After a lifetime conducting Bach, John Eliot Gardiner has written an in-depth study of a genius touched by God. He talks to Ivan Hewett. Continue reading HERE
Classical
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The ‘tremendous’ Third Symphony is both great music and a force beyond music. How, asks Richard Osborne, have conductors met this challenge during the work’s 90-year-long recorded history? Continues HERE
THE GUARDIAN / Andrew Clements The pianist Lars Vogt died in September last year. His cancer had been diagnosed in 2021, and he was already ill when, against doctors’ advice, he had travelled to Bremen to begin these Schubert recordings with his longtime collaborators, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja. They began […]
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/19/eno-the-rhinegold-review-wagner-richard-jones-martyn-brabbins-coliseum
Genre-hopping can enrich players and audiences alike. If anyone doubts the astonishing range and quality of classical music recordings being made today – and, I hope, regular readers of these pages would harbour no such perception – then they should really take heed of this month’s releases. There’s always a slight seasonality to release schedules, […]
Today we welcome Rosie Purdie The issue of opera and its appeal to a wide and diverse audience is one that opera makers are painfully aware of. It’s no secret that nowadays the majority of audiences who go to the opera are in the 60-plus age bracket and, although valiant attempts are being made to […]
THE GUARDIAN / Andrew Clements Faust/Les Siècles/Roth(Harmonia Mundi)Performed on original instruments, the composer’s neoclassical works – particularly his Violin Concerto, brilliantly played by Isabelle Faust, come into sharper focus t was through their recordings of Stravinsky’s early ballets a decade ago that François-Xavier Roth and the period instruments of Les Siècles cemented their international reputation. […]
THE GUARDIAN / Andrew Clements Tetzlaff/Tetzlaff/Vogt(Ondine, two CDs)The late pianist is outstanding in these last recordings, accompanied by his longtime collaborators, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja The pianist Lars Vogt died in September last year. His cancer had been diagnosed in 2021, and he was already ill when, against doctors’ advice, […]
Stereophile: Over the last several weeks, one newspaper after another has made note of Nielsen Soundscan’s 2006 point-of-purchase data, which showed classical record sales up 22.5%, making it the “fastest growing” category for the year. Hip-hop was down (-20.7%), R&B was down (-18.4%), alternative was down (-9.2%), jazz was down (-8.3%)—soundtracks were up (+19%), but […]
The list is organised by genre, beginning with orchestral works, then moving though chamber, instrumental and vocal. We have also included, where possible, the complete original Gramophone reviews, which are drawn from Gramophone’s Reviews Database of more than 40,000 reviews. To find out more about subscribing to this unique and endlessly fascinating resource, visit: gramophone.co.uk/subscribe.
We reprint this revealing interview with Julian Bream from January 2007… Sixty years ago, the classical guitar was little more than a musical curiosity in Britain, despite the work of Segovia in Europe – a small-voiced, exotic instrument that wasn’t to be taken seriously. But then a determined Londoner changed everything. Julian Bream’s single-handed mission […]
Including Stuart Skelton as Peter Grimes, Kristian Bezuidenhout playing Beethoven concertos and Bernard Haitink’s Bruckner Continues HERE
omenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas crop up regularly enough in recitals, most often in a group of four or five beginning a programme, or acting as a palate-cleanser between more substantial works. Concerts devoted exclusively to them are rare, but in doing precisely that harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani was on a mission to encourage his audience to […]
“Artists, musicians and composers introduce fifty key pieces of classical music composed between 1950 and 2000. As featured in the Radio 3 programme, Hear & Now.” MORE
On the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, Gramophone Magazine recommend the most outstanding recordings Essential Recordings / Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan – DG Double 453 0402GTA2 (132′ · ADD · Recorded 1979-80 ) Mahler’s Ninth is a death-haunted work but is filled, as Bruno Walter remarked, ‘with a […]
FIONA MADDOCKS The three composers on the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s African American Voices (Linn), conducted by the orchestra’s assistant conductor, South Carolina-born Kellen Gray, are enjoying a vigorous revival. William Grant Still (1895-1978), George Walker (1922-2018) and William Levi Dawson (1899-1990) combined classical training with the Black vernacular music of their upbringing. Dawson played […]
‘I was not thinking of the Redeemer when I created Parsifal’, wrote Wagner. In ceremonial moments stage director Pierre Audi and his team – including artist Anish Kapoor as set designer – rightly eschew any Christian symbolism deriving from latter-day Mass rituals, opting instead (in the first Grail scene) for images of blood and sacrifice. […]
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Peter Brathwaite writes: The Nazi campaign against so-called ‘degenerate music’, saw works by such composers as Weill, Schoenberg and Hindemith denounced and suppressed. More than 70 years later, much of this music is still unknown. Baritone Peter Brathwaite on his mission to bring it to a new audience. Please click HERE to continue
Masaaki Suzuki has finally completed his project to record the complete church cantatas of JS Bach. But what has been driving this quiet Japanese musician to tackle one of the greatest achievements in Western music? Lindsay Kemp travels to Kobe to find out Continues HERE
