Pristine Classical

Claudio Abbado and his hand-picked Orchestra Mozart have become famous for their exceptional recordings of music by their namesake, but to assume every work in their repertoire has a Koechel number attached to it would be a mistake. For this 2012 release, it demonstrates a great aptitude for the violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg, and the playing is every bit as convincing as the treatment of Mozart's oeuvre.

Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) is one of the most underappreciated composers of the 20th century, whose music is only now, thanks primarily to this new series by Chandos, coming into major recognition. Gerhard's music transcends any easy categorizing. Suffice to say that it's a rigorous (almost radical) postmodernism that employs extreme musical textures and sonic embellishments of surprising complexity….. …This will knock your teeth out.

Paul Cook @ Amazon.com

The recording project Northscapes weaves works—from the first decades of the twenty-first century by composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe—into a tapestry of soundscapes, vibrating between landscape and the imagination, between the external and internal, between nature and psyche. What these works for piano solo share is a particular attunement to nature, reverberating out of the ever-present reservoir of pagan myths, legends, and folk music of the region. Their sensitivity to the sonic environment allows these composers to explore the liminal space dividing yet connecting landscape, soundscape, and mindscape.

This reissue commemorates the 50th anniversary of Grainger’s death in February 1961. Harmonium, four guitars, two mandolas, two mandolins, two ukuleles, piccolo, three clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two alto saxophones, horn, strings, piano, baritone and choir: and that’s just the scoring for one piece, the famous sea shanty Shallow Brown. Grainger’s Jungle Book cycle was recorded here (for the original Hyperion release) for the first time. The eleven contrasting movements vividly portray the sentiments of Kipling’s poetry and Grainger wrote of the cycle that it was ‘composed as a protest against civilization’.

The quality of the recorded sound is so perfectly clear on this recording, like finely etched crystal, while at the same time it is so robust and resonant, that it is difficult to believe that the piano played on these two marvelous CDs is a replica of a 1785 Walter fortepiano, a smaller and much more fragile instrument than today's modern concert grand pianos.