All The Right NotesWhat a year 2022 has been for classical music. I’ve gone AWOL over the past half year to relocate and focus on my burgeoning research career, but as the year wraps up I thought it would be fruitful to take a look at four recordings released or reissued this year that have given me particular joy.Continue reading2022’s Fab Four
The Austrian conductor Otmar Suitner (1922-2011) turned 100 this week, which gave me the perfect opportunity to look back at his very prolific legacy, much of which has languished into oblivion. A conductor who spent most of his career behind the Iron Curtain, those who knew of him remembered him for his lengthy, but artistically not particularly groundbreaking, tenure with the Staatskapelle Berlin between 1964 and 1990, during which he churned out mostly mediocre recordings of the German classics, and which gave him a reputation of being yet another stodgy Kapellmeister. Continue readingSuitner@100: The (Truly) Legendary Recordings
This album is simply the embodiment of unadulterated joy. Here we have three of Debussy’s most accessible and evocative piano scores, orchestrated by two of his contemporaries Henri Büsser (Petite Suite) and André Caplet (La boîte à joujoux and Children’s Corner), gathered in one handy package. Continue readingDelightful Debussy Orchestrations
