No matter how many recordings of Brahms' cello sonatas you have -- indeed, the more recordings you have, the better -- this recording by Steven Isserlis and Stephen Hough deserves to be heard. Certainly, there have been great recordings of the works in the past -- the expressive Piatgorsky, the elegant Fournier, the burly Rostropovich, the list ...
This is the ninth recording of Josef Suk's second symphony in C minor, the "Asrael" Symphony, the angel of death symphony, Suk's symphonic masterpiece and his heart-wrenching requiem for his beloved young wife Otilka. The first and still the best was Vaclav Talich's 1952 recording, a performance so close to the tragic spirit to the work as to be ...
It's wonderful to be able to write a review about Czech composer Josef Suk and not have to mention that his wife died of a heart attack in her twenties. So much of Suk's greatest and most profound music was inspired by his tragedy but, to paraphrase his teacher Dvorŕk, how many times can you listen to minor-keyed monumentalities? The works on this ...
The association of violinist Katherine Gowers with pianist and accompanist Charles Owen goes back into the 1990s; in 1997, their partnership won the Parkhouse Award, an international competition of piano and string chamber ensembles held in the U.K. Though released in 2007, this studio recording, Music by Monti, Fauré, Ravel, Gershwin et al, was ...
The facts speak for themselves: Dvorák composed his Stabat Mater after the deaths of his first three children and Suk composed his Asrael Symphony after the deaths of his father-in-law Dvorák and then his young wife Ottilie, Dvorák's fourth child. And yet, for all the music's horrors and anguish, Dvorák's Stabat Mater and Suk's Asrael are ...
This disc is not for everyone: the early-'50s monaural sound, the too-lush-by-half portementi of the Czech strings, and Václav Talich's oddly emotional conducting may seem somehow out of place in a program of serenades. But since there are plenty of clear-eyed, strong-armed, and much more recent recordings in the catalog, listeners who value these ...
While not quite in same league as his Asrael Symphony, Josef Suk's A Summer's Tale is the next best thing -- if one can use such lighthearted locutions to describe works of such immense tragedy. But where the Asrael is a funeral monument to Suk's young, dead wife, A Summers' Tale is a testimony to the healing powers of nature. In his 2002 ...
Because Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major is almost always paired on CDs with Claude Debussy's String Quartet in G minor, it's nice for a change to find a different coupling on this 2007 Supraphon release. Josef Suk's String Quartet No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 11, is not as famous as Ravel's masterpiece, and as a youthful first effort it is ...
If this were an LP, only the second side would get played. With a delightfully sensuous and charmingly seductive performance of Suk's lovely Serenade for String Orchestra and a riotously funny and robustly rhythmic performance of Suk's virtuostic Scherzo fantastique, what would have been side two of Jakub Hrüsa and the Prague Philharmonic's ...
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