Music
Philip Glass: Piano Works by Vikingur Olafsson
Vikingur Olafsson is an unknown around this neck of the woods, but he has been voted ‘Musician of the Year’ in his native Iceland four times, is the music director of two major music festivals and is now a featured…
Elena Kats-Chernin: Unsent Love Letters – Meditations On Erik Satie by Tamara-Anna Cislowska
Many years after Erik Satie’s death in 1925, friends gained access to his small and cluttered apartment where they found two grand pianos stacked on top of each other, a chair, a table, seven velvet suits, and hoards of unsent…
Aida by Aida Garifullina
Aged only 29, Russian soprano Aida Garifullina has it all. She is stunningly beautiful, and possesses the voice to match. If that weren’t enough, she is named after one of the greatest operatic heroines: Verdi’s Aida. More still, Garifullina recently…
I See You by The xx
Almost five years since the release of their sophomore album, Coexist, The XX are back with I See You. It’s their most experimental output yet it loses nothing of what we may now acknowledge as their signature sound…
Rachmaninov & Prokofiev: Cello sonatas by Nina Kotova and Fabio Bidini
Russian cellist Nina Kotova’s 2014 recording of Bach cello suites became a favourite amongst Readings staff and customers. Eschewing the usual constraints of historically informed performance, Kotova’s raw and emotionally intense playing style instantly resonated with her listeners. Her latest…
La Harpe Reine by Xavier De Maistre
In late eighteenth century Paris, a person in want of a harp could search for the perfect instrument in over two hundred speciality shops, such was the harp’s popularity. While today we think of it as a fancy to occupy…
Local Objects by Zsofia Boros
Born in Hungary but based in Vienna, the reputation of guitarist Zsofia Boros will only be further enhanced by the release of her second album on the ECM label. In my opinion this album is the logical path to take…
Let Love Rule by Archie Roach
It’s been a while since we’ve had some new music from Archie Roach, if you exclude last year’s expanded edition of Charcoal Lane. Roach has been through a lot and has used his experiences as a basis for his…
JS Bach: French Suites
Bach Piano music can be quite daunting for the uninitiated. The complex melodic ideas and constant rhythmic pulse typical of his style feels like it’s turning in on itself and it can be hard to follow both the melodic and…
Telemann: Sonatas, Sonatinas and Fantasias
When I listen to Genevieve Lacey perform I often forget something, I get distracted by her lovely turn of phrase, her clean and bright sound, and those fast, pattering fingers making light of difficult ornamentations. I forget that the recorder…
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