SACDs - Glazunov

“…a triumph: the most revelatory version of the piece I've heard in years; animated, dynamic, passionate, with the greater agility and more focused tone of the Ottensteiner clarinet ideally matched to this approach. For warmth and depth of resonance Linn's recording is perfection.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 *****

“The Fitzwilliam Quartet offers playing that is pure, sensitive and, where called for gorgeously passionate” The Scotsman

“As Julia Fischer explains in the booklet-notes to this, her first CD, she has an abiding love of the Khachaturian Concerto, a work she found impossible to sell to concert-promoters. The freshness of her way with the Khachaturian is immediately striking in the chattering figuration of the opening, and she brings a rare tenderness to the lyrical second subject. The orchestral sound is impressive, too. Though Itzhak Perlman and Lydia Mordkovitch produce a beefier sound, the refinement of Fischer's performance makes it equally compelling. This concerto has claims to be the composer's finest work, claims which the yearning tenderness of the slow movement support.
The clarity of Fischer's performance in the finale brings lightness and sparkle.
In the Glazunov, too, it's the clarity and subtlety of Fischer's playing that marks out her reading. She finds the tenderness of the slow middle section of this one-movement work, and gives an easy swing to the bouncy rhythms of the final section. In the Prokofiev she takes a meditative view of the wistful melodies, the element, she says, that most attracts her, even if she does not quite reach the depths of Kyung-Wha Chung's version.
A unique coupling, superbly recorded, that could hardly be more recommendable.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“...could hardly be more recommendable, with warmly compelling performances from the brilliant young German virtuoso, superbly recorded in full, bright, clear sound...The clarity and freshness of her performance are what immediately strike home” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“The Zemlinskys play them perfectly for that they are, welcoming their harmonic inevitabilities as positive rather than a let-down when the music has built up to a hiatus and taken - as it often does - a frustratingly anodyne turn. They add a dimension that could easily be lacking in other hands.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2012