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Elgar: In the South; Enigma Variations
Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released January 1, 2002 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Elgar: Cello Concerto; Enigma Variations
Jacqueline du Pré
Classical - Released January 1, 1974 | Sony Classical
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Elgar: Cello Concerto op.85 · Enigma Variations · Pomp and Circumstance 1 & 4
Mischa Maisky
Classical - Released January 1, 1992 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Live Gospel Sermons Volume One CD Number "12" *I want to be BLESSED* & *Learning to LOVE me*
Pastor James Michael Robinson, Sr. M.Th.
Gospel - Released January 1, 2005 | Pastor James Michael Robinson, S
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1.7.12.36.72
Life in the Blue Beyond Creation
House - Released July 19, 2022 | Blueming Sounds
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One of Those Nights
L*A*W
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released September 27, 2023 | Planet 12 Productions
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J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations
Víkingur Ólafsson
Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Qobuz Album of the Week
Complete recordings of great works such as Bach’s sonatas, his “Well-Tempered Clavier,” or Chopin’s “24 Preludes” occupy a unique place within the history of musical recording. It’s in their entirety that they are most unique and powerful, whereas in the purity of their repertoire, individual pieces are generally regarded as being largely heterogeneous. These timeless compositions transcend their authors and are given new life with each interpretation, and such is the case with Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Published in 1741, as the fourth and last part of his Clavier-Übung, the “Goldberg Variations” still remain, almost 300 years later, amongst the baroque master’s most important works, not only for the history of musical composition and recording in general (Glenn Gould, Trevor Pinnock, Rosalyn Tureck, and many others come to mind), but also for Víkingur Ólafsson in particular. “I’ve been dreaming of recording this work for 25 years,” says the Icelandic pianist, thus confirming that these studies are more a life’s work than a whim.Beginning with a melody that’s simple in appearance, the work is spread over a total of 30 variations, becoming a masterpiece of complexity. Determined, at surface level, by a rigid formal framework, the material itself nevertheless demands a “sort of interpretive improvisation”. Ólafsson recognises this paradox and makes it his own not by interpreting the different variations with technical precision and a strict loyalty to the metronome, but rather by following cyclical impulses and organic interpretation. At the same time, he evolves with the work and transcends it, whether in the creativity of the fugues or the complexity of the different canons, which influence one another, rely on one another, and, finally, like a parabola, return to the first melody and the beginning of all that had transpired previously - like the ebb and flow of the Icelandic ocean, whose waves we know will always return to shore, but whose calm or strength we can never be sure of. © Lena Germann/Qobuz
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Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos & Paganini Rhapsody
Yuja Wang
Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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It’s almost as if Yuja Wang were playing at home in her second collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The music of Rachmaninov has no secrets left for the Chinese piano virtuoso, who strolls happily along these formidably difficult concertos. It’s the “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18”, the most iconic, that leads. Composed in 1901, at the time when Rachmaninov was just beginning to recover from the depression caused by the failure of his first symphony, this concerto became one of the centrepieces of the Russian composer’s work, when it was notoriously sampled in the legendary pop hit “All by myself”. Yuja Wang moves with alarming ease along a score rife with traps, starting with the tenth intervals that are every pianist’s worst nightmare. Wang offers a sublime variety in her playing, marvellously befitting of the very distinct moods of the three movements: raging and bold attacks in the “moderato”, languid legatos in the “adagio sostenuto”, and finishing with a triumphant and luminous “allegro scherzando”. “Concertos No. 1” and “No.4” are served with the same mastery, and the album closes with a “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” where the orchestra proves to be of tremendous precision. An impeccable record. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz
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Fauré: Nocturnes & Barcarolles
Marc-André Hamelin
Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Hyperion
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Diapason d'or
The virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin isn't the first pianist one would think of when it comes to Fauré's music, but he has recorded all kinds of things, even ragtime, and as it happens, he does quite well with the dense miniatures heard on this album. Fauré's Nocturnes are at some level connected to Chopin's but are quite different, with murky chromaticism, especially in the later ones, setting the night atmosphere. Fauré is thought of as a musical conservative, but one would hardly know it from the pieces here that stubbornly refuse to settle on a tonal center. The counterpoint is complex, and a successful performance is one that untangles it. There isn't big, pianistic virtuosity here, but Hamelin's ability to balance Fauré's registers is virtuosic in its own way. The Barcarolles, a genre not much pursued by other composers but for Fauré seeming to allow rays of Venetian sunshine into his rather closed-in French world, are lighter but basically cut from the same cloth. Things lighten up with the final Dolly Suite, Op. 56, where Hamelin performs with his wife, Cathy Fuller. (For those wondering, neither Mi-a-ou nor the Kitty-valse has anything to do with cats.) Although Hyperion's church sound is not idiomatic, it does not damage the remarkable clarity in what is a significant entry in the Fauré discography, one that landed on classical best-seller lists in the late summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Live from The Cliburn - Liszt: Transcendental Etudes
