That there is indeed something of the ethereal, of the timeless, and of the indefinable pervading all of the music heard on this CD instantly calls into question our shared notions of what the term Elegy actually signifies. Here the listener will encounter none of the unutterable despair of, for example, Samuel Barber’s great Adagio […]

This album features Preludes from four composers, who were all accomplished pianists and composers, and who interacted and influenced each other. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) entered the Moscow Conservatory as a young man, and one of his teachers there was Anton Arensky (1861–1906) who taught harmony. While Rachmaninoff’s style and compositions were significantly influenced by other […]

A remarkable album of concert works by legendary composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age will be released on the Quartz label on 5 April, 2024. The recording features music for violin and piano by Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Miklós Rózsa, Robert Russell Bennett, Jerome Moross and Heinz Roemheld. Much of the music is rarely […]

Music of the classical and pre-classical periods is the language of ideas and gestures. Musical gesture becomes intelligible by recurrence and recognition. Turning an idea on one’s tongue, trying it out in slightly different wording, with a new intonation and in a changed voice creates the musical discourse — the story told, or the argument […]

With this program, Slava Poprugin draws together pieces that are connected through the realisation of similar ideas in Scriabin’s different stylistic periods. For example, the pathetic, rebellious line is drawn in the Etude Op.8, No.12, Prelude Op.11, No.14, Prelude Op.27, No.1, Poeme Op.32, No.2, Preludes Op.48, Nos.1&4 and going to Op.74. The theme of erotic […]

A recording of wonderful but rarely performed pieces for violin and piano by Norwegian and Russian composers from Elisabeth Turmo and Elena Toponogova.