Classical violinist Gil Shaham has discovered what so many pop artists have already discovered: the future of recording is in self-produced, self-owned discs. Since founding the Canary Classics label in 2004, Shaham has done his best work since his DG debut. He already had several excellent discs to his credit, including an especially exciting Prokofiev disc, but this Fauré Album featuring works for violin and piano and for violin, cello, and piano was in some ways the best yet. Because much as the American-born, Israeli ...
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Classical violinist Gil Shaham has discovered what so many pop artists have already discovered: the future of recording is in self-produced, self-owned discs. Since founding the Canary Classics label in 2004, Shaham has done his best work since his DG debut. He already had several excellent discs to his credit, including an especially exciting Prokofiev disc, but this Fauré Album featuring works for violin and piano and for violin, cello, and piano was in some ways the best yet. Because much as the American-born, Israeli-raised violinist was incredibly thrilling in Prokofiev's edgy modernism, he is supremely seductive in Fauré's lyrical romanticism. With pianist Akira Eguchi in the early Violin Sonata No. 1 and cellist Brinton Smith in the late Piano Trio, Shaham is suave of tone, smooth of technique, and persuasive of argument. But in the shorter pieces in-between the two multimovement works, Shaham, freed from the constraints of large-scale structures, is almost unbearably ravishing, with a sweet...
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