Nuance 15.6

Released in the year of Claude Debussy's death centenary, this album demonstrates the exceptional harmonic and colouristic richness of his music. Centrepiece of the album is La Mer (1903-1905), a musical realization of the composer's "sincere devotion to the sea" that revolutionized orchestral composition in the early twentieth-century…

This set of recordings of Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies by Valery Gergiev leading the Vienna Philharmonic contains performances that are undeniably fire-breathing, undoubtedly heaven-storming, and inarguably heart-on-sleeve. Gergiev, one of the most exciting Russian conductors, leads the works with a combination of reckless passion, imperious command, and unbearable drama that is his hallmark, and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Released in the year of Claude Debussy's death centenary, this album demonstrates the exceptional harmonic and colouristic richness of his music. Centrepiece of the album is La Mer (1903-1905), a musical realization of the composer's "sincere devotion to the sea" that revolutionized orchestral composition in the early twentieth-century.

Known strictly as a jazz piano trio artist, Lynne Arriale breaks that mold with the addition of trumpeter Randy Brecker, and it is a welcome complement. This is not to say her piano-bass-drums recordings had run their course – far from it. What the seasoned and literate brass man brings to the table ignites Arriale's innate passion, and inspires her dream sequence style of playing into a netherworld of darker passion and modernist ideas that are startling in their pure inventiveness…

Limited Edition 80-CD set presenting Claudio Arrau’s complete Philips and American Decca recordings plus his live recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 with Leonard Bernstein (Amnesty International) on Deutsche Grammophon. Balancing invincible technical accuracy and virtuosity with rigorous intellectual and spiritual stimulation, Claudio Arrau played to probe, divine and to interpret the will of the composer, always faithful to the text. He viewed technique and virtuosity as inseparable from musical expression and constantly stressed the expressive, spiritual and creative power of virtuosity while downplaying its sensational aspect and suffusing every note with meaning.

26 year-old Denis Kozhukhin arrives on the recording scene fully-fledged, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. Intellect is central: I’ve never heard so much revelatory detail in Prokofiev’s triptych of dark and painful masterpieces. Kozhukhin has a way of bringing out the detail of the inner parts, or even a usually inconsequential-seeming bass line, that highlights the drama instead of distracting from it; there’s so much internal play in the droll march-scherzo of the Sixth Sonata, so much genius revealed about the way Prokofiev elaborates or dislocates the minuet theme at the heart of the Eighth. The touch is one that the composer-pianist would probably applaud: clear rather than dry, recorded with superb presence and ringing treble, bringing in the sustaining pedal with mesmerising care only to nuance the more pensive themes.

Sept ans après un Indispensable associant les 8e (par Mravinski) et 9e (Krips), Gaëtan Naulleau a écrémé la discographie des six autres symphonies.

When this cycle of the symphonies of Shostakovich with Dmitri Kitajenko conducting the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln was released in 2005, Shostakovich cycles were no longer the novelties they had been in the latter years of the twentieth century. There were already several superlative cycles in circulation – the monumental Kondrashin, the modernist Rozhdestvensky, the anguished Barshai – and a pair of superlative cycles nearing completion – the commanding Jansons and the compelling Gergiev – when the Kitajenko – Köln cycle was issued on Capriccio in superaudio sound…