Lebrecht’s Album of the Week
Allan Pettersson: Barefoot songs (BIS)
Sweden scorned the composer who could have been its greatest
Gustav Mahler: 4th symphony (Pentatone)
A new recording of Mahler’s smallest symphony is “indispensable” to connoisseurs of his music
British piano concertos (Lyrita); British music for strings #3 (CPO)
A prawn cocktail of exceptionally competent music to enjoy on Easter Sunday
Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No 1 / Moments Musicaux
A new release of Rachmaninov’s first piano sonata deserves more than five stars
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Cello Works and Piano Sonatas
If you want an entry point to Weinberg, this is it
Metamorphosen (Chandos)
John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London reinterpret Metamorphosen chillingly as elegy
Ligeti and Kodaly: Lux Aeterna (OUR Recordings)
The otherworldly and the down-to-earth
Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber works (BIS)
The British composer — still writing at 87 years of age — is an acquired taste
Schulhoff, Popov: String quartets (QBT)
A Baedeker tour of Europe’s miseries, amidst the outrage in Ukraine
Joyce DiDonato: Eden (Erato); Asmik Grigorian: Rachmaninov (Alpha)
This is singing as mildly polemical conversation, from her to us