26 March 2022
The Guardian, Fiona Maddocks
Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge & other songs‘The Scottish tenor’s gift for combining pure tone with direct, daring expression makes this a covetable disc (even with so many available versions out there, including John Mark Ainsley’s, also on Hyperion). In Is My Team Ploughing?, hushed strings pulsating, Spence handles the leaps from pianissimo to full voice with absolute control. Bredon Hill conjures the hot stillness of a summer’s day, piano tolling and pealing as 'distant bells', the high strings suddenly transforming all to icy winter and sorrow: magically done by all, as is the whole disc’ (The Guardian)
21 March 2022
Classics Today, Jed Distler
Scriabin: Mazurkas‘Sensitive pianists with an ear for nuance usually put across the Mazurkas convincingly. Andrey Gugnin possesses these qualities, and has that gift for spinning out melodies in long, shapely arches, with exquisite finger legato … you cannot go wrong with Gugnin’s refined artistry and Hyperion’s world-class sonics’ (Classics Today)
» More19 March 2022
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany, Harald Eggebrecht
Mendelssohn: Violin Sonatas„[Alina Ibragimova und Cèdric Tiberghien] beweisen, dass Mendelssohn nichts mit vermeintlich romantischer Gefühligkeit zu tun hat. Ibragimovas lichter, dabei intensiver Geigenton und Tiberghiens unverzärtelter Zugriff machen die drei Sonaten und einen grandiosen Fragmentsatz zur aufregenden Begegnung mit Mendelssohns klassizistischem Genius“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)
19 March 2022
BBC Record Review, Andrew McGregor
Scriabin: Mazurkas‘Andrey Gugnin completely gets the way Scriabin emerges from Chopin’s salon and ends up somewhere quite different, as these mazurkas should demonstrate … you can feel the harmonic niceties of Chopin’s Parisian salon dissolving as Scriabin explores his own alternative tonalities, and Andrey Gugnin seems to understand where Scriabin has come from and where he’s heading—a passionate, sometimes improvisatory approach that pays dividends’ (BBC Record Review)
17 March 2022
The Arts Fuse, USA, Ralph P Locke
Bach (CPE): Sonatas & Rondos‘Hamelin, a musician of superlative gifts, makes us feel as if the composer has returned to Earth, discovered the glories of the modern piano, and is improvising the music in front of us’ (The Arts Fuse, USA)
» More