Robert Matthew

This is a welcome re-release from Hyperion on its budget Helios label. When these performances first appeared in 1990, critical opinion was divided as to their merits. The back of this CD quotes statements of high praise from the American Record Guide and Classic CD, among others. From memory, the review that appeared in Gramophone Magazine was harsh in its criticism. For my part, I incline more to the former view. This disc has much to recommend it.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the mastery of a 20th-century original with superb new recordings of Kurt Weill’s Violin Concerto and Second Symphony by Tamás Kocsis and the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Jac van Steen.

From the notes:"It is often said, not without justification, that Toscanini's performances stand out from those of his contemporaries for what might be called their (for the time) 'modern' approach, which is to say that the excesses of Romantic subjective interpretation were, generally speaking, not for him. What distinguished his readings principally is his extraordinary command of structure, realised through the appositeness of his chosen tempi, very rarely varied, and only then to make a definite musical point, almost as a punctuation in the overall schematic plan, allied to orchestral playing of considerable concentration and commitment. Toscanini never needed to indulge in jejune 'point-making' as an interpretative habit - nor did he countenance it in other conductors." written by Robert Matthew-Walker

SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth with insightful, deeply felt accounts of his String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, coupled with Gustav Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, by the Tippett Quartet.