Rachel Podgorica

A new recording from violinist Rachel Podger is always worth attention. And before you even get to appreciating the first-class performances - faithful realizations of Bach’s Art of Fugue skillfully arranged for strings - you notice the immediate, vibrant presence of the instruments. The sound is stunning, reminiscent of the early days of digital recording, when listeners used to marvel at how realistic the sound was. Channel Classics has been doing this forever; we just may have forgotten how special it is when it’s done right.

Karl Kohn is represented on this impressive two-album set by all of his solo and chamber music for flute. Kohn writes that "my music since the early 1960’s has been firmly re-connected with the broader heritage of Western art music, either by specific and direct quotation or “parody,” or – prevailingly - by more oblique allusions to characteristics of past style." Though he has spent seven decades working in California, the 95 year old composer writes that "I am struck how it seems to reflect, first, my Viennese musical heritage, and then my training in a neo-classical tradition." The performances feature the American flute virtuoso, Rachel Rudich, the dedicatee of many of Kohn's works.

On Instrument of the Devil, gifted young violinist Rachel Barton Pine displays her technical prowess and the instrument's emotional range in an unusual, virtuosic program that, in her words, offers listeners something other than "the usual potpourri of encores."