Champs Hill CHRCD055

This is a delightful second CD* by a favourite musician of mine, one whom I have reviewed repeatedly, at Blackheath Halls, the Royal Academy of Music and elsewhere.

The selection of works, solo at Champs Hill and orchestral at Cardiff, is satisfying at various levels, and should be perfect for radio disc jockeys.

Ksenija Siderova's musicality will convince those remaining few who still think of the accordion as something of an outsider. I don't like Champs Hill's cover photos of her so have preferred to give you one from our review of a Wigmore Hall 2009 recital:

The Vaclav Trojan concerto (more correctly Concerto fo Orchestra and Accordion) is a charming evocation of familiar fairy-tale characters with cheerful ebullience and also darker moods suggesting a slithering dragon waking up. Every item, many of them familiar, makes you appreciate it anew under Ksenija's hands.

I hope that her next recording might help to establish the accordion in duo with piano, notably successful at Blackheath with her partner Stefan Ćirić, possibly the best experience of all, and the one with greatest potental significance.

Peter Grahame Woolf

*See our review of Ksenija's first CD, with Berio, Nordheim, Schnittke, Takahashi etc

Below: Ksenija Siderova explaining her Pigini "Rolls Royce" accordion on Classic FM

and watch her playing a Scherzo-Toccata