MW EXCLUSIVE 4CD sets £18 each or £28 for both postage paid
Search
What's New
Classical CD Reviews
Live Reviews
Jazz CD Reviews
Composers
Resources
Contact Us

Classical CD and DVD reviews. MusicWeb is not a subscription site and it is our advertisers that pay for it. Please visit their sites regularly to see if anything might interest you. Purchasing from them keeps MusicWeb free.
  Classical Editor: Rob Barnett  
Founder Len Mullenger   
  




Buy through MusicWeb for £12.49 postage paid World-wide. Immediate delivery

Purchase button

 George ENESCU (1881-1955)
Suites for solo piano: No. 1 in G minor Dans le style ancien Op. 3 (1897) [19.40]; No. 2 in D major Op. 10 (1901) [22.21]; No. 3 Pièces Impromptues Op. 18 (1913-16) [36.54]
Luiza Borac (piano)
rec. 23-30 March 2003, Stadttheater Lindau, Bodensee. DDD
AVIE AV0013 [79.06]

It reflects well on Borac and Avie that such an ideal and unhackneyed programme as this should have been chosen. The music is unfamiliar, the timing is ample and the liner notes are models of freshness and span. Both the indefatigable Martin Anderson and the thoughtful and virtuosic Luiza Borac contribute articles.

The four movement First Suite, the work of a fifteen year old composer, is thoroughly well defined by neo-baroque and neo-classical criteria. The first three movements are decided Bachian with trills and badinage as well as Olympian atmosphere. Ms Borac rescues the music from any heaviness. The final movement is closer to Hummel or early Beethoven (last movement of the First Piano Concerto). The adagio is the most refreshingly impressive movement (tr. 3).

The Second Suite breaks from the bondage of the past and from neos and retros of any sort. The first movement's romantically majestic chiming makes way for the arpeggiated lyric dreamland of the Sarabande and the humid phantasmal meander of the Pavane. The Bourrée is like much of the rest of this attractive suite - a fusion of Debussy, Warlock and Poulenc.

The Third Suite is in seven movements. It is contemporary with the Great War - the twelve months before the start and two years into hostilities. The style is yet more swirlingly impressionistic (tr.13), scathingly fantastic (tr.12), discordantly exuberant (tr. 15) and poised than in the Second Suite. Carillon Nocturne with its grotesqueries, Chinoiserie and atonality leans in and out of Schoenberg's Hanging Gardens and Cyril Scott's Lotusland. This movement shows Mlle Borac at her most impressive with her powers of concentration unwavering. It rounds out the disc in an enigmatic mist: elusive and sphinx-like.

Rob Barnett

see also review by Kevin Sutton

Advertising Rates
Visitor stats
MusicWeb International
has over 25,000 Classical CD reviews on offer


Gerard Hoffnung Concerts &
The Bricklayer Story

Naxos Classical



Australian Eloquence CDs on Buywell.com


New Releases

Hyperion
New Releases


Guild Music





MusicWeb sells the Polish
catalogue CDAccord
£10.50 post free W-W


MusicWeb sells the
Arcodiva catalogue
£12.00 post free W-W


£11.50
post-free world-wide
Try it and see - Sale or Return

MusicWeb can now offer you discs from the following catalogues:
Prices include postage

[Acte Préalable £13.50]
[Arcodiva £12.00]
[Avie from £6.25]
Brilliant Classics
[British Music Society £13.49]
[CDACCORD from £10.50 ]
[ClassicO £12.50]
[Hallé from £11]
[Hortus £14.99 ]
[Lyrita ONLY £11.50 ]
LYRITA Sale or Return
[Onyx £12.00 ]
ONYX Sale or Return
[REDCLIFFE £11 ]
[Sheva £11]
[Tactus £11.50 ]
[Talent from £12.00 ]
[Toccata Classics £12.50 ]

Musicweb
Special Offers

Google Ads - for information about privacy matters, click here. 

Return to Index



Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.

You can purchase CDs and Save around 22% with these retailers: