J S Bach: Goldberg Variations/Sonatas and Partitas (Delphian/Navona)
In times of stress I reach for Bach in the raw, one instrument, one pair of hands. I’m choosy who I listen to when the…
Browsing: Norman Lebrecht
Lebrecht Weekly – Ebony Quartet: Unheard (Channel Classics)
Quarter of a century ago, Decca sank its Three Tenors profits into an ‘Entartete Musik’ series, breaking the silence that had settled on a generation…
Lebrecht Weekly – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Late keyboard pieces (ECM New Series)
No label generates such a buzz around new releases as the quirky Munich-based ECM which, after 48 years of high output, still manages to produce…
Lebrecht Weekly – Hans Werner Henze: Kammermusik 1958, Neue Volkslieder (Tudor)
Modern composers, when they die, go into limbo for about a decade before their reputation settles. It has been five years since Henze left us…
Lebrecht Weekly – Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus (Hyperion)
The US composer Bunita Marcus worked for seven years with Morton Feldman and subsequently accused him, after his death, of sexual abuse. Feldman wrote this…
Lebrecht Weekly – Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres (Opera Rara)
Now here’s a surprise. A new release from Opera Rara usually consists of some bel canto work that has languished forgotten in a vault since its premiere…
Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)
The first thing you need to know about Daniel Barenboim’s live performance with the Staatskapelle Berlin is that it is the best-sounding Gerontius on record.…
Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 5th symphony (Bis/BR Klassik)
If you go out and buy the Minnesota Orchestra’s Bis recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony, rest assured that you need never buy another. It’s resoundingly…
Lebrecht Weekly – Walton: Violin concerto, Hindemith variations (Hyperion)
Any new recording of the Walton concerto will always be measured against Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the work in 1935, edited the solo part and…
Lebrecht Weekly – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady: Romantic duets (Hänssler Profil)
I spent a morning with the great baritone in his Berlin home a couple of years before he died. Fischer-Dieskau was in morose mood. His…
