> Classical Music |
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Artist:
Various Artists
 Fantastic album, 2007-10-23
You can't fault the bringing together of an album like this one with all your favourites on one CD.
Congratulations for also including new artists in it like Paul Potts, Kindred Spirits and Natasha Marsh.
Well done Classical 2008
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List Price: £17.99
Our Price: £5.00
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Artist:
Alfred Brendel
Without doubt the best set of Beethoven Sonatas I have heard, 2000-12-06
Alfred Brendel is well known and well respected by the musical community as a great interpreter of Beethoven, but the recordings on this cycle are second to none. Alfred Brendel brings the discipline of perfect precision to the music in a way that I have never experienced before; regardless of speed or complexity, each note stands on its own and yet is perfectly part of the whole. One might expect there to be some reduction in expressiveness as a result of such amazing precision, but quite the reverse is true. The feeling that runs through the pieces is wholly genuine, and Brendel never allows technical ability to compromise artistic integrity. Consider the 3rd movement of the Waldstein sonata. The subtlety of the rendition is second to none, and one feels intimately attached to the music, as though Beethoven himself were playing through him. The shifts in velocity, tempo, colour and just the general feeling of the piece are simultaneously uplifting and captivating. Despite this wonder of expressiveness there is never any inappropriate enrichment or thickening of tone, a trap that so many great performers seem unable to escape.This is what it must have been like to hear Liszt perform Beethoven - Alfred Brendel is at the same time a master of precision and expression, one for whom technique and form are as one.
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List Price: £10.99
Our Price: £7.11
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Artist:
Karl Jenkins
At least!, 2006-03-17
At least a beatiful contemporary requiem,without unuseful dissonances or heart anguish for listeners!
Here I find sorrow,crying souls,deep sadness...but everything is noble and direct to everybody's heart! I remember Jenkins as Soft Machine's keyboardist...then Adiemus (great first and third albums!)..now a good modern composer,with a great harmonic knowledge and a superb sense of measure! Really great and moving...I'm a chorus master...how would I like to teach music like this to my chorus! Thanks,Karl!!
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List Price: £15.99
Our Price: £7.42
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In an introduction to this disc of Christmas music, John Rutter tellingly commends the Christmas carol as one of the few forms that permits "serious" composers to write tunes, regardless of whatever political correctness rules the avant-garde of the day. And he's been exploiting that licence with a vengeance ever since, as a Cambridge student, he composed the jaunty little number that remains his greatest hit--"The Shepherd's Pipe Carol". Needless to say it's on this disc, along with the good, bad and indifferent of his Christmas output through the past 40 years, immaculately sung by one of the most accomplished professional choirs in the business under its superlatively accomplished founder-director Stephen Layton. And I defy anyone inclined to marginalise Rutter as middlebrow not to be touched by the eloquence, charm and craft of his work when it's done like this, in ideal conditions. At its worst the music is derivative but fun. At best it's irresistibly endearing. Not for nothing does he rival Howard Blake as English music's Mr Christmas, and this seasonally timed release delivers the evidence encyclopaedically--it's a perfect stocking-filler. --Michael White
Outstanding collection of John Rutter's Christmas music, 2001-12-18
Even if you are not overly keen on Rutter's Christmas settings, this disc is simply irresistible. Speaking as a keen chorister myself, the singing simply takes my breath away. Added to sensitive direction from Stephen Layton, magical orchestrations and excellent recording from Hyperion this is a must-have and will make a wonderful Christmas gift.I heard one of the tracks on BBC Radio 3's Choirworks (02/dec/01)and realised I just had to buy it. This is the conductor and choir who took this year's Choral award in the Gramophone awards - I look forward to more recordings from this combination.
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List Price: £15.99
Our Price: £10.26
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Artist:
Vladimir Ashkenazy London Symphony Orchestra André Previn
If you don't already have the complete Rachmaninov concertos, you can buy this version with total confidence. There may be better recordings of the individual works (such as the legendary Michelangeli in No. 4 or Argerich in No. 3) but this remains the finest complete recording, unrivalled since it was made in the early 1970s. Only the boxy sound (in itself not bad enough to lessen the recommendation) and the tuning of the piano in the first movement of the First Concerto counts against it. Vladimir Ashkenazy is one of Rachmaninov's most sympathetic interpreters, both as pianist and latterly as conductor. He never ladles on the sugar in the way some interpreters do and the music sounds all the greater for it. Previn is a superb ally, and his relationship with the LSO was one of the most distinguished in the orchestra's history. The highlights are too numerous to number: by far the best thing is to buy it and hear it for yourself. --Harriet Smith
Excellent selection!, 2003-12-10
I find that these recordings are very deeply felt by both the soloist and conductor.
I always like the way Vladimir Ashkenazy interprets these concertos. It is all the more enjoyable that he plays in such an unselfish manner and allows the music to properly flow. There is a tune near the beginning of the third concerto which I can show as an example. There are plenty of brilliant pianists, but so many of them overcook the romanticism and show off too much. It takes a musical giant like Ashkenazy to be able to hold himself back for the sake of the music. Being a professional orchestra player, I have played with quantities of great pianists. When I heard Ashkenazy he was incredibly brilliant and had wonderful musical flair.
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List Price: £10.99
Our Price: £7.08
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Artist:
Choristers of Westminster Abbey London Symphony Orchestra James Horner
One for anybody, 2004-02-19
This soundtrack never tires, with excellent authentic cultural music from Scotland. This soundtrack always takes me where I want to go, and back to the inspiring story that is Braveheart. The bagpipe tunes are absolutely heart-wrenching, and always give me goosebumps. I hardly ever feel that the music is just a fill-in like so many other soundtracks which are just backing tracks. This soundtrack is more than a backing, and of course it is what takes us to the Highlands in this film. Anybody who is interested in cultural music and enjoys beautiful Scottish traditional sounds must get this. I give it my complete confidence.
