Archive for Featured
Announcing Limited Edition LPs!
Reference Recordings is excited to have come across a limited collection of some of our earliest recordings on LP — including our first-ever recording, created in 1976 before Prof. Keith O. Johnson began working with RR! Explore the recordings below, and make sure to look through the images as each one includes the LP Jacket with information about the backstory of the recordings. We regret we cannot ship to the EU or UK at this time.…
Gramophone Reviews Le Dolce Sirene
The Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene gets a great review from Laurence Vittes in the March 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine: “The Kansas City-based Bach Aria Soloists make their recording debut on Reference Recordings with a lovely album of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, complemented by Cecilia McDowall and concluding with their own improvisation on La folia. Recorded with the label’s trademark sweet and clear perfection, ‘Le dolce sirene’ achieves that audiophile miracle, sounding even…
Audiophile Audition Gives an Ovation to Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene
Audiophile Audition‘s Fritz Balwit has a wonderful overview and review for the Bach Aria Soloists’ Le Dolce Sirene recording: “The most striking feature of this opening track is the keening sound of the violin paired with a minimal cello basso continuo. This was my first exposure to the exceptional skills of the violinist and director of the ensemble, Elizabeth Suh Lane… substantial works that will appeal to fans of modern vocal recitals. They don’t lack…
Fanfare Says Invasion is Not To Be Missed
Fanfare Magazine’s Colin Clarke says Nadia Shpachenko’s Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine is “Not To Be Missed”: “Spratlan’s music is viscerally exciting, a sonic representation of (understandable) anxiety via a preponderance of gesture. The performance is as good as one could imagine. It falls to Shpachenko to present Piano Suite No. 1 (2021), a somewhat Schoenbergian utterance, perhaps particularly in the initial “Capriccio.” Shpachenko truly understands, as does Spratlan, the expressive nature of dissonance,…
Doug MacLeod is a 2023 Blues Music Award Nominee!
The Blues Foundation announced its 2023 Blues Music Awards Nominees and Reference Recordings is excited to share that Doug MacLeod has been nominated for his 22nd Blues Music Award with a 2023 nomination for Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year! Doug MacLeod Recordings on Reference
Gramophone Reviews Nadia Shpachenko’s Invasion Release
The January 2023 issue of Gramophone Magazine features a review of Nadia Shpachenko’s recording of Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine: “Lewis Spratlan’s Invasion is a raucous, volatile tone poem for a sextet of piano, saxophone, horn, trombone, percussion and – I assume to provide some local Ukrainian colour – mandolin, written at speed in March this year.… Invasion is the music of indignation and outrage, its combative nature (it does have a more contemplative central section) mirrored…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Brahms Symphony No. 4 and MacMillan Larghetto a 2022 Recording of the Year Nominee
Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 and James MacMillan Larghetto for Orchestra is a MusicWeb International 2022 Recording of the Year Double-Nominee! “Indisputably the finest – and possibly the most important – recording to emerge in 2022 was this release of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony by Manfred Honeck. In an age where recordings of the old war-horses are not universally welcomed, the general thought being that everything that has been said about the…
Fiona Boyes Inducted into Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame
Congratulations to Fiona Boyes! On November 23, 2022, Fiona will be inducted into the Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame! She also has the distinction of being the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame. “Fiona Boyes will be the first woman even to be inducted into the Blues Music Victoria Hall of Fame on Wednesday November 23. Extraordinarily talented blues guitarist and vocalist Fiona Boyes will this month be inducted into the Blues…
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 and Stucky: Silent Spring Nominated for Engineering GRAMMY®
We are thrilled to share that Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 and Stucky: Silent Spring was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY® Award in the Best Engineered Album, Classical category! Congratulations to engineer Mark Donahue on his nomination! “Throughout the symphony, passion is omnipresent, be it in a positive or ominous posture. Honeck unravels with his musicians to infinite perfection a modern version of a symphony that is all too…
Two 2023 International Classical Music Awards Nominations!
We are thrilled to share that the International Classical Music Awards have nominated two of our recordings in the 2023 ICMAs! The final result with all winners will be announced on January 18, 2023, and the Award Ceremony and Gala concert will take place in Wrocław, Poland on April 21, hosted by the NFM Philharmonic. Nominations Symphonic Music Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Contemporary Music Martin West & the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra
Migration in Gramophone’s November Issue!
Gramophone Magazine’s Christian Hoskins reviews the University of Texas and Jerry Junkin’s Migration recording in the November 2022 issue: This generously filled album brings together four works by contemporary American composers either scored or adapted for wind ensemble. Adam Schoenberg’s Second Symphony is a programmatic piece inspired by his wife’s family’s migration to the United States. The first of its five movements, ‘March’, with its imposing brass statements and busy percussion, communicates the tension that…
All About the Arts Previews Reencuentros
Rafael de Acha previews and reviews Cecilia Duarte’s Reencuentros recording on All About the Arts: “Cecilia Duarte gives renewed life to a dozen Latin American songs… the profound meditation on the end of life Alfonsina y el Mar, arranged by David Scanlon for his string bass as the sole accompaniment to Duarte in a posthumous homage to the Argentine poetess Alfonsina Storni, follow each other in impressive succession evidencing Cecilia Duarte’s beautiful voice and her impeccably…
Invasion is Not To Be Missed
Huntley Dent has added Nadia Shpachenko’s Invasion: Music and Art for Ukraine to Fanfare‘s “Not To Be Missed” list! “Calling upon her friend and sometime collaborator, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan, Shpachenko commissioned Invasion, which is scored for piano and chamber ensemble. My expectations of grim, angry music were overturned by Invasion, whose three sections, lasting 12 minutes, don’t echo the stark bleakness of wartime Shostakovich, or any other war music I can think of. Instead, Spratlan…
Migration is Not To Be Missed!
Huntley Dent has a second Fanfare rave review for the University of Texas Wind Ensemble and Jerry Junkin’s Migration recording in the Not To Be Missed Section: “This is an eye-opening release… There is no air of elitism around this collection, thankfully. The splendid sound of a large wind orchestra (the UT Wind Ensemble, at 65 strong, ranks as an orchestra to me) doesn’t immediately connote a piece as sophisticated as Corigliano’s brilliant Clarinet Concerto,…
Five Star Fanfare Review for Migration
Fanfare‘s Mark Novak gives the University of Texas Wind Ensemble’s Migration recording a Five Star Review and places it in the “Not To Be Missed” section! “This is an outstanding compilation of music for wind ensemble by four living American composers. The first accolade goes to Reference Recordings and their superbly excellent recording which can be heard even with standard CD resolution. The dynamic range is wide, the impression of being present in the hall…