Gramophone Choices,
Gramophone Editor's Choices - October 2014
Pick of the Gramophone crop this month is the phenomenal Russian-German pianist Igor Levit, with a wonderfully individual and vital recording of the Bach Partitas - a fitting follow-up to his Sony debut disc of the late Beethoven sonatas, which was a Gramophone Awards finalist this year and also scooped him the Best Newcomer prize at BBC Music Magazine Awards in the spring.
It's a good month for keyboard releases overall, in fact, with Steven Osborne's recital of Medtner and Rachmaninov, Maria João Pires's Beethoven Concertos Nos. 3 & 4 featuring as Editor's Choices, and a thought-provoking documentary on the blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii by Peter Rosen, in the DVD of the Month spot. There's also a healthy proportion of new music, in the shape of Gerald Barry's zany setting of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and a lovely collection of song-cycles by Jonathan Dove.
Recording of the Month
'Above all, they are fresh and joyous...Levit's achievement is to miss nothing of their scope and variety as compositions.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Editor's Choices
'What comes across most winningly is the ebb and flow of the work: the more inward passages are allowed to breathe; the extrovert ones are absolutely fiery.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'This one is something special...In part this is because of the choice of repertoire...in part it is because of the exquisite sound produced by Polyphony.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'[an] enthralling selection of five-part motets. Assured soloists are drawn from the ranks...such miniature pieces are capable of real grandeur in the right hands.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'It would be hard to imagine a more enticing introduction to the delights of 17th-century Italian violin music...Podger and her accompanists enjoy bringing out these pieces' sense of discovery.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4
Maria João Pires, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding
'Never for a moment does she over-reach herself or force her pace and sonority...Few pianists have ever been more true to their own lights...It is my dearest wish that this will become a complete cycle.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
'Honeck twirls us through a winning programme with every solo beautifully pointed, every transition perfectly judged, while his orchestra responds as if he'd been conducting them for generations.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Barry magnifies the fizzing quality into a relentlessly high-wire act that has the audience relishing the stamina of the performers, here under the needle-sharp control of ringmaster-in-chief Thomas Adès.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jonathan Dove: All You Who Sleep Tonight
Claire Booth, Patricia Bardon, Nicky Spence, Andrew Matthews-Owen
'If you want to find out what has happened to English song since Britten, this is as good a place to start as any...Here are four highly imaginative new song-cycles, each deserving a life of its own.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Reissue of the Month
'[Nilsson] is achingly tender in the recognition scene with Orestes, vividly obsequious as she lures Aegisthus to his death and tireless in her final, fatal dance...The conducting is beyond praise.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
