Tír Na HiFi

Have you heard the album yet, Claus? It’s an astonishing piece of work. Don’t miss it.

Wonderful footage of Gwenifer Raymond play her version of Oh Command Me, Lord on banjo at a concert last year. There is a breathless abandon about this performance, fearless in its intensity, which goes way beyond technical virtuosity. The title of the tune suggests a desperate plea for salvation fr...

Finishing up tonight with Céline Frisch’s profoundly beautiful reading of the Goldberg Variations. Subtly nuanced, gently probing and deeply serene, this is one to savour.

Listening to Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier tonight, performed by two wonderful harpsichordists. Book 1 by Céline Frisch is more studied, more reserved and is perhaps more delicate, whereas Book 2 by Christophe Rousset is more ebullient and exudes a greater sense of style and panache. Both are simply ...

Great album, Tony. Try to hear Seymour Reads The Constitution, Ode and Where Do You Start from this trio as well.

Bent Knee are a great band that I first started listening to a few years back and I keep checking in on them on a regular basis. There are a lot of different influences here from trad rock/thrash metal reaching out to the extended time signatures of prog rock and jazz rock. There is some of the whim...

I do think the most important thing is to have patience, Simon, and to try to listen without prejudice. When I was listening for the first time to classical (and jazz) in my teenage years, I found it difficult and foreboding initially. (Perhaps because I started with 20th century composers like Stra...

I would look seriously at the contents of any box before purchasing, Tony. Many of these big boxes are very wide-ranging and may cover material that does not currently interest you (for example, Renaissance choral music and 20th century music and opera and art-song is not universally popular). The l...

You may want to try this Jessye Norman version, Tony:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-mKWCZIohF0

The original CD, Sacred Songs, is out of print but is available here as an (expensive) CD-R:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... cred-songs

Buck Meek’s recently released Roll Back The Clocks is simply exquisite. I really enjoyed his deceptively understated and very naturalistic observations of everyday life on his first album (of which the finest example is Joe By The Book) but this is a major step forward. There is a honeyed warmth and...