Contents

Fretwork. The title-work, composed for them in 2001, tells the story of Jews in late1930s Vienna. As the town turns to a ghetto, the Jews find their musical soul once more in glorious klezmer. That tension between assimilation and cultural preservation is also the story of Jewish music itself...

Katya Apekisheva is not a household name, certainly not on the level of other Grieg specialists such as Leif Ove Andsnes, but she gives them all a run for their money with a recording of rare quality. Technically super and utterly idiomatic, this is Grieg-playing of the highest order. One for the...

With one reservation, this is a well-nigh perfect performance of one of Briften's less-performed operas (one which at once manages to be creepy and shot through with conviction). Leading a terrific cast, Peter Coleman-Wright sounds too mature for the student soldier Owen, so Alan Opie as his...

Hard to believe this is actually in my DVD player! For years opera fans would talk wistfully of the "lost" Billy Budd. It turns out that it wasn't lost at all, only misfiled. So here it is, fabulous in performance and picture quality (for its period) as part of Decca Peter Pears edition. John...

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Hype can be the biggest danger to a performer's career and we've seen artists fail to live up to their billing time and again. Too often they're emotionally or professionally crippled for life by the experience. But Freddy Kempf, once billed as the UK's new great pianist, returns with a fabulous...

The title of this album may make it sound as though some kind of slushy love-fest is in store but in fact its meanings here are far more complex. The viola d'amore is an endlessly fascinating instrument, consisting as it does not only of sounds from the strings that are played, but from the...