LISTENS

Debussy, Messiaen: Extase (Pentatone) ★★★★☆ 🎧 Apple | Spotify | Amazon There's a line of magnificence that runs by French vocal music, from Debussy to Messiaen to Boulez, which exists to the exclusion of all else....

Elsa Barraine: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2; Illustration symphonique pour Pogromes d’Andre Spire; La Mise au tombeau du Titien (CPO) ★★★☆☆ 🎧 Apple | Spotify | Amazon The second symphony by this unsung French composer has...

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 (Dwell from the 2022 Cliburn Competitors) (Decca) ★★★★☆ 🎧 Apple | Spotify | Amazon Rachmaninoff had massive palms and large fingers. He wrote concertos for himself to play. The third, in...

Simply Biber (Channel Classics/Outhere Music) ★★★★☆ 🎧 Channel Classics (Avail to pre-order as of Might 23) When you had advised me initially of the week that I’d nonetheless be listening to Biber on Friday, my response...

Wilhelm Furtwängler: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor (Chandos) ★★☆☆☆ 🎧 Apple | Spotify | What’s this report doing on my deck? I've listened to Furtwängler’s personal recordings of his overlong second symphony, and have heard...

Martha Argerich: The Warner Classics Version (46 CDs) ★★★★★ 🎧 Amazon Some artists cease at nothing to get consideration. Others draw back from it like birds of an endangered species. No prizes for guessing which class...

Shostakovich & Britten (Decca Classics) ★★★★☆ 🎧 Apple | Spotify | Amazon The second cello concerto of Dmitri Shostakovich has by no means matched the primary in public attraction or soloist appreciation. Premiered on the composer’s...

Songs from Japan and Europe — a relationship in music (TYXart) ★★★★☆ 🎧 TYXart Like each reviewer I like surprises, and nothing has stunned me extra in a month of Easter Sundays than this delicate and...