment of all he’s played since – concertos, jazz, Jimi Hendrix. It’s affectionate and irreverent in equal measure, and Kennedy and his Orchestra of Life never sound less than riveting. Pretty much all Vivaldi’s notes are there; around, above and in between them come interjections, overlays and linking passages involving guest musicians from jazz and rock: Orphy Robinson, Damon Reece, Z-Star and others. Spring is welcomed in by a distant-sounding intro on an electric-guitar. Summer’s storms bring forth bursts of crazily sampled static. Autumn tears off at a cracking pace, but with a jazz trumpet sauntering lazily over the top. It all sounds like a colossal jam session from the inside of a Botticelli painting.
Nigel Kennedy, Paul Tortelier - Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Rococo Variations (1993)

Nigel Kennedy, Paul Tortelier - Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Rococo Variations (1993)
EAC | APE (image+.cue, log) | Covers Included | 56:11 | 211 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | Catalog: 0777 7 54890 2 6

Nigel Kennedy’s repackaged 1986 recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is an adventure – free, rhapsodic, emphasising the constant flow of song which is the work’s main asset. Perhaps he’s a little over-keen to emphasise what melancholy there is here, nearly bringing the outer movements to a halt with the bitter-sweet dreams of second subjects, but the Canzonetta is a miracle of introspection. All this passes Gil Shaham by. While the young Israeli clearly has a fabulous palette, conjuring a bright, beautiful sheen at the top of the instrument (though unduly spotlit by DG), he rarely uses it discriminatingly enough, and the sense of flexible movement so vital for the Tchaikovsky is missing.

Nigel Kennedy - The Kennedy Experience (1999)  Music

Posted by popsakov at Dec. 19, 2022
Nigel Kennedy - The Kennedy Experience (1999)

Nigel Kennedy - The Kennedy Experience (1999)
EAC Rip | FLAC (Tracks) + Cue + m3u + Log ~ 385 Mb | MP3 CBR320 ~ 168 Mb
Full Scans | 00:55:06 | RAR 5% Recovery
Chamber Music, Classical Pop, Experimental, Free Improvisation | Sony Classical #SK 61687

Tribute albums sometimes can backfire and come across as acts of extreme hubris. The name of Jimi Hendrix, who wrote the six songs on this album, appears only once, buried in teeny type in the booklet’s credits. Sure, we gather as much from the album’s title and names of the tracks, but Hendrix at least deserves cover credit. As for the music, Kennedy and his young pals perform arrangements that are exquisitely crafted and stunningly clear, but only remotely related to the originals. Most are three times as long as the songs, and dwell on riffs that Hendrix threw away in performance. The ensemble is lovely in its own way, but folksy acoustic guitar strums and genteel plucks of the cello are just not what Hendrix was about. Kennedy’s attempts to transform his violin into a psychedelic instrument–playing with harmonics to reproduce feedback, doubling a line with octaves–sound clever, but he spills his bag of tricks early on. Whoever this album is aimed at, it comes across as a gimmick.

Nigel Kennedy - Nigel Kennedy Plays Jazz (1984) [Reissue 1990]  Music

Posted by gribovar at Aug. 23, 2021
Nigel Kennedy - Nigel Kennedy Plays Jazz (1984) [Reissue 1990]

Nigel Kennedy - Nigel Kennedy Plays Jazz (1984) [Reissue 1990]
EAC Rip | FLAC (image+.cue+log) - 226 MB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.93) - 129 MB | Covers - 7 MB
Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Crossover Jazz | RAR 3% Rec. | Label: Chandos (CHAN 6513)

This recording was made the same day as Kennedy's debut recording (Elgar Sonata.) He had some studio time left over, so he and Peter Pettinger spontaneously played some jazz standards. No planning, no rehearsal, no previous experience playing jazz together. In that context, this is a remarkable recording. And a historical first that will likely never be repeated - debut classical and debut jazz recording being recorded on the same day.
Jazz violin is hard to come by. Few people have the technique to play the violin well enough to even begin to serve the free flow and spontaneity of jazz. And few, if any, jazz musicians have ever recorded a more than passable performance of classical repertoire…

Nigel Kennedy - Mendelssohn & Bruch: Violin Concertos (1988)  Music

Posted by tirexiss at Jan. 13, 2024
Nigel Kennedy - Mendelssohn & Bruch: Violin Concertos (1988)

Nigel Kennedy - Mendelssohn & Bruch: Violin Concertos (1988)
EAC | FLAC (image+.cue, log) | Covers Included | 01:10:35 | 333 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | Catalog: CDC 7 49663 2

Kennedy has shrewdly augmented the regular concerto coupling of Bruch and Mendelssohn with the rare Schubert work, and the result is a generous issue which on every front can be warmly recommended for exceptionally strong and positive performances, vividly recorded. The Rondo in A, D438, dating from 1816, the year of his Concertstuck in D for violin and orchestra, was originally written for solo violin accompanied by string quartet.

The Nigel Kennedy Quintet - Shhh! (2010)  Music

Posted by gribovar at Sept. 15, 2023
The Nigel Kennedy Quintet - Shhh! (2010)

The Nigel Kennedy Quintet - Shhh! (2010)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 352 MB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.93) - 126 MB | Covers - 19 MB
Genre: Contemporary Jazz | RAR 3% Rec. | Label: EMI (50999 6 08502 2 5)

The album covers of the iconoclastic British violinist Nigel Kennedy often promise more craziness than they actually deliver, and that's true in the case of this release, presenting to the buyer a cartoon of a mohawk-wearing figure saying "Shhh!" The contents differ considerably from what the cover would suggest; Shhh! is a more or less straight-ahead album of jazz in various styles. Kennedy came by his inclination toward jazz honestly, playing jazz on the piano as a child and appearing in a duet concert at age 16 with Stéphane Grappelli despite warnings from his teachers. Here he appears, as on several other albums from the 2005-2010 period, with an all-Polish group of musicians (except for Afro-British percussionist Xantoné Blacq)…
Nigel Kennedy, Berliner Philharmoniker - Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Concertos (2000)

Nigel Kennedy, Berliner Philharmoniker - Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Concertos (2000)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 308 Mb | Total time: 58:54 | Scans included
Classical | Label: EMI Classics | # 7243 5 57016 2 6 | Recorded: 2000

Kennedy, the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy, has a well-earned reputation as the bad boy of classical music. His defiantly anti-Establishment antics anger traditionalists and tickle the rebellious. This venture into the Bach canon will confirm both camps in their views. Traditionalists will fume at such excesses as the exaggerated, ugly flourish at the end of the E Major Concerto and the supersonic speeds adopted for the Allegro movement of the two-violin Concerto among much else, including the puzzle-booklet more appropriate to a pop release. Kennedy's fans, though, will relish those elements of what is an ultimately fairly straightforward set of Bach interpretations enlivened by personal touches, a string sound that owes much to "authentic instrument" practices, and zippy speeds that make for exciting listening.