Mstation Classical Reviews

Age of the Diva Albinoni Almost Christmas Arias, Hampson, Harnoncourt Bach Keyboard Concertos Bach Viola Bach, Barenboim Bach, Cantatas Bach, Concertos Bach, JS, Keyboard Works Bach, Mass in B Minor Bach, Mutter Bach, trio-sonatas Baroque Christmas Album Baroque Trumpet Bartok, Concertos Bartoli Bartoli, Opera Proibita Bax, Baroque Beethoven Piano Beethoven String Quartets Beethoven and Brahms Beethoven, piano Bella Donna: Courtly Love Belle Epoque Melodies Berlioz, Les Troyens Binchois, Dufay Boccherini, Cello Concertos Boxed Baroque Boyce, Eight Symphonies British Light Classics British Piano Concertos Brubeck, The Gates of Justice Bruch, Violin Concerto Callas Canteloube, Chants d'Auvergne Carols Chanticleer, Sound in Spirit Charpentier Charpentier, Lebegue Christmas 04 Christmas Vespers Contemporary and Medieval Copland Delius Der Rosenkavalier Dukachev - Beethoven, Prokofiev, Rachminov Elgar Elgar, Marches Elgar, The Enigma Variations Faure songs French Medieval Songs Fux Gounod, Faust Graham: Causon, Ravel, Debussy Great Ballets Grieg, Franck Handel Arias Handel, Deborah Handel, Messiah Handel, The Triumph ... Handel, Water Music DVD Hapsburg Music Haydn Haydn, Handel DVD's Herz Piano Jane Austen's Songbook Josefowicz Recital King's Singers La Fille Mal Gardee Lang Lang and Yo Yo Ma: Farewell Isabella and Chinese things Lauridsen Llibre Vermell Luci, Bartoli, and a dead diva Lully, Comedies-ballets, Phaeton Maerzmusik sampler Mahler Symphony No 7 Mahler, Berg Mantovani Matsudaira Medieval French Songs Mendelssohn Sacred Mendelssohn, Dvorak Messa di Gloria Michael Haydn Miles Davis ... sorta Monterverdi, Orfeo Monteverdi Vespers Monteverdi, Poppea Monteverdi, The Sacred Music 3 Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel Montiverdi Vespers Morricone Mozart Symphonies Mozart, Cosi fan tutte Mozart, Exsultate Jubilate Mozart, Mass in C Minor Mozart, symphonies 40, 41 Mozart: Die Zauberflote Mozart: the string quartets Mozrt Requiem Mutter Mozart New English Hymnal New RSS system and Feeds Nikolay Roslavets Peerson, Latin Motets Penguins March Pergolesi, La Serva Padrona Philip Glass, Symphonies 2 and 3 Poulenc concerto Proms Purcell - Dido and Aeneas Purcell Sonatas Purcell: Dido and Aeneas Rachmaninov, Piano Ramallah - Beethoven No. 5 Rameau, Les Paladins Reger, Bach and Telemann Variations Renaissance Organ Music Romantic Cello Concertos Romantic Violin Russian Album -Anna Netrebko Rutter Mass Sanctuary, the heart has its reasons Scarlatti, The complete Keyboard Sonatas Schubert and Mozart piano Schubert Ð Death and the Maiden Shostakovich Shostakovich and Schnittke, Cello Shostakovich/Josefowicz Sibelius String Quartets Sixteen: Ikon South American Baroque Stainer, The Crucifiction Sting does Dowland Strauss tone poem Takemitsu Tallis Tchaikovsky, Symphony No 5, Verdi, Sibelius The Kirov celebrates Nijinsky Toshiro Mayazumi Vaughan Williams Verdi View from a dark tunnel Virginal -Susann van Soldt Vivaldi Cello Vivaldi, Motezuma Vivaldi, Sacred Music Vivaldi: Dixit Dominus Von Otter Wagner, Das Rheingold Wagner, Gotterdammerung DVD Water Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks Weir, Gillian Weiss / Lindberg Lute Whitacre, Cloudburst Williams, Bingham: Mass von Weber, Chamber Music

Fri, 04 May 2007 View from a dark tunnel Some years back the tour manager for Tori Amos wore a t-shirt with the inscription "I'd like to see your point of view but I can't get my head far enough up my ass". heh heh, ggl And here at Mstation we feel like wearing exactly that t-shirt when confronted with classical music label people. Our recent move across two countries has completely confounded them. It would seem straightforward enough - contact the appropriate people in the country we're now in and all would be roses. And you would expect that the people we have been dealing with would arrange this. In fact the different countries are different medieval style fiefdoms and as our international website is not even in their language, you can imagine the result. And then there's the case of Hyperion who turned out to be a thoroughly nasty lot without a shred of loyalty and not much in the way of business sense. It took a new PR person for us to discover all this. Nice work! We felt so strongly about this company that we were going to delete all their reviews but felt in the end that the efforts of the reviewers and the musicians themselves should remain. Truth to tell, we had been thinking about the classical review situation just as we rethought the pop side of things some months back and the classical situation is much more of a problem in that there is a finite repertoire which keeps getting reissued under one excuse or another. In the past we have tried to skip by this by mostly concentrating on things the average listener might not have been exposed to. We have done this quite successfully I think and have been especially helped by extraordinarily learned people such as Peter Wells. Other aspects that have disquieted us have included the practice of some symphony orchestras of hiring in temps to do recording work and then issuing the result under their name -- orchestra outsourcing! It's dishonest, plain and simple. And don't get us started on cut-price labels that record in countries you haven't heard of and where the profits stay well and truly at home. So, making virtue of necessity (we don't have "staff" to deal with this sort of corporate bullshit) what we will do in the future is to have some reviews and some commentary as and when we see fit. While the business might not be beautiful, a lot of the music certainly is. (the editor) [] permanent link