Can Mozart be taken for a romantic composer?

Some have learned to hear the difference Technical aspects of music reproduction continue to occupy our minds. Leaving aside the indifferent, there seem to be two principal schools of thought: The innovators, wanting the very best, and the dissenters, going to any length to prove them wrong; Hi-Res makes no difference to the human ear, […]

Hidden DSD Treasures

It suddenly dawned on me a few days ago that Native DSD’s available albums have increased dramatically in number well over 1800 now.  If you’re like me, you might forget to check earlier releases for hidden treasure.  Or, you might have developed a different opinion about a given work or performance.  So I decided to spend […]

Reviewed: The Coo, Carmen Gomes, Van Der Bent / Den Bakker

The Coo: Amsterdam Moon (Just Listen Records) In a time when distancing and division override our common human need for social contact, a musical collaboration that bridges the distance between England and the Netherlands delivers a message of hopeful optimism with a strong dose of emotional honesty. British singer-songwriter Matt Arthur’s encounter with Dutch singer-songwriter […]

BarcaNova Records – a new label that must be heard

BarcaNova Records is a relatively new Dutch label that must be heard. On their stylishly ‘cool’ website, BarcaNova founder, Hubert Koekenberg, outlines the label’s adage as follows: “Passionate and devoted to classical music, we aspire only perfection. Putting our all into producing only the best music”. Surely a stimulating statement invoking immediate curiosity among dedicated […]

Unusual Repertoire that Merits wider Acknowledgment

Ole Bull, the other Norwegian composer from the town of Bergen, or, as Robert Schumann used to call him, the Norwegian Paganini, is for most music lovers and until this very day a hardly known mystery figure. We owe it to enterprising, though proudly nationalistic people like Morten Lindberg, the driving force behind 2L, that […]

Trumpet Treasures

Angelo Verploegen and Jasper van Hulten: The Duke Book (Just Listen Records) Jazz performance is sometimes compared to a tightrope walk. A dialogue between a horn player and a percussionist, with no piano, guitar or bass to provide the harmonic foundation, is like a tightrope walk without a net. On their recent album “The Duke […]

Old AND New – Another way of Looking at Things

Schumann, Mendelssohn and Schubert are seemingly sitting a bit forlorn between their ‘totally opposite’ Spanish numbers, who steal the show for all those, adventurous enough to open up their ears to modern times. Noelia Rodiles likes such combinations: “For me, this kind of pairing should be seen as the norm, rather than some kind of […]

Truly Exceptional Rachmaninoff performances by Fedorova

It took 18-year-old Sergueï Vassilievitch Rachmaninoff, working from early morning to late at night, no more than two and a half days to finish the original version of his First Piano Concerto by adding a middle and final movement to an earlier unfinished ‘concerto’ movement. It is modelled to Grieg’s piano concerto and, musical education […]