In December 2004, UK distributor HiAudio sent me a sample of Graham Slee’s Solo headphone amplifier for review in Hi-Fi News. The copy I submitted to Steve Harris coincided with his replacement as editor by Steve Fairclough – after several reminders it became apparent to me that he had no intention of publishing the […]
Author: Christopher Breunig
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Davis’s new Fidelio The New Year brings a sea-change to the London Symphony Orchestra as workaholic Valery Gergiev takes over from Sir Colin Davis as principal conductor, his senior colleague becoming its president. (The Philharmonia and London Philharmonic Orchestras have also announced new appointments: Esa-Pekka Salonen and Vladimir Jurowski.) Happily, Sir Colin is to make […]
Christopher Breunig This collection of songs about dreams and fantasies has been sitting in the equivalent of my ‘in tray’ for far too long, I discover! The Delft-born mezzo has been coached by Jard van Nes and Dame Janet Baker, and was chosen by Haitink for his Mahler ‘Resurrection’ performance at this year’s Proms and […]
BRUCKNER Symphony 8 MAHLER Symphony 6 Concertgebouw Orchestra/Eduard van Beinum Tahra TAH614-615 You sometimes wonder at the seeming profusion of immaculate copies of complete sets of 78s from which restoration engineers work. The source for 18 acetates of a Dutch Radio transmission of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, from April 1955? Eduard van Beinum’s Concertgebouw performance was […]
Writes Christopher Breunig: After finally being allowed to come to the West in 1960, Richter soon made LPs for CBS, RCA, DG, EMI and Philips. Extraordinary! His UK debut with Kondrashin was at the Albert Hall in July ’61 in Chopin, Dvorak and Liszt; the two Liszt Concertos (which you can find ‘live’, with the […]
Christopher Breunig writes: The interest here lies in the pianist Bernd Glemser (whose Rachmaninov programme on OC 558 is not to be missed: it has the Corelli Variations, Sonata 2 and other pieces) and the transcribed string quartet, which might be a way in for those who normally would fight shy of Shostakovich’s chamber […]
Three conductors, and a German thread Each chapter heading in My Century by Günter Grass is a year, from 1900-1999, and although Grass is somewhat disgraced by his belated admission that he joined the Waffen-SS, this fictionalised chronicle is nonetheless worth reading for the light it sheds on German thinking – not least on the […]
Internationally respected authority on classical music, Mr. Christopher Breunig returns to this site. First, a little about him: Christopher trained and practiced as an architect, but over the years contributed music reviews to various publications, including the Sunday Times, Guardian and other specialist journals including International Piano and Classic Record Collector. Britten and Shostakovich It’s […]
A 1964 BBC Symphony Orchestra performance of Elgar’s Symphony No.2, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, has recently been issued on CD Killing two birds with one stone, as it were, Sir Thomas Beecham once described Karajan as ‘like Malcolm Sargent, only musical’. There’s a moment at the end of a BBC Symphony Orchestra performance of […]