Hi-Fi News and Record Review

Hi-Fi News & Record Review has been a trusted source of expert reviews since its debut in June 1956, which was two years prior to the advent of commercial stereo sound. This publication is dedicated to deepening our appreciation for music by exploring the finest audio equipment available for avid listeners. Each edition of Hi-Fi News features comprehensive reviews of premium audio gear, covering everything from top-tier vinyl players to classic vintage equipment that shaped the audio landscape. It's a must-read for anyone passionate about music.

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Charles Ives American visionary

1 week ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Charles Ives American visionaryPeter Quantrill | Apr 17, 2025 | First Published: Mar 1, 2025 Modernist, patriot, man of faith, insurance broker: a new box illuminates one of classical music’s most singular voices, and his recording legacy, explored by Peter Quantrill It did not take Schoenberg long, after emigrating to the US in 1933, to size up the local scene. ‘There is a great Man living in this Country – a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one’s self and to learn.
Never too old

1 week ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

The longevity of conductors can be misleading, says Peter Quantrill, when the sentiment of the occasion obscures the vitality of the music-making. Yet with age can come great wisdom... Conductors enjoy something of an advantage over their fellow musicians. Not just that they are better paid – to a degree that grinds the gears of their often more experienced orchestral colleagues the world over – but that the nature of their craft is relatively impervious to the ravages and indignities of age.
A night at the opera

1 week ago | hifinews.com | Barry Willis

Front-of-centre drama, battles behind the scenes... Barry Willis attends the opening of Verdi’s Un Ballo in San Francisco, but for him it’s the acoustics that truly bring down the houseIn late September, I enjoyed a rare treat: third-row centre seats at the San Francisco Opera’s opening of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (‘A Masked Ball’), thanks to a friend’s season tickets. Verdi’s ornate tale is one of jealousy and murder, like many others.
Classical, February 2025

2 weeks ago | hifinews.com | Patrick Fraser

RLPO/Domingó Hindoyan Works by Carreño, Castellanos, Estévez, Hung & Plaza Onyx ONYX4251 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution) As MD since 2021, Hindoyan has been doing first-class work in Liverpool. Now the Venezuelan maestro returns to his roots with an unhackneyed album of symphonic poems. You’ll catch echoes of Sibelius and Rimsky in the lush stillness of Juan Bautista Plaza’s Vigilia.
Death of the orchestra?

3 weeks ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Peter Quantrill finds reasons to be cheerful in the proliferation of young-musician ensembles based on more flexible models of organisation – but can traditional venues follow suit? There is no question that traditional symphony orchestras are finding life tough, especially in a post-Covid world. Audiences are down, funding is down, rehearsal time cut to the bone. The fight is not so much for relevance as prominence.
Gallium’s going places

3 weeks ago | hifinews.com | Barry Willis

Following a flying visit to an audiophile friend’s listening room, Barry Willis believes Gallium Nitride (GaN) power transistors could be just what the amplifier world has been looking forFor more than two decades, I attended several hi-fi shows annually, including – until high-performance audio was sidelined – the Consumer Electronics Show, where someone was usually hyping a new technology.
Classical, January 2025

1 month ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Luiza Borac Bach: Goldberg Variations, etc; Chick Corea: Children’s Songs Profil PH24018 (two discs) From the gentle, considered touch of the Aria, it’s clear that this will be a rewardingly ‘central’ and unfussy Goldbergs. Borac’s long experience in playing the music of her countryman Enescu tells in the unerring clarity of her voice-leading, up there with classic accounts by Rosen and Yudina.
Too young for Brahms

1 month ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

A pair of prestigious piano competition finals has Peter Quantrill wondering if particular pieces and composers are best left on the shelf, waiting for a musician’s life to catch up with their abilityCan a musician be ‘too young’ for certain repertoire? It may just be coincidence, but I am inclined to think so after hearing two young pianists win major competitions. Over a single weekend in late September 2024, the finals of both the Leeds International and George Enescu competitions took place.
Performance art

1 month ago | hifinews.com | Barry Willis

Can a good hi-fi demo count as art? Barry Willis discovered the crowd-pleasing nature of high-quality music reproduction – and some ‘interesting’ systems – at San Francisco’s MOMAIn 1917, French artist Marcel Duchamp submitted a factory-produced urinal to a high-level art exhibit in New York. ‘Fountain’, as he called it, was rejected by the exhibit’s committee on the grounds it was not art. The incident was the Big Bang of modern and contemporary art.
Géza Anda Troubadour of the Piano

1 month ago | hifinews.com | Peter Quantrill

Géza Anda Troubadour of the Piano Peter Quantrill | Mar 12, 2025 | First Published: Jan 1, 2025 There’s more to the Hungarian pianist than his famous Bartók and Mozart recordings, says Peter Quantrill, as he explores Anda’s rigorous formation and poetic imagination When ‘contact hours’ are meanly doled out to students with a teaspoon – here’s your two-hour seminar for the week, don’t enjoy it all at once – the kind of education and formation which Géza Anda underwent in 1930s Budapest would...