Reviews
Here you will find reviews of Joseph James recordings published in the media.
Ateș Orga on Wanderer Fantasy
The writer and musicologist Ateș Orga writes of the recent Wanderer recording:
“Orlando Jopling does powerful, extraordinary things with this music, generating a structural momentum, emotional charge and climax that can evade even the best of pianists. I haven't been so satisfied with these masterworks for a long time. Detailed, creative transcriptions in the Mahler/Barshai tradition. Great production and sound. A revelation.”
Extracts from a review of Requiem After JS Bach
BBC Music Magazine
"Joseph James's translucent scoring finds a warm inner glow in Bach's harpsichord textures, with some beautiful filigree writing for flutes, oboes and bassoon...."
"exquisite vocal lines for the three main soloists: what was almost an abstract musical argument in one of Bach's Three-Part Inventions becomes immediately a passionately human one in Joseph James's Libera Me...."
"The Requiem after JS Bach is destined to bring the results of their unique partnership (Stanley Joseph Seeger and Francis James Brown, aka 'Joseph James') to a massive international audience"
Classic CD Magazine reviews Sketches from the Scarlet Letter
Classic CD Magazine
Possibly the strangest orchestral line-up ever assembled on CD is released this month. Joseph James's Sketches from the Scarlet Letter was recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Andrew Greenwood in April 1991. It requires forces of over 125 musicians, in addition to a standard symphony orchestra, instruments as diverse as an Irish harp, a serpent, a cornett, a regal organ, a chitarrone, a contra-bass banjo, a hurdy-gurdy, and even a set of musical wine glasses."