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 […]
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Renaud Capuçon’s playing of the Brahms: Violin Concerto, Berg: Violin Concerto makes this a remarkable disc, writes Geoffrey Norris. Please click HERE to continue
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kpyx
This week on the Gramophone website we are celebrating the career and recordings of the great Italian conductor Claudio Abbado. Among the highlights of Abbado Week are two different guides his finest recordings, a comprehensive overview of Abbado’s career and heartfelt tribute from Gramophone’s Editor-in-Chief James Jolly, and a classic interview with Abbado drawn from […]
“I haven’t been this struck by the orchestral expositions to Chopin’s concertos since Jun Märkl with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for Ingrid Fliter. Now in the company of another Scottish orchestra, the RSNO, Elim Chan makes equally bold decisions about how the music should go. It’s easy to understand why they ….. ” Continues HERE
As a musician, as a man of ideals, and as a citizen of the world, Yehudi Menuhin made an extraordinary mark on his era. The Menuhin Century, a unique project to be released on 1 April, marks the 100th anniversary of his birth on 22 April 1916. Comprising a total of 80 CDs across five themed […]
Pianist Daniel Tong and violinist Krysia Osostowicz have dreamt up Beethoven Plus, inviting 10 composers, including Judith Bingham, Huw Watkins and Jonathan Dove, to write a companion piece to the sonata of their choice Please click HERE to continue
He wrote this in his head in bed one night, slept on it, then wrote it the following day. Note for note. Absolute genius!
Pianist Dejan Lazic explores the genius of the composer and virtuoso Continues HERE
They report: These Lieder have enjoyed numerous recordings in both their orchestral and piano versions. Richard Wigmore surveys those featuring all 12 songs and recommends the one to own Continues HERE
Including Stuart Skelton as Peter Grimes, Kristian Bezuidenhout playing Beethoven concertos and Bernard Haitink’s Bruckner Continues HERE
Andrew Clements writes ….. he most significant musical anniversaries of 2018 are all centenaries – of the births of Leonard Bernstein and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and of the death of Claude Debussy, and it’s the last of those, which falls in March, that is attracting the attention of record companies. Warner Classics has got in […]
Gramophone Magazine: As his centenary year draws to a close, we can look back at some wonderful new recordings of Britten’s music: Philip Hingham’s disc of the Cello Suites (Delphi an), Oliver Knudsen conducting The Rape of Lucretius at Aldeburgh (Virgin Classics), Ian Bostridge recording Britten’s songs with Antonio Pappano and Xuefei Yang (EMI Classics), […]
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Phillip Clark writes: Ludwig van Beethoven, the composer who, more than any other, changed music, the sound of music and what it is that composers do, wrote nine symphonies that jolted music out of itself. Life could never – would never – be the same again. The “classical” rationality of structure, harmony, form, melodic development […]
by Aaron Green Updated October 23, 2017 Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concerto is unmistakably Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous work. Outside of the concert hall, you’ve heard movements of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in movies like Tin Cup, Spy Game, A View to Kill, What Lies Beneath, White Chicks, Saved!, Pacific Heights, and The Other Sister just to name a few. You’ve heard it […]
“Born in 1659, Henry Purcell was the finest and most original composer of his day. Though he was to live a very short life (he died in 1695) he was able to enjoy and make full use of the renewed flowering of music after the Restoration of the Monarchy. As the son of a musician […]
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 […]
Mark Bebbington reflects on the composer’s works for solo (or two) piano. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s extraordinary output for orchestra and voice is a central part of the repertoire – but not so his music for solo piano or piano duet. As he releases a new disc of the composer’s complete music for solo (or two) […]
The Scottish violinist takes an unusual route to exploring her Celtic connections, courtesy of two works written for her by jazz supremo Wynton Marsalis, writes Charlotte Gardner Continues HERE
From the archives: It’s a bumper year for composer anniversaries. There’s the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, fabulously gifted and with something odd and dark that fascinates us. There’s the 200th of Giuseppe Verdi, musical voice of an entire nation. And there’s also the 200th of Richard Wagner, one of those […]
Anthony Tommasini writes ….. Jan Lisiecki, pianist; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christian Zacharias. Deutsche Grammophon B0016888-02; CD. The pianist Jan Lisiecki, born in Canada to Polish parents, was 16 when he made this debut recording for Deutsche Grammophon and 17 when he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in December. […]
Simon Broughton talks to pianist Lusine Grigoryan about her new Komitas recording on ECM Ask someone to name an Armenian composer and the first name on the list is likely to be Aram Khachaturian, famous for his Gayane and Spartacus ballet scores. But for Armenians, their most treasured composer is Komitas (1869-1935), often described […]
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 […]