BACH: Sonatas and Partitas?

There is something about Bach that can simultaneously soothe my often aching brain while also stirring my flagging soul and nothing more so than the sonatas and partitas for solo violin (though I don’t mind a bit of flute or oboe now and again either. I’ve been listening to quite a few recordings lately but […]

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Blurring the boundary between classical music and jazz – the long read

GRAMOPHONE: Composer and pianist Iain Farrington surveys the interwoven history of classical and jazz as his new album, ‘Gershwinicity’, is released on the Somm label lthough the terms ‘classical’ and ‘jazz’ are frustratingly vague for such a broad wealth of music, they provide a useful distinction for two different musical traditions. When the two styles […]

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SCHUBERT: Our podcast of the day

GRAMOPHONE In 2019, Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Schubert’s great song-cycle in concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and Erato were on hand to record it. James Jolly caught up with the multi-Gramophone Award-winning mezzo to talk about her unique approach to the work. As one of a handful of women singers who have […]

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SCHUBERT: Our podcast of the day

GRAMOPHONE: Joined by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the American mezzo takes a different approach to this song masterwork In 2019, Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Schubert’s great song-cycle in concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and Erato were on hand to record it. James Jolly caught up with the multi-Gramophone Award-winning mezzo to talk about her […]

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LOSSLESS: The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall goes lossless

GRAMOPHONE: A world first video stream-on-demand with audio track in lossless studio quality The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall (DCH) – which has been broadcasting around 40 concerts live from the Philharmonie every season since 2008 and then offering them in a constantly growing concert archive – notches up another technological milestone with the introduction […]

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LISZT: Our podcast of the day

GRAMOPHONE Liszt’s piano music, with Alexander Ullman Alexander Ullman’s new album featuring Liszt’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2 and the Sonata in B Minor, is released today on Rubicon Classics. For this week’s episode of the Gramophone Podcast, the Award-winning pianist joined Editor Martin Cullingford to explore this extraordinary music, its beauty and its […]

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VIVALDI: An interesting read

GRAMOPHONE: Arranging The Four Seasons for solo harp Harpist Keziah Thomas talks us through recreating Vivaldi’s evocative imagery on her own instrument As a child of the 80s, my first encounter with The Four Seasons came from my favourite cassette in my grandfather’s meticulously indexed drawer of classical music albums, ‘Hooked on Classics’. Vivaldi’s music […]

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Ask Mr. H: “I love classical music, but I don’t have a real understanding of it in terms of the emotion. I’m not looking to learn about the composers and I don’t want to learn an instrument, but I want to know more about how what moves me moves me. Does that make sense? Can you recommend a book or books?”

Howard Popeck: Certainly. Now forgive me for saying this, but it is possible to over-analyse the wonder of music, the magic and the emotion. It’s a danger, but somehow I sense you aren’t going to fall into the trap. The most wonderful book on the sheer unadulterated joy of classical music without the usual patronising […]

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MOZART: Clarinet Concerto … which recording is best?

Mozart’s last concerto presents unique challenges to those recording the work, finds Nalen Anthoni Valedictory or visionary? Is there a choice? Could Mozart, who finished this concerto about eight weeks before he died, have been anything other than valedictory? Yet in his letter from Vienna to Constanze in Baden, written at midnight on October 7, […]

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THE GUARDIAN: The critics pick their classical highlights.

For the first 10 months of 2022, it seemed that British musical life was returning to some kind of normality. But that was to reckon without the decisions of the one organisation in this country whose sole reason for existence is to nurture and encourage the arts throughout England. It was generally accepted that there […]

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SCHUBERT / THE PIANO TRIOS: News

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 […]

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OPEN-MINDED: The open-mindedness of the finest artists

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, […]

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OPERA: How can its image be positively affected within the UK primary and secondary education regime?

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 […]

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