Yunchan Lim
Classical - Released July 7, 2023 | Steinway and Sons
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The teenage pianist Yunchan Lim has gotten reams (or gigabytes) of good press, yet listeners may have any number of reasons for being skeptical. Lim's K-pop looks are not everyone's cup of tea, and on his debut album, while showing plenty of promise, he seemed oddly reluctant to take the spotlight. Any doubts, however, will be put to rest by Lim's performances, recorded here, in his winning career in the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. They are astonishing. Competition performances often have a well-practiced, safe quality, but not this one; Lim goes out onto the edge and stays there. Sample at will, and note that he tends to give quieter passages an almost harsh quality; his method is to raise the tension, which he knows he can dissipate in brilliant, tumultuous passagework. What's more, he accomplishes these utterly distinctive performances in Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, often-recorded works that are commonplace in the competition repertory. The title of this collection is slightly mistranslated from its French original, Études d'exécution transcendante ("Etudes of Transcendental Execution"). The original points up the degree to which, for all the storm and thunder, these are true etudes, posing specific technical problems for the player, and Lim sets the rigorous and the fantastic elements against each other brilliantly. One need only add that Steinway's live sound is superlative. Everything one has heard is true, and this album made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2022.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Fantasia
Igor Levit
Classical - Released September 29, 2023 | Sony Classical
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4F de Télérama
It’s rare for a work as crucial to piano literature as Liszt’s “Sonata in B Minor” to be submerged beneath the thematic title of an album rather than being presented as its primary sales pitch. Yet the great pianist Igor Levit clearly knows what he’s doing. Titled Fantasia, his new double album on Sony Classical is dedicated to pieces that escape all formal frameworks, covering a period of almost two centuries from 1720 to 1910. His program begins with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which single handedly galvanised a good part of Western classical music, finishing with Franz Liszt, Alan Berg, and Ferruccio Busoni, all three of whom cite Bach in their works, the first two having composed sonatas that rely more on a “Fantasia” than on a precise form. This freedom of composition is the common thread of this fascinating program that comprises in one fell swoop Bach’s exceptional “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue” and Ferruccio Busoni’s monumental “Fantasia contrappuntistica,” to which Levit responds with renditions of Siloti, Liszt, and Busoni. With his soft and supple sonority, Igor Levit is above all an introspective musician who doesn’t try to make an outrageous demonstration of Liszt’s sonata, haunted by Goethe’s Faust, nor does he do so with that of Alban Berg, whose twelve-tone writing doesn’t burn bridges with music history. With his unique imagination and emotional depth, Igor Levit takes us on a fascinating interior journey through time periods and innovative styles whose timeless and expressive forces never stop compelling us. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work
Jun Märkl
Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos
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WAVES: Music by Rameau, Ravel, Alkan
Bruce Liu
Classical - Released November 3, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Jean-Philippe Rameau, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Maurice Ravel: three centuries of French music meet face-to-face to pass the baton in this record that is so admirably interpreted by the young Bruce Liu. For his first studio album Waves (Deutsche Grammophon), the Chinese pianist and winner of the 2021 Chopin Piano Competition at 24 years old, undertakes the delicate mission of constructing and presenting a vast panel of sonoric textures and approaches, unique to each composer and their time. With the valued assistance of technician Michel Brandjes, Liu has managed to erect a monument of subtlety and variations that carefully house the pieces that he interprets. As he himself explains in the liner notes: Rameau’s writing (“Gavotte et six doubles,” “Les Sauvages”) lends itself to a sound that abounds in bursts of rage and passion, contrasting with the misty impressionism of Ravel and his “Miroirs.” Somewhere between the two, “Barcarolle” and “Festin d’Esope” serve as the bridge that certain Romantics sought between baroque music and their own. Bruce Liu revels in the flexibility of his playing, which is precise and adapts to older and more recent repertoire alike. His interpretation of Ravel’s “Miroirs” is particularly admirable for its skillful use of sonoric layers and its sense of time – and, notably, of silence – and brings to mind another beautiful version - that of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, also released on Deutsche Grammophon. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz
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Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
Rock - Released May 16, 1966 | Columbia
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The Qobuz Ideal Discography
Reference album, rock monument, pop masterpiece.
