Patricia Kopatchinskaja switches with ease between classical violin and Eastern European fiddle styles; she’s joined by her mother Emilia (also on violin) and her father Viktor on cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer-like instrument popular in Romania ...

Born in 1942, Swedish composer Sven- David Sandström first came to attention for his complex orchestral works. For 20 years, however, Sandström was a member of the Hägersten Motet Choir, near Stockholm. In that nurturing ...

Yevgeny Sudbin has graced us with thoughtful, sunny readings of the popular Emperor Concerto and the less-often- heard Fourth. He has a pleasant tone, and a transparent, refined approach with more charm and fleetness than ...

Wayne Garcia reviewed Wheeler’s opera The Construction of Boston (Issue 184), noting its remarkable beauty and originality. I’d never heard Wheeler’s music before, but I’m very impressed; his songs are uncluttered, accessible, and witty or ...

This list of recommended film score recordings is not meant to be a list of best film scores. Some great scores are not included because of poor sound (and some poor scores not included despite ...

The latest in Sony’s continual repackaging of its Bernstein holdings, this blockbuster portrays the conductor as a world- striding interpreter of symphonies: 60 CDs in an LP-sized case containing most of his Columbia (aka CBS ...

Complete string quartets? Aren’t there just two? Not exactly. The Kreutzer Sonata and Intimate Letters quartets are both from Janácek’s last years, inspired by his intense romantic attachment to Kamila Stösslová, a much younger woman. ...

These are modern-era “concert tangos,” not vernacular numbers danced on stages and in ballrooms, cabarets, and bars around the world. Some are modernist, post-tonal, even subversive, whether angular or recondite or vaporous, splashing tone-clusters up ...

Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble have released their third album, after Officium and Mnemosyne, both of which were damned by purists and praised by the more adventurous. The conceit is that the singers perform ...

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a Jewish-Italian composer who studied with Ildebrando Pizzetti and in turn taught Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams, among others. His marvelous Guitar Concerto No. 1, written for Segovia, is his best known ...

January 7, 2013 - A new symphonic tour-de-force from the Kansas City Symphony! This colorful, beloved English music has been captured in brilliant HDCD sound by GRAMMY®-winning engineer Keith O. Johnson The Kansas City Symphony ...

The American composer Henry Brant, who died in 2008 at the age of 94, is chiefly remembered for his highly original “spatial music.” Brant wrote more than 100 works in which the physical placement of ...

Federico Mompou (1893-1987) is often referred to as a “minimalist.” But there are different stripes of minimalism. Mompou’s is not of the rarified La Monte Young or hyperactive Philip Glass varieties, but rather in the ...

David Chesky’s latest CD consists of a concerto for electric guitar and two ballet scores, all unified in celebrating the cultural and ethnic diversity of New York City, where Chesky lives. Stylistically an extension of ...

Composed in 1957 for his son Maxim’s graduation recital, the Second Piano Concerto is regarded by some as one of Shostakovich’s lesser works. Shostakovich himself said that it had “no redeeming artistic merits.” Nonetheless, he ...