Vladimir Ashkenazy News
Icelandic pianist and conductor from Russia
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2024-03-13
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2023-10-26 03:30:00
Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody (CD Review)
by Ryan RossYuja Wang, piano; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon 486 4759 (2 CDs) It is a strange coincidence that as I have been listening to these Rachmaninoff discs, I just finished reading Samuel Lipman’s Music After Modernism (Basic Books, 1979). This book is a series of essays outlining the author’s thoughts about the Western classical tradition during what he saw as its twilight years. One of his arguments is that the lack of vital new repertoire adopted by performers in any enduring way sees them adding new interpretations of well-established favorites to an ever-growing backlog. One wonders what Lipman would have thought of the explosion of previously unrecorded repertoire and its champions from the 1980s up to the present, with the advent of the compact disc and then streaming. (Since he passed away in 1994, his experience of these developments would have been limited or non-existent.) But given the […]
2023-08-14 04:30:00
Rautavaara and Martinů: Piano Concertos (CD Review)
by Ryan RossRautavaara: Piano Concerto No. 3 ‘Gift of Dreams’; Martinů: Piano Concerto No. 3. Olli Mustonen, piano; Lahti Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, conductor. BIS-2532The unexpected coupling of these two compositions is already creating some buzz for this recording. What do they and their composers at all have in common anyway? According to the liner notes by Jean-Pascal Vachon, both men “adopted an attitude free from any musical puritanism, constantly finding new sources of inspiration which they explored without taboos.” Right. But these are also both very accessible compositions in a 20th-century musical landscape where accessibility still isn’t a particularly prestigious value, even in hindsight. It was one thing for Martinů to be composing neo-Romantic music (Vachon notes his Third Concerto’s links with Brahms) as late as 1948, but what of Rautavaara cranking out works that are at once so individual and yet so unabashedly easy on the ears, decades after having […]
2022-12-07 00:00:00
Shostakovich & Mussorgsky: Songs, Chamber music
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1885)Songs and Dances of DeathThe Nursery and other songsSergei Leiferkus, baritoneSemion Skigin, pianoConifer Classics 75605 51229 2 (1995)[flac, cue, log, scans]DOWNLOADModest Mussorgsky (1839-1885)The NurserySergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)The Ugly Duckling, op. 18Alexander Grechaninov (1864-1956)The Lane: 5 Children's Songs, op. 89Elisabeth Söderström, sopranoVladimir Ashkenazy, pianoDecca 476 2511 (2004). Recorded 1977-1978[flac, cue, log, scans]DOWNLOADDmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)Suite on Words of Michelangelo, op. 145a6 Romances on Verses by Raleigh, Burns, Shakespeare, op. 140October, op.132, symphonic poemIldar Abdrazakov, bassBBC PhilharmonicGianandrea NosedaChandos CHAN 10358 (2006)[flac, cue, log, scans]DOWNLOADDmitri ShostakovichPiano Trios no. 1 op. 8 & no. 2 op. 67Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander BlokSusan Gritton, sopranoThe Florestan TrioHyperion CDA67834 (2011)[flac, cue, log, scans]DOWNLOADDmitri ShostakovichPiano Quintet, op. 57String Quartet no. 3, op. 73Belcea QuartetPiotr AnderszeweskiAlpha 360 (2018)[flac, cue, log, scans]DOWNLOAD
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