Brahms: (The) Complete Symphonies [SACD]

Karajan's more beautiful than bold

Advantages: Subtle, Expressive, Beautiful Performances
Disadvantages: Pricey but worth the cost

Every classical music fan will probably have a collection of Brahm's four symphonies around somewhere, but for tonal clarity, poetic beauty and the milking of every orchestral and melodic subtlety I have heard no better than Karajan's rendition with the BPO. The first is clear and bright, with a truly haunting adagio and nice pace to the finale. There are other performances of the 2nd that I prefer, but this gave me new insights into the form, Karajan paying particular attention to crisply defined structure rather than over-Romanticising Brahms' score. The highlight, however, has to be the tumultuously powerful 4th symphony, in which both form and drama fuse marvellously, especially at the culminating final moments of the first and fourth movements. Forget the lower rate orchestral versions around the web, this is worth every ...

cynicalconsumer 14.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Brahms: Complete Symphonies

Not 'Truly Madly Completely' in love with this...

Advantages: Some of Savage Garden's best songs and a fantastic Darren Hayes ballad
Disadvantages: The B-Sides are bad...real bad!

, bringing it out on the 7th November 2005, so fans worldwide could pre-order a copy for themselves and be reassured that they wouldn?t have a Savage Gardenless Christmas? So, like the good little fans we are, my Brother and I bought it as an X-Mas prezzie for my Mum who will always be a Savage Garden fan, even if she hasn?t exactly been what you?d call enthralled with Darren?s career afterwards. This has nothing to do with the fact that she fancied that arse off him and he ruined her married lady fantasies, by the way... WHAT MAKES THE ?TRULY MADLY COMPLETELY? COLLECTION DIFFERENT TO OTHER SG STUFF? Whilst the one disk is primarily dedicated to the work of the band until their separation, it isn?t exclusively about the songs they released in the form of singles or music videos. There are five B-Sides included, which are all Savage ...

MizzMolko 14.03.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: exceptional
Review of Truly Madly Completely (The Best Of Savage Garden) - Savage Garden

Horn Trios by Brahms and Ligeti

Advantages: Two outstanding peices of chamber music for an unusual combination of instruments
Disadvantages: On the surface quite contrasting works, listener must be openminded

The work of Ligeti has been at the forefront of Western avant-garde since his escape from the oppressive communist regime of Hungary in 1956, and he is widely appreciated as one of the most outstanding contemporary composers. The Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano because it was born out of a three-year period of illness and writer's block after the completion of Le Grand Macabre in which time he laboured over a piano concerto but completed only two short harpsichord pieces (Continuum and Hungarian Rock), yet the result in 1982 was the Trio, one of the finest and most complex pieces written so far. His career up to this point had included such sucesses as his Requiem, Atmosphères and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001. Tiring of his own cluster-textural techniques and the avant-garde, Ligeti refreshed his compositional ...

sandersabigail 29.08.2007 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Brahms; Ligeti: Horn Trios