Mendelssohn: Antigone

Advantages: Outstanding playing, interesting repertoire
Disadvantages: Full price disc

...This disc from Murray Perahia on the Sony label is quite simply one of the best solo piano discs to be released in recent years. Containing four Bach/Busoni transcriptions, excerpts from Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words and some of Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, the disc shows off Perahia's astounding technique and musicality simultaneously. I've listened to this disc almost every day for the past two months and I'm STILL not bored with it! It seems to have a piece of music for every mood, from the upbeat, almost jazzy feel of the Bach to the sombre gallop of Schubert's Erl-King. This is the first disc of Perahia's that I've really got into - can't wait for his forthcoming disc of Bach's Goldberg Variations!... Read review

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Advantages: An excellent introduction to Classical Music
Disadvantages: None

...the Naxos catalogue. The names are not all familiar , but the music is uniformly excellent, so for every Beethoven you get a Corelli, for every Verdi you get a Palestrina and so on. The first CD opens with a Gregorian Chant (De Profundis) and is followed by "O Virga Mediatrix" by Hildegard Von Bingen. More familiar territory is covered on the second CD which opens with Scubert's "Ave Maria" and includes Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" , finishing with Orff's "O Fortuna", Britten's "Playful Pizzicato" and Glass' "Violin Concerto - 1st Movement". A very listenable collection, and available for 8.99 GBP from Amazon. This is the sort of opinion where a spell checker is not much uses. I hope I got all the names right. Useful related web sites are www.naxos.com www.hnh.com Copyright © 2001 by Mike Singleton, Newcastle, England... Read review

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Advantages: Great music, fantastic value for money and fine performance
Disadvantages: Onepiece with slightly overbearing clarinettist...?

...for the totally amazing price of just £3.99. Wow! That's the cost of 2 Unhappy Meals at McD's - and the music will give a lifetime of enjoyment rather than chronic indigestion and a place on the NHS waiting list for your local cardiology ward. I was especially pleased at my "bargain", as the combination of music on the CD is a little unconventional with the result that out of the 4 pieces, I was thrilled to realise that I didn't have recordings of 3 of them, which made it an even more spectacular buy. Whilst Beethoven and Schubert are mainstream classical composers, their music as featured here is from the much less frequently heard fringes of their compositional output and as a result definitely well worth exploring. The Mendelssohn Octet on the other hand, is far better known and often performed or broadcast - but fits perfectly into this... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful