This month brings you another bumper crop of great reviews from the leading music magazines, quality dailies and online review sites. There’s no doubt about it: Naxos releases and distributes some of the best music and audiovisual albums!
‘…immediately my record-of-the-year, perhaps of the decade, the most exciting Ives issue since Leonard Bernstein’s pioneering Second Symphony in 1958.’
– Want List
‘The whole is bursting with imagination, freshness and surprises.’
– Diapason ★★★★
‘This is an immensely enjoyable recording of Respighi’s ‘Roman Trilogy’, Robert Treviño capturing every element of the work’s intensity and atmosphere.’
– Gramophone
‘Treviño serves up charismatic Respighi you won’t want to miss.’
– Limelight
‘Conductor Robert Treviño paces the work superbly. …Percussion has a heyday, underpinned by the organ pedals giving a fine contrast to the quiet, beautifully delicate impressionism of the Villa Medici final movement.’
– MusicWeb International
‘Pines of Rome is the most popular of the three, from its glistening opening to the inexorable march of the Roman army into the capital. Once more, Trevino shows his acute sense of pacing, not just in this final build-up, but in the shaping of the whole piece, with even the pre-recorded nightingale in the third movement emerging naturally out of the flow of the music.’
– BBC Music Magazine ★★★★★
‘…this is absolutely infectious fun, and the performances are fully in the spirit of these evergreen favourites.’
– AllMusic.com ★★★★★
‘…a magnificent account of a balletic rarity, which is all the more colourful for some superb playing by violinist Kalina Hristova and harpist Vesela Trichkova.’
– Classical Lost and Found
‘The quartet play with dedication and commitment, and their engaging performances reveal a real love of the music.’
– MusicWeb International
‘It’s a delightful experience from start to finish.’
– Fanfare
‘Both ingenious and richly evocative and beautifully and quietly played besides, this is a wonderful release.’
– AllMusic.com ★★★★★
‘Nguyen shows throughout a consistent and innate understanding of Chihara’s eclectic piano-writing, relishing its textural delicacy as much as its energy… Nguyen’s touch – in every sense – is pitch-perfect…’
– Gramophone
‘In this excellent recording, Smith makes the art of transcription seem easy – which it definitely is not. For a creative encounter with new repertoire for the classical guitar, listen to this!’
– American Record Guide
‘…I’m glad to have heard this piece for its thrilling and imaginative moments.’
– American Record Guide
‘The soloists aren’t there to impress us with their incredible technique. Rather, Grau’s music demands they connect with the audience emotionally. And in that, they all succeed.’
– WTJU
‘This recording…is terrific. I fell in love with this masterpiece of renewed love and humanity all over again.’
– American Record Guide
‘…this wonderful album will put a real spring in your step.’
– Fanfare
‘…Thoughtfully and consistently musical performances that are wholly satisfying…’
– Gramophone
‘Matteo Bevilacqua on piano and the strings of the Roma Tre Orchestra Ensemble show with their interpretations what an entertaining and specific language Perosi has developed and how it can be presented in an exhilarating way with approached playing.’
– Pizzicato ★★★★★
‘Assured of enjoying the best possible conditions… infinitely superior to those previously offered by RCA, the music lover will be captivated at every moment by this piano that speaks more than it declaims, at once free and concise.’
– Classica
‘These are gripping performances of both works. This is another great release from the “Music of Brazil” series and an important entry in Prado’s recorded legacy.’
– American Record Guide
‘Bobby Mitchell performs superbly, with all the vibrance, technical facility, clarity, and emotional range one could hope for.’
– Fanfare
‘Alexander Scriabin’s Second Symphony can be something of a vertiginous heave on heavy seas, but with JoAnn Falletta at the helm, it becomes a swift exciting ride in a motor boat, skipping the waves with effortless delicacy.’
– Fanfare
‘I cannot imagine [the symphony] better delivered, given the expertise and virtuosity of the Hong Kong Philharmonic.’
– MusicWeb International
‘…A marvellous arrangement of Five Lithuanian Folk Songs…raised to a high musical level…The interpretations are very atmospheric.’
– Pizzicato ★★★★★
‘…it is first and foremost the attentive and expressive conducting of Wolfgang Sawallisch that makes this Elijah a reference. He shows himself to be a singer-conductor who carries his team in his hands.’
