Not autumnal, not reflective, not reserved, and definitely not restrained, this coupling of Brahms' two string sextets may seem to some to be at best wrong-headed and at worst simply wrong. After all, isn't Brahms the composer for whom the adjective autumnal was coined and to whom the adjectives reflective, reserved, and restrained are reflexively ...
The Nash Ensemble has distinguished itself as one of the United Kingdom's preeminent chamber music organizations. This piano trio features violinist Marianne Thorsen, cellist Paul Watkins, and pianist Ian Brown and lives up to the performance expectations of the greater Nash Ensemble. Their recording of the two Mendelssohn Piano Trios offer ...
Founded in 1964 and as well known for recordings of contemporary music as for recordings of standard repertoire, the Nash Ensemble here adds another superb disc to its ample discography with these 2005 and 2006 recordings of Mozart's piano quartets. With sweet-toned string players -- violinist Marianne Thorsen, violist Lawrence Power, and cellist ...
In hard times, everyone is looking for the killer deal. In respect to wind chamber music of the early romantic period, one could hardly do better than with Brilliant Classics' Romantic Ensembles, a six-CD box set that contains much of the major wind literature from the first half of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth ...
All one can regret about this admirable set of Dvorák chamber music is what it leaves out. Of course, one can understand omitting the Czech master's 14 string quartets -- surely an apt subject for a separate set -- but the inclusion of most but not all of his other chamber music works makes this set almost but not quite ideal. Most of the ...
The Piano Quintet here might well be by Brahms and the Clarinet Quintet could as easily be by Dvorák. But when you think about it, could there possibly be any higher compliments one could pay to a late nineteenth century composer, especially to a young composer of mixed race from London? Samuel Coleridge-Taylor fully deserves those compliments and ...
Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings? Not this time: in this 2006 recording by London's Nash Ensemble, Metamorphosen is played by a string septet: pairs of violins, violas, and cellos plus a single bass. The arrangement -- or, rather, the realization -- by Rudolf Leopold was made from Strauss' initial sketch for the work as a string septet found in ...
Astonishing in its length and fascinating for its inventiveness, Schubert's Octet in F major, D. 803, was a major advance for the composer in his diligent efforts to extend his range of expression. In this regard, the Octet may be seen as a steppingstone to the Symphony No. 9, "Great," for it has much of the same expansiveness of that work, which ...
Harrison Birtwistle's highly abstract music is not for everyone. It tears itself into component sounds and asks the listener to re-assemble them into something greater than their sum. It takes work. But the composer has a committed champion in the Nash Ensemble, and those who want to immerse themselves in Birtwistle's universe of musical gesture ...
It's wonderful to be able to write a review about Czech composer Josef Suk and not have to mention that his wife died of a heart attack in her twenties. So much of Suk's greatest and most profound music was inspired by his tragedy but, to paraphrase his teacher Dvorŕk, how many times can you listen to minor-keyed monumentalities? The works on this ...
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