War and heartbreak colour the backdrop to this ever-popular sketch of Spain, but the best recordings are rooted in Baroque fantasy and formality, says Peter Quantrill
The Concierto de Aranjuez was composed in exile from one war and first performed in the shadow of another. Joaquín Rodrigo began writing it in 1939, having fled to Paris with his wife Victoria from the Spanish Civil War. The couple had met in the French capital a decade earlier, she a recent piano graduate from the Conservatoire and he a student of Paul Dukas at the École Normale. They married in Valencia in January 1933, against her father's wishes, and took a honeymoon in Aranjuez, a town south of Madrid dominated by its royal palace and gardens.
Not 'version 5' – the 'V' here refers to Wilson's cabinet material. In fact, the Alexx V is a 'v2' and it's a masterpiece
True to form, Wilson Audio allowed five years to pass before revising its Alexx floorstander [HFN Nov '16], avoiding that old high-end crisis of perceived obsolescence. As I always say, what was fine last Tuesday is still fine today, but Wilson tends to upgrade its models with major leaps, not tiny steps, and so it is with the Alexx V (£139,000).
Sometimes, only an integrated amplifier will do, even if you've £15k burning a hole in your pocket. AVID's gargantuan Sigsum is here to challenge any bias toward separates
Maybe one grows less ornery with age, or perhaps there was a nice guy inside of me waiting to crawl out from my crotchety self. It's just that, only a few years ago, the frustrating elements of AVID's Sigsum integrated amplifier would have had me cursing Editor PM for asking me to review it. So, there's minimalism here, and there's contrariness, and that's just the lack of a remote control. In a product a fiver short of £15,000.
Martin Colloms hears a power amp setting the pace for the 21st century
The development of this completely new power amplifier has been a major undertaking for Naim. Up to now, its designs have been variants on the late Julian Vereker's founding concept, which led to the first NAP 250 stereo chassis some 25 years ago. Even now, the company's biggest current model, the NAP 135, is a monoblock variant of the '250, with more generous power supplies allocated to the separated channels.
Not 'version 5' – the 'V' here refers to Wilson's cabinet material. In fact, the Alexx V is a 'v2' and it's a masterpiece
Sometimes, only an integrated amplifier will do, even if you've £15k burning a hole in your pocket. AVID's gargantuan Sigsum is here to challenge any bias toward separates
Martin Colloms hears a power amp setting the pace for the 21st century
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