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List Price: £8.99
Our Price: £5.17
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Artist:
Galina Vishnevskaya Peter Pears Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau The Bach Choir London Symphony Chorus The Melos Ensemble Of London London Symphony Orchestra Benjamin Britten
STILL REMAINS THE BEST, 2006-08-22
This was the piece of music that first really turned me on to classical music, listening to the very first performance from Coventry Cathedral on a small tranny radio. What I failed to realise then was that this massive impact was achieved by brilliant structural simplicity.
The whole work is effectively a study on the tritone, the 'diabolus in musica', that most disturbing and unstable of intervals. From the bells at the start to the harmonically ambiguous endings of the first and second movements and of the entire work; from the alternating tonics of the boys' Te Decet Hymnus to the alternating tintinnabulations of the soprano's Sanctus; from the fanfares of the Dies Irae to the two halves of the tenor's ineffable Dona Nobis Pacem at the end of the Agnus Dei. All these and countless other examples revolve around or grow out of the tritone. And what better musical image for war could there be than those two most irreconcilable notes in the scale?
Then, of course, there is the inspired concept of juxtaposing the hieratic incantations of the Latin Mass for the Dead with the burning anger of Wilfred Owen's First World War poems. There are, in fact, three tiers of performers in the War Requiem - the boys' choir and chamber organ, objective and dissociated in the distance; the soprano, chorus and orchestra singing the Latin Mass at, as it were, the centre of things; and the tenor and baritone with the chamber orchestra delivering Owen's bitter poems in the intimate and confidential foreground. The different perspectives of these three groups are a vital aspect of any performance and are ideally realised by producer, John Culshaw (of Golden Ring fame) and his team on this premiere recording.
After that first performance and subsequent ones in London, this recording was awaited with great anticipation. But even the most optimistic marketing man at Decca wasn't prepared for the overnight success of the enterprise. Classical music albums - especially of new music - weren't supposed to sell like that. From the iconic (and, at the time, unique) simplicity of the cover to the superlative standard of the recorded sound, never mind the quality of the performance itself, it outstripped the highest expectations.
And what of this performance? These were the performers for whom the piece was written - from the three soloists (specifically, a Russian, an Englishman and a German) to the inimitable Jimmy Blades in the chamber orchestra's percussion department. Famously, the Soviet Minster of Culture prevented Vishnevskaya from performing at the premiere and Heather Harper had to stand in and learn her part in just 10 days. By the time she recorded the part, her voice was not what it was in 1962. The purity of tone and the anguished commitment of her singing at moments like the Lacrymosa that one remembers from those first performances are very different from the more distanced interpretation with a touch of Slavic wobble that we get from Vishnevskaya. Different, but not necessarily better or worse. Pears and Fischer-Dieskau are, dare I say, peerless. Glorious singing from both: human, bitter, angry, touching, heartbreaking (Move Him into the Sun), heart-restoring as they duet the two dead enemies of Strange Meeting to sleep. The touch of a German accent in Fischer-Dieskau's otherwise immaculate English puts a new perspective on many of the poems that fall to his part (not just Strange Meeting) - but, after all, the Germans must have shared all the same feelings that Owen expressed so poignantly in his poetry.
As for Britten's control over all these forces (the first time, I think, that he hadn't shared the conducting, usually with Meredith Davies), it is as masterly as you would expect from the creator of it all - and one who was an illuminating conductor, too, both in his own and in others' music.
There have been many other recordings since this one. Some may have matched it in some departments some of the time. None can touch it for its inspired expression of a masterpiece, fresh from the making.
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List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £11.11
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Artist:
Various Artists
an absolute delight, 2005-11-29
Pop this on your sound system when the family's round for Christmas and I guarantee a hush will descend on the gathering. This is a fantastic album, with sobre, moving renditions of our most cherished Christmas carols. No glitz, no glitter, just beautiful, timeless songs, beautifully rendered. A treasure trove for adults and children alike. This is what Christmas is about!
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List Price: £9.99
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Bach Concertos, 2002-06-30
Some of the most celebrated and widely recorded of Bach's music lies in his concerti, and naturally one wonders which recordings to buy with so much choice. I was totally struck by the performance of the concerti on this disc - I can honestly say that you need look no further, in particular for the recording of Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Violin. In a time and age where the question of baroque authenticity is rife, scholars, performers and music appreciaters have began to pose questions as to what one looks for in a performance, what is correct and incorrect and moreover, what makes a good performance. Timeless recordings like this answer these questions in no uncertain terms, and remind us that no amount of talking, philosophising and by-the-book reinventing of the past will substitute a truelly musically intuitive performance. Tess Miller and Carmel Kaine create something totally sublime - this disc is certainly one to own, even if only to hear this remarkable duo!
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List Price: £10.99
Our Price: £6.96
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Rated: Exempt
Artist:
Katherine Jenkins
Wonderful concert, wonderful young lady, 2006-12-23
A great concert in which Katherines personality and doqn ti earth nature shines through. I am so glad O Mio Babbino Caro is on here as I have seen Katherine sing it live on 3 occasions, and it brought tears to my eyes everytime. I can also say that Katherine is the nicest, most down to earth persob you could wish to meet, and she appreciates that her fans have helped to get her where she is today.
Buy this disc today, you wont be disappointed!!!
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List Price: £17.99
Our Price: £6.85
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