Unlike Rattle’s recording of the Mahler Fifth, a great interpretation with a surprisingly sloppy Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra plays as if their lives depended on it. The three-day…
This kind of creative involvement cultivates the capacity for spontaneous composition. Except for his overly frantic and too cheerful reading of the Rondo-Burleske, however, this is one of the greatest…
Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion. Popular culture has consistently exploited…
It’s almost like hearing a recording in mono sound—very good, clear mono, but still mono—compared with state-of-the-art digital stereo. She just gets more out of her orchestra and, with that…
As in some of her other works, too, Zwilich throws in some clear jazz references—here, at least, in the earlier jazz-classical style of Gershwin, only a bit more modal. She…
Serbian producer Tebra, returns to the label with 'Suza', a sonic masterpiece majestically switching between keyboards and strings. The producer creates a surreal party ecosystem, with one foot on the…
And Witzel’s solo is an extension of that theme, using its harmonic base to improvise on but also extending the time—and the harmony—within his improvised choruses. In other words, the…
Music is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. Modern music is heard in a bewildering profusion of styles, many of them contemporary, others engendered…
Hammond organist Brian Ho, on the other hand, is just a rhythmic player who swings. He’s not as inventive as Jimmy Smith or Barbara Dennerlein , who are the two…