Mark Seow

Gramophone — REVIEW: "The decision to not individually track movements here by the Ganassi Consort is welcome. Though it makes it awkward to find and skip to specific moments, it encourages that these sonatas be enjoyed as wholes. For the Sonata in C minor, HWV366, the Adagio emerges from the untitled second movement; flow isn’t something kick-started into action, but rather unravels as an extension in musical thought..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "It's low-hanging fruit, but perfectly ripe for the picking: this album from The Breathtaking Collective is breathtaking..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...Conscious of adding to the chatter, I’ll attempt to temper my praise. From the tinkling registral changes in the Allegro ma non tanto of the Concerto in A major, BWV1055, to his tantalisingly paced cadenza in the opening movement of the Concerto in D minor, BWV1052 – and the ensuing fabulousness of his trill – Esfahani exhibits a mastery of large-scale swing and fastidiously shaped, expressive detail. There’s something utterly enjoyable about the squeeze achieved by Esfahani’s pacing and legato of the central Siciliano of the Concerto in E major, BWV1053. Then there’s the frenetic joy of the closing movement of the Concerto in D major, BWV1054; Esfahani transforms into a slot machine spilling over in jackpot celebration. Yet Esfahani is at his swirling, angsty best in the concerto’s opening movement: the current of energy (beginning in the section at 2'08") remains undeterred all the way to the recapitulation and its crashing octaves..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "Jan Dismas Zelenka isn’t just a useful name for the A‑Z classical music round of the pub quiz. He’s a brilliant representative of the Bohemian Baroque, an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, and, as these sonatas show, an inventive, multi-dimensional composer who pushes instrumentalists to the limits of 18th-century virtuosity. This album of the Six Sonatas, ZWV181, is, from beginning to end, a triumph..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "... Vivaldi and Bononcini collide with Piazzolla, though it is the confluence in Ouverture Tango-Baroque by Luca Salvadori (b1958) that is the album’s highlight. Resonant pizzicato forms a backdrop to a harpsichord solo, sultry and suggestive, from Cristiano Gaudio. The texture warms through as accordionist Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi enters the mix. His bellows are excellent in intensity, puncturing the air with angular and raspy attack. The quotation from Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor for two violins, RV522, is a lovely surprise, especially when the Italian Baroque finds itself railroaded by the hair-flicking, foot-kicking tango once more..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "For those who feed on a regular diet of Handel and Telemann, this album of sinfonias will make one thing certain: the music of Graupner is weird. Harmonically, this is immediately felt in the Poco allegro of the Sinfonia in D, GWV528. Concertmaster Joanna Huszcza makes a wonderful feature of the melodic bends, and Il Gardellino form a charming backdrop. But lovely above all is the gentle thump of Bart Rosseel on the timpani. Here there are four of them, sketching out a skeleton bass line, but elsewhere it gets surprisingly manifold. For the Sinfonia in F, GWV566, we get six kettledrums. Six! The effect is not to be underestimated..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "On December 12, 2024, the musicologist Olivier Fourés visited Giuliano Carmignola at his house in Preganziol, near Treviso. The Barcelona-based luthier David Bagué i Soler had made Carmignola a violin, the instrument featured on this recording, and Fourés lent an ear as the cadenzas grew longer into the evening. Hours of reminiscing later, some very specific maths grew inevitable: Carmignola had recorded 87 concertos by Vivaldi..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...The Vivaldi movements that close the album fare much better, and the textures are welcomingly inventive. The frosty mixture of col legno and pizzicato is an excellent refresher before the choking sumptuousness in the Tieteberga aria. The best is saved till last: Wieder-Atherton’s arrangement of an aria from Farnace revels in melodrama, and the contributions from the mononymously known Mahut on percussion fabulously stir the air with grumble, shriek, rattle and roar."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...This premiere recording of Joachim Bernard Hagen’s Lute Concerto in D minor is not going to set the world on fire – but my goodness, is it lovely. The lutenist Evangelina Mascardi has a wonderful touch, and the ensemble Estrovagante directed by Riccardo Doni provide well-tempered, sympathetic support..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...Here, however, Zuljan plays the orpharion – an instrument invented by the English luthier John Rose some time around 1580. Queen Elizabeth I was, apparently, the first person to be gifted one, and its popularity soon took off. Zuljan plays on an orpharion built by Bruce Brook (2022) after a nine-course model (London, 1617). And as expected, his interpretations teem with sophistication..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "'I do not think of this as a transcription, nor even as a version for other instruments. I would simply call it an apparition – something that exists, but, like certain natural phenomena – a rainbow, for instance – becomes visible only under particular conditions.’ So writes Mario Brunello in the introduction to this album’s booklet notes. While for the context of this review I can’t call them ‘apparitions’, I can call them wonderful. On four- and five-string violoncello piccolo, Brunello and Mauro Valli deliver performances that bring very little other than delight..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...Capuçon’s ability to turn it up a gear with ferocious Ferrari-like rapidity is undeniably attractive. Take the Presto from the Sonata in G minor, BWV1001: given the repeated binary structure, we are treated to four ‘ends’. But nothing quite prepares this listener for the holds-no-prisoners dynamism of its eventual conclusion. Capuçon unleashes a power that then transfers into the next Partita; by bar 5 of the Allemande in B minor, I’m somewhat breathless in equal parts fear and thrill for the inescapable whiplash..