– Pizzicato
‘A wonderful historical reissue that catches the intense drama in Mendelssohn’s oratorio.’
– AllMusic.com
‘It goes without saying that the BRSO is impeccable: sonorous brass, mellow woodwind, thunderous timpani, shimmering strings – they have it all.’
– MusicWeb International
‘…this is a Bruckner performance in the classic Haitink mold, restrained, accurate in the smallest details, and beautifully shaped.’
– AllMusic.com ★★★★★
‘The Meccore Quartet’s visceral commitment to Penderecki’s works for string quartet gives them a richness and stylistic inventiveness that are both extraordinary and exciting.’
– Diapason
‘This work, alternately dazzling and heart-warming, is an absolute gem.’
– Fanfare
‘Berit Norbakken is positively beatific as Mary. The Norwegian soprano possesses an instrument of aqueous transparency, enhanced by minimal use of vibrato. Her wide, heavenward leaps in descant passages above the choir are executed with seraphic purity.’
– Opera News
‘Knudsen’s sense of melody and harmony is stellar.’
– American Record Guide
‘…A wonderful choral release.’
– AllMusic.com ★★★★★
‘Günther Groissböck is a master of the graceful art of German Lieder, revealing infinite nuances right down to the most abysmal notes of nostalgia.’
– Classica
‘The pieces are played with ravishing verve and much humour by the Viennese pianist Gottlieb Wallisch.’
– Schweizer Musikzeitung
‘At the head of an almost flawless cast, Rafael Kubelík exalts the power of Carl Orff’s tragedy after Aeschylus, sung in ancient Greek.’
– Diapason
‘Mahan Esfahani, Hille Perl and Michala Petri thus walk in the footsteps of Corellimania, and in interpretations of great virtuosity, the ensemble provides beautiful phrasing and ornamentation in this spontaneous performance.’
– Pizzicato ★★★★★
‘…such a consistently gripping and gorgeous listen… This is a radiant reading, full of tight, sprightly dialogue… talk about an album to put a spring in one’s step.’
– Gramophone
‘Dennis Russell Davies’s Leipzig release of Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony is the most exciting version yet recorded from the standpoint of sound and a more vivid than usual take on the composer’s brilliant and brassy orchestration.’
– Fanfare
‘…Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for solo violin are gleamingly played by a newcomer, the Romanian violinist Anca Vasile Caraman.’
– Fanfare
‘This is, musically speaking, a most nourishing collection, and the digital sound is excellent.’
– Gramophone
‘Robert Carsen renews the spirituality of history’s first sacred opera, in a musically stunning production directed by Giovanni Antonini.’
– Diapason ★★★★★
‘A lesser-known Humperdinck opera receives the best possible advocacy in a film our critic Andrew Mellor found “utterly captivating – every single second of it’.”
– Gramophone
‘Elisabet Strid is superb in the psychologically complex role of Els… Daniel Johansson brings amplitude, warmth and lyricism to his performance of Elis… Both the orchestral playing and choral singing in Berlin are beautifully prepared and expressive, and the sound is wide-ranging and superbly balanced.’
– Gramophones
‘…Nadja Loschky’s production for the Graz Opera of Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Passenger firmly establishes the work as a 20th-century masterpiece.’
– Fanfare
‘…It’s a compelling performance.’
– Gramophone
‘Krassimira Stoyanova remains one of the world’s most accomplished (and underrated) sopranos, with handsome, evenly produced tone and the superb phrasing afforded her by her string-player background.’
– Opera News
‘Ain Anger stands out as a superb Pimen, both in the resonant beauty of his voice and in his wonderfully expressive and natural inflections. John Tomlinson as Varlaam is an engaging, consummate singer-actor, ably carrying the opera’s only comedic interlude (the Inn scene).’
– Gramophone
‘Winters is utterly remarkable throughout, words and gestures always telling, emotions barely contained within a steady stream of glorious tone, unsparing in the way she digs deep into the raptures and anguish that war within Katya’s soul.’
– Gramophone
‘Adam Sims gives a tour-de-force performance, evocatively capturing Sinclair Lewis’s keenly observed satire of the evangelical Christian movement of the early- twentieth-century Midwest.’
– AudioFile