<<  -- 2 --  Greg Barns    COUNTRY MUSIC?

As someone who reviews classical CDs for a daily newspaper in Australia I have a welter of material to choose from when I make my selections. I could review the umpteenth edition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony or Mozart opera arias recorded by the latest young soprano being marketed by the recording companies. And occasionally I do.

But it's the CDs that expand the musical horizon or raise the profile of works, ensembles and musicians and composers that many of my readers get excited about. And the Nashville/Carter release is in that category.

To be frank if I had been presented with the Nashville Orchestra playing Beethoven's 5th I probably wouldn't notice it -- why would I when say Deutsche Gramophon re-releases the great Wilhelm Furtwängler doing the same work with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1951?

But Elliott Carter is a composer less well known to audiences in Australia. Or elsewhere for that matter. Yet his music is relatively accessible and deserves to be recorded and heard. And because it's less recorded and therefore a 'little exotic' reviewers and audiences listen to it if only out of a sense of curiosity.

Continue >>