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Debussy: Études & Pour le piano
Steven Osborne
Solo Piano - Released November 3, 2023 | Hyperion
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Gramophone: Recording of the Month
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Rachmaninov Variations
Daniil Trifonov
Classical - Released June 15, 2015 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
The long-awaited new album from Daniil Trifonov is finally here! It comes fully dedicated to the music of Rachmaninoff, and, more specifically, to his three cycles of variations for piano. First of all, we have the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, a late work composed in the summer of 1934, which stands as one of Rachmaninoff’s great scores, alongside the Third Symphony, The Bells, the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom , and the Symphonic Dances. For this recording the Philadelphia Orchestra, working under the leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, focus on the young Russian virtuoso with rapt attention, who then proceeds with another of the Russian composer’s great cycles, the underappreciated Variations on a Theme by Chopin , whose main theme resumes on the opening bars of the 20th Prelude of Op. 28, in C minor. Rachmaninoff designs from a highly polyphonic basis a work of rare complexity, and shape, through its harmonies. He has Chopin in mind, of course, for his lyrical side (Variations 6 and 21), but also J.S Bach (Variation 1), and Schumann – for the big Finale – whose epic touch ghosts the Symphonic Studies Op. 13. This partition, which allowed Trifonov to remove some passages, is believed by some performers to be an immense lyric poem in which notes turn literally into words (notably Jorge Bolet, and his magical phrasing, for Decca in 1986!). Others wish to unify it, like the young Trifonov himself, whose gesture is aimed primarily at a sense of fluidity. After a relatively brief, bright, tribute to Rachmaninov composed by the pianist himself, the album closes with the famous Variations on a Theme by Corelli, which is in fact the theme of "La Follia", which was used ceaselessly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all over Europe. © Qobuz
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Schumann & Brahms
Benjamin Grosvenor
Classical - Released March 17, 2023 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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Diapason d'or -
4F de Télérama
After two glorious albums devoted to Chopin and Liszt, Benjamin Grosvenor continues his exploration of the Romantic period by tackling the third leading faction of the genre, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms (who was a close friend of both the Schumann’s). The Kreisleriana, like many of Schumann’s other cycles, are a virtuosic reflection on his artistic 'doubles'; Eusebius, the melancholic dreamer, and Florestan, the feverish and passionate rake. The Three Romances Op.28 expresses Schumann's eternal and unconditional love for Clara, who saw in these pieces "the most beautiful love dialogues". In the last movement of the Sonata No. 3 Op.14, Schumann makes an elegant reference to his own Kreisleriana. Clara Wieck's Variations on a Theme of Schumann later inspired Brahms to write his own variations on the same theme. There are similarities in character to his Intermezzi at the end of the album. With his singular and unmistakable touch, Benjamin Grosvenor delivers an interpretation of unadulterated purity, with a simple and luminous audio recording that gives these great passages their deserved nobility. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz
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Bach: Goldberg Variations Reimagined
Rachel Podger
Classical - Released October 20, 2023 | Channel Classics
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One may well wonder why (or whether) a non-keyboard version of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, arguably at the apex of the entire tradition of keyboard music, is at all needed. However, Baroque violinist Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque member Chad Kelly, who "reimagined" the work (arranged is not a strong enough word), offer several justifications for their deployment of the Variations across various kinds of chamber music here. "Despite what many respected and respectful commentators have propagated," Kelly says, "it is not a sacrosanct work of pure, absolute and abstract art." Kelly seeks to use the varied settings to clarify Bach's counterpoint, to examine the musical influences that were in the air when Bach wrote the work, and to "be idiomatic to the historical instruments used in its performance and to the individual styles and genres referenced in the work." All this involves rewriting certain passages. That is a lot to ask, but generally, Kelly and Podger make it work. There are just 18 tracks, with several variations often combined into a little suite. This tends to deemphasize the tripartite structure of the variations, with a canon every third variation. Listeners can make up their own mind about that, but most will be impressed enough by the smooth Baroque winds in the slower variations, especially the crucial Adagio Variation 26, that they will be won over by this unorthodox effort. This release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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