It’s hard to keep up with the flow of classic albums updated with modern spatial audio from major labels, let alone review them all in detail. Here are some more I’ve noticed recently.
Many listeners are fond of Mitsuko Uchida’s tastefully classical approach to Mozart’s piano concertos. Her complete set with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra, dating from the late 1980’s, is highly regarded and often recommended. In some ways I prefer her much later revisit of ten cornerstones of the repertoire (all the mature concertos, essentially) for Decca. She recorded these from 2009-2016, and they were released as 5 separate albums with two concertos each. For this go round, she plays with a scaled-down Cleveland Orchestra, conducting from the piano. At this later stage of her career, Uchida brings a more deeply considered interpretation, leaning into the darker emotional depths of late Mozart. One of the most compelling of the series is this pairing of No. 20 in D Minor (K. 466) and No. 27 (K. 595), released in 2011. Here now in remixed Dolby Atmos (where available), in a restrained and appropriately chamber-sized spatial enhancement:
Wind the clock back another 13 years, and we have a greatest hits package from The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, led in those days by Stephen Cleobury. This is also from Decca, an album titled The King’s Collection (1998). These are lovely performances, mostly familiar favorites, but distinguished by an unexpected final track, John Tavener’s Song for Athene, which at the time of release was still fresh in the public ear from Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997:
Now let’s wind it back further still, to the early days of the authentic instruments revolution: 1978, Trevor Pinnock leading The English Concert from the harpsichord, for J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suites BWV 1066–1069. This DG/Archiv recording was a touchstone of the historically-informed approach to Baroque music back in the day, and it continues to hold its own as a recommended recording of these great works to this day. Now in modern sound, Dolby Atmos style:
