CD Reviews
Each week, our professional critics review the latest recording releases, from Bay Area music groups to international releases our editors think deserve your attention.
CD REVIEW
January 25, 2011
Circus Maximus is a scream, an impressive piece of workmanship, if a debatable work for the ages. In its latest incarnation as a high-definition Blu-ray disk, it’s a first-class device for showing off your latest surround-sound system.
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January 18, 2011
A new performance can make you re-imagine a piece you thought you'd known cold: Two new discs, by the Pavel Haas and Artemis Quartets, remind me of that. And what the two groups share is extraordinary technical crispness coupled with tenderness and intelligence; the ability to refresh and renew.
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January 11, 2011
It’s not often that we get to hear such a large body of new music, developed over a long time, by one composer and played by a single ensemble. No one could listen to Lisa Bielawa's two-CD set and not marvel.
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January 4, 2011
Magdalena Kožená has proven her mettle in music of the high Baroque, and in her 2010 CD, Lettere Amorose, she adds to her recorded repertory Italian love songs by the 17th-century composers, bringing a natural flair and easy virtuosity to the works, and a beautiful and distinctive sound.
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January 4, 2011
What better way to usher in a new year than to have fun with that funmost of instruments, the clarinet? Those who love William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost reinvention of ragtime will take instantly to the first four cuts of this new Harmonia Mundi release.
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December 28, 2010
If this album garners the Grammy it’s been nominated for, it will not only properly reward Matt Haimovitz and his self-described big band of cellos, it will also help legitimize the concept of the award category “Classical Crossover.” Either way, it leaves us cheering for that Grammy — and for more quality crossover.
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December 28, 2010
Composer Rodolphe Kreutzer — pretty much off the public’s radar, but very much on the violin student’s — is brought to life in a fantastic CD by Axel Strauss thanks to his incredible nimbleness in both hands and one utterly lovely cantabile.
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December 21, 2010
Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic deliver a reading of Tchaikovsky's beloved score that is — wonder of wonders — fresh and deeply felt.
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December 14, 2010
Hard to believe, but for 50 years Gounod’s Faust reigned as the world’s most popular opera. These days, it has fallen to No. 29 in popularity. If Faust and the devil have a any chance of resurrection, it will take productions such as this. Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
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December 7, 2010
The nine men of Clerestory have taken a daring step. For their first “studio-recorded” CD, laid down in the sanctuary of Berkeley’s Unitarian Universalist Church, they perform music inspired by the three closely aligned celebrations of Halloween, All Soul’s Day, and El día de los muertos.
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