MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


 ARTICLE

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Reviewer’s Log - June/July 2009
Patrick C Waller 

Time permits only very brief comments at the moment but I hope that some of the links given below will be of interest to readers.

The NMC songbook (NMCD150) is a magnificent achievement and certain to be one of my records of the year. Almost at the same level is René Jacobs recording of Telemann’s Brockes Passion (HMC902013.14). I also have enjoyed exploring Rautavaara’s Music for Male Voice Choir (Ondine ODE11252).

The latest English Music Festival was held in Oxfordshire at the end of May. The Saturday evening concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra under David Lloyd-Jones was excellent. Most notably, Philippe Graffin resurrected Frederick Cliffe’s Violin Concerto from 1896 and I hope that he will record this work. A reconstruction of Delius’s early tone poem Hiawatha also featured on the programme and has been recorded by these forces for a new Dutton issue . On the same label, I can recommend a disc of Violin Concertos by Guirne Creith, Thomas Pitfield and Richard Arnell played by Lorraine McAslan (CDLX7221). John France drew my attention to the current issue of the Maud Powell Society journal Signature which focuses on women in music and contains an interesting article on Guirne Creith.

There has been a very good crop of Naxos discs recently, of which the following are the ones which have grabbed and held my attention:

Emma Johnson playing Dankworth, Bernstein and Copland (8.572240)
Telemann - Twelve Fantasies for solo violin (8.570563)
Giannini - Symphony No. 4 and Piano Concerto (8.559352)
Schubert - Music for Flute and Piano (8.570754)
Shostakovich - reconstructed film score The Girlfriends (8.572138)
Malipiero - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (8.570879)
Janáček - Suites from Kát’a Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair (8.570556)
Pleyel
- Violin Concerto and Sinfonia Concertantes (8.570320). 

The Naxos Music Library continues to expand at an amazing rate and the Nimbus catalogue has recently been appearing so that very interesting piano recordings by Vlado Perlmuter and Shura Cherkassky can now be heard. I was also fascinated by Shura Gehrman’s (a pseudonym for Numa Labinsky, the founder of Nimbus) recordings of both Schubert song cycles. His voice and interpretative style were very unusual and provoked extreme reactions at both end of the spectrum from critics - my reaction was positive.

A recent recording of Bruckner’s Second symphony by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden is gripping indeed and the sound is spectacular.

A disc of piano miniatures composed and played by MusicWeb reviewer Christopher Howell is perfect for late evening relaxation.

I haven’t downloaded much recently, only a couple of irresistible bargains from Amazon UK - Mendelssohn’s String Quintets, Octet and Op. 13 Quartet by Hausmusik and Wagner’s Ring as performed in concert in Rome in 1953 under Furtwängler. This comes in two parts each costing a mere £6 (Part I, Part 2). There are literally hundreds of tracks and some loud clicks to be put up with at the joins. Nevertheless this is fantastic value and the sound quality is not bad at all. Whilst downloading the second part, my computer ran out of battery and I had to ask Amazon to allow to me access to some of the tracks again - this they did promptly and without any fuss.

An equally amazing bargain from Amazon UK is the Karajan Symphony Edition which I obtained for £33 although it has since increased to £37. This contains 38 discs with all the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Tchaikovsky plus Haydn’s Paris and London symphonies and Mozart’s late works. The motivation here was to replace my Bruckner LP set with CDs at last and it was much cheaper to get this giant compilation than to buy the same Bruckner recordings on their own (see review by John Quinn). From what I have heard so far, I think this set is only really for Karajan fans although there are some high spots - Beethoven 9 (from 1977) and Bruckner 5 being the most obvious. After a while, the smoothness of many of these recordings becomes a bit monotonous so I have given up for the moment and will come back to it.

Finally, I was interested to see David Barker’s survey of recordings of Shostakovich’s Eleventh symphony. It would be good to see more articles on specific works and their recordings on MusicWeb.

Patrick C Waller 

Previous weblogs

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


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.