Music Reviews
A grand collection of reviews. If you are a professional music reviewer and would like to contribute a review to this blog, please contact us.
Review: Yarlung Records “Women and War and Peace”
Instantly Serving the Discerning Music Lover At a time when ‘streaming’ has become the norm, some courageous labels continue to serving the small market of discerning music lovers with the best attainable quality in high resolution. Yarlung Records is such a label. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against streaming. The (internet) radio fills a large part of […]
Even More Variations
*All albums featured in this article are now available at 20% discount. Offer ends March 31, 2023 end of day CET. Discounts are applied automatically at checkout. It’s true! As more and more time goes by I find that it’s quite difficult to have a single “favorite” performance of a given piece of classical music. […]
Hunnia Records – Delightful Discoveries in Pure DSD256
This is a reposted article originally written for Positive Feedback by our friend Rush Paul. The great team at Positive Feedback, as well as Rush himself, have kindly given us permission to repost this and you can find the original article at this link. Thanks to Rush the PF team! I’ve been listening to various […]
Review: Just Listen’s “Changing Landscapes” and “Dances”
As winter gives way to spring, the inner landscape opens to the reawakened natural world. Two albums from Just Listen form the perfect soundtrack for seasonal change. Changing Landscapes Music that crosses genres can be difficult to characterize in words. “Changing Landscapes”, an album by pianist Philipp Rüttgers and violist Oene Van Geel, draws on […]
Review – ‘Bach Suites 1 & 3 For Cello’
Two of the same? Not quite We have here two versions of the same, offered separately or in a ‘bundle sale’. I don’t think that it has ever happened before. Jake Purches, the producer of these albums, says: “The program is the same … but the interpretation is quite different”. How right he is. At […]
Review – Bachs Königin
JSB, the Almost Unbreakable Craftsman There is no limit, so it seems, to what can be done with the musical language of one of the most compelling composers of humanity, Johann Sebastian Bach. No matter which instruments are used. Not even an accordion playing selected preludes and fugues from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, or the Goldberg Variations […]
Review – Beethoven’s Testaments of 1802
It is like looking at a Rembrandt after the grime of the ages has been removed When I came more or less by chance across this 2L release, I didn’t know the performing violinist, Ragnhild Hemsing, nor her piano partner, Tor Espen Aspaas. I hesitated, believing that good readings of Beethoven’s Sonatas were the ‘chasse […]
Back to the sound of Happy Times?
With so many artists and recording companies gracing their audiences with new and often inventive musical projects, each vying for the attention of the educated listeners’ ears, it is once in a while a pleasure to go down memory lane and realize that some music doesn’t age. Haydn’s Musical Time Triptych is one of them. […]
Thoughts on Rising Dutch Talent Niek Baar
The scene is set for something special Dutch violinist Niek Baar obtained his master’s degree at the famous Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin, Germany, and … he is an avid collector of international prizes. Is he special? Looks like it, and for more than one reason. After so many Dutch female violinists made […]
A Review of Anna Fedorova’s Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos 2 & 4
It’s All About Passion & Poetry In her first instalment of a projected survey of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concertos, Anna Federova hugely surprised me, and surely many others, with a reading of the first piano concerto that surpassed quite a few existing recordings by pianists of note. This follow-on release notably including the ever-so-popular Second Concerto […]
Not Just Another ‘Ravel Highlights’
This new release, presented as a ‘concept-album’ around Maurice Ravel, is not just another Ravel Highlights. It is an emotionally led, deliberate choice. It has numerous points of interest not found elsewhere. Firstly, the use of gut strings and special bows, as was customary in Ravel’s time; Secondly, the chosen pianos, one of which ‘prepared’, […]
A brilliant example of music and sound serving the ‘niche’ crowd
It is no secret that High-Resolution Super Audio is under pressure. Over the years, some labels have given up altogether. Streaming has become the norm, so it seems. We, the ‘niche’ crowd, are indebted to all those still operating at the sharp end of quality, and to Native DSD for passing on the best sound […]