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17 reviews
Gary Wilby himself regards his sound-creations as “miniatures and intimate”, echoing in a real sense something of poet William Blake’s respect for small things, with the latter’s words “a world in a grain of sand”, reflecting Wilby’s own…
This beautifully-appointed Rattle disc’s serial number finishes with the tell-tale date 2022, one which inspires a tale piquantly framed by yours truly as a poor excuse, but one nevertheless linked to positive outcomes. At the time this…
Monday 16 December 2019 The third volume of recordings of piano performances by Richard Farrell (1926 – 1958) has appeared, nine years after the first volume. Apart from a couple of small pieces, none have been commercially released though…
ONYX 4181 (available from Presto Classical) What on earth, you are asking, am I doing reviewing a CD by a pianist whose name would be largely unknown to New Zealand audiences? The answer is that Rustem Hayroudinoff is the brother of the…
Rattle RAT DO80 2018 My first encounter with Tony Chen Lin was in 2008 at Kerikeri’s International Piano Competition, in which he was awarded what I’ve always regarded as a “too close to call” second place to his friend Jun…
Atoll Records ACD 228 Inbal Megiddo is presently the head of ‘Cello Studies at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, and has appeared in numerous concerts in Wellington both as a soloist and as a member of Te…
How best does one describe a “classic” in art, and specifically in music? Taking the contents of both CDs listed above, one might argue that there are two “classic” compositions to be found among these works, one recognised internationally…
Rattle CD RAT D070 2017 Early in 1819, Anton Diabelli, who was a music publisher in Vienna, and something of a dilettante composer, wrote a waltz, and invited all of the leading composers of the time in and around Vienna to compose a…
(reviewed December 2014) With his recently-released set of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas recorded for Rattle Records, Michael Houstoun joins a select number of pianists who have recorded the cycle more than once. And though he’s in…
Sunday, October 19th, 2014 Yvette Audain modestly commented beforehand that what would make her night would be at least TWO people in the audience for the launch of her CD “Grooves Unspoken”. Well, she got her wish and more, besides – not…
NAXOS 8.572671 After the splendid concert given by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra featuring Jenny McLeod’s The Emperor and the Nightingale as part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts Series, it was interesting re-adjusting…
Ode Records CDMANU 5101 I must confess my first reaction upon receiving this CD was of surprise that so gifted an executant as Georgina Zellan-Smith would expend so much of her energies on “faded trifles” such as these. Especially in the…
AV2192 (Concertos 2, 3) Avie Records and its NZ distributor Ode Records will have pleased Wellington concertgoers enormously with a recent pair of CD recordings (available separately) featuring pianist Simon Trpčeski and conductor Vasily…
Naxos 8.572305 Interesting that Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO chose to record these works before presenting them in concert – I had thought that the orchestra’s “Sibelius Festival” of September 2009 was the occasion for parallel recordings…
NAXOS 8.570794 There’s much to enjoy in both of these NZSO/Naxos recordings, perhaps more consistently so with the Beethoven than with the Mendelssohn, though the latter, for all its idiosyncrasies, still contains many felicities,…
Naxos 8.57209 Put on Track 10 of this new Naxos CD for an irresistibly foot-tapping introduction to the three quartets by Alfred Hill you’ll find here, in characterful readings by the Dominion String Quartet. Hill was Australasia’s first…
Atoll ACD 208/1-2 The exhumation of mostly long-invisible recordings by New Zealand’s greatest pianist has been a slow and laborious exercise. Richard Farrell who died aged 31 in 1958 left only a small number of commercial recordings,…
