Graham Rickson

Writer at The Arts Desk

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Classical CDs: Bells, whistles and bowing techniques

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Michel Béroff: Complete Erato Recordings (Erato) My associating French pianist Michel Béroff with ‘modern’ music says more about my age than it does about Béroff’s actual specialities. If you were looking for Messiaen in an early 1980s record library you’d probably find his EMI LPs of Turangalîla, the Quatour pour la fin du Temps and the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus on the shelves, the last named a work which Béroff played extracts from to its composer in 1961, at the age of 11.
Classical CDs: Cannons, culverts and mooching cattle

3 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Antal Doráti in London: The Mercury Masters Vol. 1 (Decca Eloquence) A couple of recent YouTube videos show DG engineers hard at work remastering Karajan’s 1970s Bruckner and Mahler recordings for new vinyl LP pressings. The process looks tortuous, the multitracked master tapes painstakingly examined and reassembled, artificial reverb added using an empty stairwell.
Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating between 1946 and 1992. Among its vast output were four lavish science fiction adventures, released between 1960 and 1976 and shown here in gleaming new transfers. Each one, to varying degrees, depicts the future through a rose-coloured lens, the world evolving into a utopian socialist paradise where disputes are settled peacefully.
Classical CDs: Jelly Babies, porridge and kazoos

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony) The concert I attended of Brahms Lieder in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in October 2024, with Christian Gerhaher in fabulous voice and Gerold Huber at the peak of his craft was fabulous – five star review of that very special evening here. I was therefore overjoyed to discover only recently that they had made this recording of a very similar programme just one week before.
Blu-ray: Laurel & Hardy - The Silent Years (1928)

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Eureka’s second volume of Laurel and Hardy shorts catches the pair in 1928 on the cusp of their successful transition to the sound era, two of the 10 films originally released with synchronised sound effects and music. This works especially well in We Faw Down, though having another actor dub Stan’s laugh is disconcerting.
Classical CDs: Chinese poetry, rollercoasters and old bookshops

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Jürg Frey: Voices EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble/James Weeks (Neu Records) A new CD from EXAUDI is a guaranteed treat for all the senses: the sound quality is always impeccable, the CD presentation a tactile pleasure. Heck, it even smells good (a mixture of new car and old bookshop).
DVD/Blu-ray: All We Imagine is Light

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women in contemporary Mumbai; as shown by director Payal Kapadia, the city is arguably the film’s fourth major character. Kapadia eschews convention, her metropolis painted in muted colours with dark skies and heavy rain a constant.
Classical CDs: Romance, reforestation and a Rolleiflex

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès (LPO) Here are three orchestral suites taken from stage works by Thomas Adès, from different stages of his career, captured at live performances at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2018 and 2023. So not new recordings, but good to have these in one place to trace the composer’s career from prodigious breakthrough to acknowledged master.
Blu-ray: Yojimbo & Sanjuro

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.
Classical CDs: Big bands, beasts and birdcalls

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Graham Rickson

Vox Feminae: Works for voices, theorbo/tiorbino/ baroque guitar, bass viol, triple harp by Barbara Strozzi, Antonia Bemba and Hieryonymus Kapsberge Les Kapsber’girls/Albane Imbs (Alpha) What a complete transformation from one album to the next. The last one, Vous-avez dit brunettes? – did you say brunettes – (Alpha, 2021) opened tongue-in-cheek with the bleating and bells of a flock of sheep, then launching into occasionally over-theatrical songs about shepherds, love or drinking.