Mozart: Horn Concertos etc

Advantages: You could become a genius
Disadvantages: But then again you might not

...wonderful music that must be all to the good. I’ve been listening to it for about 45 years (and that ought to make me a genius by now!), ever since I learned that I share his birthday (well OK, he’s 187 years older than me but that’s near enough!) and I’m still discovering new works – he wrote over six hundred pieces encompassing almost every type imaginable: symphonies, concertos, string quartets, operas, choral works, etc. and yet died in poverty at the age of 36. Mind you, he wrote his first known pieces at the age of five so that was still over thirty years of composing. I have no intention here of scaring off potential listeners, either, by getting technical or “learned.” The music on offer in this review needs no intellectualising. If I give explanations it’s only to de-mystify the music, not to make your head spin. If someone tried... Read review

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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

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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... Read review

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