Review | Kerson Leong Dazzles in Lopsided Les Violons du Roy Program
For Valentine’s Day, Les Violons du Roy presented a program full of pathos at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall. On the program were iconic excerpts from J.S…
Browsing: Shostakovich
Concert Review | María Dueñas, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and OM Illuminate with Symphonic Brilliance
The Orchestre Métropolitain presented a spellbinding performance featuring Shostakovich’s evocative “Leningrad” Symphony No. 7 at Montreal’s Maison Symphonique.
Lebrecht Weekly | Valentin Bibik: Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano (Indésens)
Valentin Bibik’s sonatas reflect a world in transition and a composer who cannot decide which part of it to cling to – the Soviet past, the turbulent present, or a post-modern future.
Concert Review | Danish String Quartet Commands Attention at Koerner Hall
Who will carry on the standard set by the Emerson String Quartet? Among the names mentioned recently was the Danish String Quartet.
Lebrecht Weekly | Shostakovich symphonies 2, 3, 12, 13 (DG)
I can’t remember a pre-Christmas season that started so sluggishly, without an obvious blockbuster on display. DG and Sony are leading with cultish solo pianists;…
Lebrecht Weekly | Prokofiev, Tcherepnin: The Bark of Yearning (Avi-music)
Western orchestras take a binary view of the Russian 20th century. Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich are good for business, the rest are box-office death.…
Dmitri Shostakovich: 2 sonatas and 24 preludes (Hyperion)
If I listen one more time to Andrey Gugnin playing DSCH I shall probably be locked up for my own safety, at least until after…
Dmitri Shostakovich: 6th and 7th symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon)
The sixth and seventh symphonies are central to the composer’s work, in both senses of the term. Written in 1939 and 1941, they develop the…
Cello concertos (Pentatone/Myrios)
Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned more than 100 works for his instrument and performed some of them more than once. Aside from the two Shostakovich concertos and…
Shostakovich: Symphonies 4 and 11 (Deutsche Grammophon)
Two problematic symphonies by a tortured composer are despatched by the Boston Symphony and its Latvian conductor with near-nonchalance. The 4th, withheld by the composer…