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "...For the aria ‘Sol da te, mio dolce amore’ from Orlando furioso – the version from November 1727, not the earlier production of 1714 which contains much of the same libretto – we’re treated to remarkable flute-playing from Karel Valter. As Michael Talbot’s excellent notes teach us, the aria is an outpouring of love by the paladin Ruggiero for the enchantress Alcina, who has just bewitched him. Valter’s obbligato provides much of the intangible magic that sets the scene. Ribboning and streaming, this unfurling is less a melody, more an incantation..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "Upon reading one critic’s words earlier this year, naming Hugh Cutting ‘the best countertenor on the planet’, I rolled my eyes. But ‘Refound’, Cutting’s debut recital album, reminds me that some hyperbole is called for. An extraordinary lyrical journey that mixes pleading refrains, tender recitation, lustrous clarity and an other-worldly chest voice."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "Teodoro Baù is one of those early music geeks in that he has more viols than he does fingers. Among these, there’s his bass viol made by Sergio Gistri in 2006, which Baù received a few days after his 13th birthday. He moved to Switzerland with ‘her’ to study at the Schola Cantorum. He also has one made by Carlo Chiesa in 2022, after a smaller 17th-century model, suitable for Italian opera. And then there’s another made by Gistri, this one a 2018 model after Stainer, which he went to pick up on his 26th birthday. It is the bright and ringing tone of this instrument that can be heard on Baù’s Corelli Op 5 sonatas – an album I fell in love with back in October 2022 (‘it’s difficult to imagine a more heartfelt performance’)..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "I’m not a Buddhist, but sometimes I catch myself thinking: who is Johann Sebastian Bach reincarnated as today? To which a quick answer I’ve come to give, especially after listening to this album, is: Christopher Scott Thile, born in Oceanside, California, on February 20, 1981. Music flows from his fingertips like joyous gobbledegook from a toddler..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "I’m surprised I cannot find another album that begins with this part-song by William Lawes. On the autograph manuscript of Music, the Master of thy Art is Dead, Lawes writes that it was composed in memory of his friend John Tomkins, who succeeded Orlando Gibbons as organist at King’s College, Cambridge (he would also go on to rule the loft at St Paul’s Cathedral). It’s an enigmatic opening, as the word ‘music’ seems to summon the magic into motion..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "When analysing Zara Nelsova’s recording of BWV1008,..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "When the Gramophone jury meets to discuss that year’s Award winners and vote for the Recording of the Year, there is usually talk about whether something will be considered a ‘benchmark’ recording. Turning to the term’s original usage from the first half of the 19th century, I was comforted to learn of the lines chiselled into stone structures by surveyors that ensured a levelling rod could be positioned in the same place in the future. This origin underlines what is required of its musical parallel: precision, far-sightedness, deeply digested knowledge and that ineffable sense of an object made not just for oneself, but as a gift for future generations..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "I was excited to tuck into this latest album from Maddalena Del Gobbo. Marais, Telemann, Sainte-Colombe, Abel and a new commission – glorious but standard fare for players of the viola da gamba. Sadly the performances do not quite hit the mark; some are close to convincing, yet it is that distance that amplifies the sense of ‘so close and yet so far’..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "Say the word ‘Locatelli’ to a baroque violinist and they might feel a sudden pain in their back or left hand. The music of the Bergamo-born violinist-composer is fiendish. It’s no surprise that it’s much less performed than that of his Italian counterparts, and few have the mettle (and muscle) to commit it to disc. There’s a scattering of fine recordings, and recent years have brought us various Locatelli concertos from Isabelle Faust and Il Giardino Armonico (Harmonia Mundi, 10/23), as well as Théotime Langlois de Swarte with Les Ombres (also HM, 3/22). Here Europa Galante bring us the first half of Locatelli’s Op 4, which comprises six Introduttioni teatrali – works that were potentially conceived for the Amsterdam Municipal Theatre as preludes..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "On the most superficial of listenings, this is a bog-standard collection of good Baroque music played well. We are in very capable hands: Sophie Gent, who frequently leads ensembles including Pygmalion, Ricercar Consort, Il Gardellino and Arcangelo, is a leading period violinist of her generation. Here, with Ensemble Masques under Olivier Fortin, she is a stunning, sparkling soloist. Her performance of JS Bach’s Concerto in A minor, BWV1041, is the recording’s most successful offering. It opens the album with utter assuredness: the tempo is keenly felt, articulation clean and phrasing delivered pleasingly throughout. How, in the Allegro assai, the concerto’s final movement, Gent fades out of the first solo episode is a thing of wonder. The bariolage patterns, deftly voiced to bring out the bass line, are a magisterial mixture of dynamic and agogic emphasis..."

Gramophone — REVIEW: "The 12 Concerti grossi of Corelli’s Op 6 are a gleaming staple of the Baroque repertoire. The work’s publication arrived in 1714, a year after the composer’s death. But this was not the first time Rome mourned. When in 1708 Corelli withdrew from public view to revise his compositions for printing, a rumour circulated that he was dead. His agent even had to issue a statement declaring this to be fake news..."

Gramophone — REIVEW: "...Timbre is at the heart of Rameau’s music, and throughout this production we are treated to stunning sound worlds. There’s the cascading sumptuousness that accompanies Mercure’s descent – a loveliness that is mirrored in Jupiter’s descent at the start of Act 2 – and brilliantly quacking oboes in the first passepied of Act 1. The capricious shifts between lyricism, braying donkeys and fluttering chaos in ‘C’est pour mon divertissement’ is Rameau at his volatile theatrical best. For the most part, Tournet controls these changes with stylish ease, and even when the tempo relationships feel slightly random this adds to the impulsive characterisation of Platée’s ego..."