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  Arnold Bax

  BBC Philharmonic, Vernon Handley Chandos · CHAN10122(5) · 5 hours 54 minutes Bax’s symphonies live in this weird, wonderful space between Sibelian brooding and full-blown Celtic romanticism, and they don’t give up their secrets easily — you need a conductor who believes in the sprawl rather than trying to tidy it up. Vernon Handley spent decades earning the title […]

  ARNOLD BAX | 26.08.18
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  Balakirev: Incidental Music

  USSR State Symphony Orchestra, USSR State Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nikolai Anosov, Leo Ginzburg Naxos · 980993 · 43 minutes Balakirev doesn’t get nearly enough airtime considering how much of what we love in Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov actually traces back to his ideas first. The King Lear music in particular shows off that orchestral imagination — stormy, theatrical, full of […]

  BALAKIREV | 26.08.18
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  Géza Anda

  Géza Anda (piano), Philharmonia Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker, Karl Böhm Prospero Classical · PROSP0100 · 79 minutes There’s something magnetic about hearing Géza Anda live rather than in the studio — the Mozart especially breathes in a way that feels almost improvised, like he’s discovering the phrases in real time alongside Böhm and the Vienna players. Anda’s touch has this […]

  GéZA ANDA | 26.08.18
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  Balakirev: Overtures

  Dinara Klinton (piano), Niederrheinsche Sinfoniker, Mihkel Kutson MDG · MDG95222366 · 67 minutes Balakirev tends to get filed under “the guy who convinced Tchaikovsky to write Romeo and Juliet” rather than treated as a composer worth hearing on his own terms, which is a shame because his orchestral writing has this restless, richly colored quality that deserves better than […]

  BALAKIREV | 26.08.18
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  Brzezinski Piano Works and Violin Sonata by Pakura

  PAKURA Brzeziński, Szulc (Acte Prealable) Barbara Pakura (piano); Irena Kalinowska-Grohs (violin) Acte Prealable AP0267 / AP0271 (64:29 / 62:07) Some names survive by accident, others by neglect, and a few — like Franciszek Brzezinski — by the peculiar diligence of Polish independent labels determined that nothing shall go unrecorded, however slender the case for its […]

  ACTE PREALABLE | 26.08.18

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