The pianist reveals what it was like to play Beethoven with Osmo Vänskä in Minnesota for the first time. A strong feeling of trepidation has always accompanied my arrival in the twin cities of Minnesota. I still remember experiencing it the very first time I was invited to work with the Minnesota Orchestra back in […]
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Gramophone Magazine write: Schoenberg may fairly be said to have been one of the most influential musicians in history with his advocacy of the 12-note technique. The events in the life of this brave giant can be briefly sketched; his music and his ideas need a book to themselves. His father Samuel, who ran a […]
Professor Gloria Moss writes ….. Like it or not, looks affect our responses. So Nicola Benedetti’s comments that “classical music isn’t supposed to be sexy” and that her success bears no relation to her looks flies in the face of volumes of marketing research. It also flies in the face of history, since you have […]
From the archives Of the compilations released to mark the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy’s birth this year, this is the most treasurable. As a survey of the music of perhaps of the greatest 20th-century composer it could hardly be bettered, especially within recordings from a single label, or rather, a single group of labels, […]
John Adams has managed both to provoke and to console a nation with his trailblazing works. Philip Clark meets the American composer Please click HERE to view
We are told: Volume 72 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series comes to the rescue of yet another neglected figure. London-born composer, pianist, writer and educator (he was an early Principal of the Royal Academy of Music), Cipriani Potter was encouraged by Beethoven and admired by Wagner. Howard Shelley and his Tasmanian forces give […]
For most of history, the territory of what people called music didn’t extend very far. It consisted, by and large, of the sounds and styles they grew up with. Anything else was a barbaric noise. Now, the territory seems endless. It stretches outwards to “ethnic” non-Western instruments and beyond them to electronic sound. And part […]
The Canadian pianist talks about his Polish heritage and his relationship with Chopin’s 21 miniatures Jan Lisiecki, a former Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, has recorded his eighth album for Deutsche Grammophon, the complete Chopin Nocturnes (his third Chopin recording for the DG). James Jolly caught up with him by video call in Poland […]
Complete with the original Gramophone reviews of 50 of the finest Beethoven recordings available HERE
On this album, CPE Bach: Keyboard Sonatas II, Danny Driver is intimately in touch with the fluctuations of the musical language, writes Geoffrey Norris. MORE
The French pianist, joined by Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, has recorded an album of the Polish composer, an album he’s called ‘Żal’ Lucas Debargue, who shot to fame during the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition where he took fourth prize, but totally stole the audience’s hearts, and shortly after was signed by Sony Classical. ‘Żal’ […]
We are told: Be transported throughout ancient history to all regions of the world with this beautiful and unique presentation of Requiem from The Fraternity. With the exceptional art form of Gregorian chant, this recording has a mystical quality. With an ethos reflecting a time of sadness, representing that period of mourning inherent in […]
IMOGEN TILDEN … The world’s greatest classical music festival is back. From landing on Mars to the life of a beehive, Thomas Adès, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Jennifer Walshe and others tell us about the work they’ll debut there. READ MORE
The electrifying, township-born musician on attending South Africa’s Eton, moving to Manchester and feeling Bach’s groove. A bel Selaocoe walks into a bar in King’s Cross, London, with a small suitcase and a large, curvaceous silver case. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to put that in the cloakroom,” the waitress says. “I […]
Rachel Barton Pine’s performance is ‘tastefully tailored’ , says Geoffrey Norris Please click HERE to continue
It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer’s life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer’s works. In Beethoven’s case, one mustn’t forget that in 1802, the year he was contemplating suicide – as he wrote in an unsent letter to his brothers […]
The musical past does not always recede at a uniform speed, measured coolly in years or decades. Sometimes an artist’s death can make an entire era feel suddenly more distant. That was the case with the passing this month of the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, one of the last prominent links to a legendary chapter […]
There is plenty of blood coursing through the veins of these lesser-known works, says Geoffrey Norris Continues HERE
https://www.allmusic.com/album/glass-les-enfants-terribles-mw0003434634
Ivan Hewitt writes: Stage fright is like madness; it comes without warning, out of a blue sky. That’s how it came to Scottish pianist Steven Osborne, one of the most intelligent and sensitive pianists around. About ten years ago, during a performance of Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto, he suddenly started worrying that he was about […]
It’s thanks to Haydn that the symphony became the place where a composer’s grandest, most original, and most daring thoughts were to be found. His first symphonies are more like suites, the historical form out of which the symphony developed. They were composed in Esterhazy for the court where he worked. There is a quality […]
From the archives: In today’s economic climate, opera houses are in trouble. Yet at the same time, more people are watching opera than ever before. What’s going on, asks Rupert Christiansen. It seemed all too grimly appropriate last week that Opera Europa – the umbrella support group and talking-shop for European opera houses – should […]