Beethoven & Mozart: Piano-and-Wind Quintets

Advantages: A definite easy listen
Disadvantages: Maybe too easy

...- Romance Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Elgar - Chanson de matin Beethoven - Pastoral Symphony CD 2 Mozart - 'Elvira Madigan' Piano Concerto JS Bach - Sheep may safely graze JS Bach - Keyboard Concerto No 5 in F minor Handel - Water Music Vivaldi - Concerto for lute and two violins JS Bach - Aria Grieg - Piano Concerto JS Bach - Double Violin Concerto Monteverdi - Beatus vir Chopin - Etude in E 'Tristesse' Elgar - Serenade in E minor Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 2 Barber - Adagio for String Faure - In paradisum - Schubert - String Quintet Faure - Berceuse x-x-x... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Haunting, passionate music to get lost in.
Disadvantages: It's classical and this puts people off before they even try it.

...it technically (hardly know the difference between a major and minor) and so you will have to forgive me this lack of knowledge and trust to my intuition that this is great stuff. But I can say that this is music to get lost in. It has so much variation in mood and imagery that it is as if Schubert has poured his very life into it, the good, the bad and the ugly of his outstanding genius, his syphilis and deep melancholic depressions interspersed with highlights of joy, passion the shine out as proof they exist. Much of what Wagner said of Beethoven can be also said of the Quintet. I find some classical music is useful for housework – I put on cordless headphones and rouse myself into action accompanied by Mozart, other music I can use as background music but this quintet deserves full attention and I find it too emotional to let anything else... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: a new take on a familiar warhorse
Disadvantages: is it worth full price?

...It's unlikely that any music lover who has a good recording of Beethoven's violin concerto on CD (say: Perlman, Grumiaux or Szigeti) would ever say to him or herself: 'boy, I wonder what that sounds like on the clarinet'. In fact, the only people who might would be clarinetists, for they tend to feel (mistakenly, as it happens)that there just isn't enough original repertoire written for their instrument. So here, spanking new, is a Deutsche Grammophon CD offering us an original work in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and an arrangement of the Beethoven prepared by Russian pianist/conductor Mikhail Pletnev. The soloist is Michael Collins, who plays the familiar Mozart on his basset horn with all the joy and panache we expect. The Beethoven is a different cup of tea. It's difficult to listen to the famous melodies without hearing the fiddle (or... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful