“Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is in a bit of a grump. He’s just been giving a lecture at the Royal Academy of Music, and can’t understand why the students are so enthused by the fashionable minimalist music of Steve Reich. “It’s all so repetitive,” he says. “There’s no proper development.” This sentiment would surprise anyone […]
Classical
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Pianist Dejan Lazic explores the genius of the composer and virtuoso. In the latest Gramophone podcast, pianist Dejan Lazic explores the genius of Liszt, from his legacy as a virtuoso soloist to his extraordinary transcriptions of the works of Wagner and Mozart among others. The interview – with Gramophone’s Editor Martin Cullingford – also features […]
Victoria, Monteverdi, Carter, Boulez and a great deal in between: Pablo Heras-Casado is one of those conductors, not common in any generation, who dine further afield than the meat-and-potatoes repertoire offered by most of his colleagues. The work he does has its place and time. A sense of place in the Winter Daydreams Symphony […]
“In the history of art,” observed the philosopher Theodor Adorno mischievously, “late works are the catastrophes.” Not disasters: catastrophes — a spectacular subversion of an artist’s oeuvre, all within the context of a sense of mortality overtaking the individual. The final period is necessarily ruptured from the earlier: carefully sculptured works of youth and maturity make […]
From the archives: Andrew Dickinson is a young tenor with a strong stage personality and bold ambition, says Rupert Christiansen. Who is he? An impressively bright and ambitious 28-year-old tenor, Andrew Dickinson is about to sing with Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera. How did he get here? Dickinson grew up in a suburb of Liverpool […]
Saint-Saëns/Liszt/Horowitz: Danse macabre. Liszt: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude; Mephisto Waltz No1. Behzod Abduraimov (piano) Decca 478 3301, £12.99 Mark the name. Behzod Abduraimov, born in Uzbekistan and still only in his very early twenties. He is a remarkable young pianist, and it is well worth getting in on the ground floor with this […]
One of America’s leading sopranos for over three decades, and a favourite with conductors from Karajan to Levine, Alan Blyth pays tribute. I was present in 1952 at the Stoll Theatre in London when Leontyne Price made her London debut, virtually unknown, in a legendary tour of Porgy and Bess. I cannot say I recall […]
Along with the piano, the violin is the instrument best served with concertos, and what a variety there is! Here’s a violin concerto Top 10 that embraces all the great works at the centre of every violinist’s repertoire ranging from the poise of the Mozart via the red-blooded Romantic works like the Tchaikovsky to the […]
Philip Clark celebrates the American poet who was a kindred spirit of the composers she has inspired As an intellectual loner, a disrupter of poetic convention, an instinctual progressive, a sensual philosopher, an obstinate believer in the validity and vitality of her own work, a transformer of small-town 19th-century America into impassionedly passionate poetic visions […]
Reassuringly Expensive. The Solti Decca Wagner Ring cycle in the big wooden presentation box (Ring 1-22) was like that. In the mid ‘70s it retailed for about £49 – at a time when I earned around £30 a week before tax. There it was, this magnificent edifice – ‘The Greatest Achievement in the History of […]
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David Oldroyd-Bolt writes as follows: “Early Beethoven belongs to an intimate sound world best evoked these days on period pianos, rather than on a loud Steinway,” declared John Allison in his review of Steven Osborne’s recent Wigmore Hall recital. Much as I admire Mr Allison as a critic, he’s dangerously close to the mindset adopted […]
The viola was the instrument of choice for Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Dvorák and Beethoven; Jimi Hendrix and John Cale both played it; violinists turn to it to improve technique. So why is the viola the butt of jokes? Tabea Zimmermann defends her instrument Please click HERE to continue reading
Kate Molleson writes ….. The lone cello has played gateway to many a composer’s soul. Bach and Britten, most famously. Ernest Bloch wrote his three solo cello suites in the 1950s, near the end of his life, and they are fleeting and strange. As performed by Natalie Clein, their small scale is poignant – melancholy […]
Complete with the original Gramophone reviews of 50 of the finest JS Bach recordings available Continues HERE
Hugo Shirley listens to the available recordings of Strauss’s opera and recommends his favourite The original Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), a chamber opera appended to a reworking of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, was not a success. Reluctantly, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal decided to embark upon a reworking of their bold experiment. The Molière […]
Gary Lemco (Audiophile Audition) writes ….. Despite having virtually “retired” from the active concert stage in 1947 in order to fulfill her teaching duties and her parenting role, Nadia Reisenberg (1904-1983) once more commands our attention in a series of chamber (and solo) works organized by her son, producer and commentator Robert Sherman. With the […]
The centenary of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps was widely celebrated in 2013, and since then recordings have increased dramatically, suggesting that this groundbreaking ballet has lost none of its power to intrigue and enthrall. Alpha’s 2017 recording of a concert by Krzysztof Urbański and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester offers a vivid performance that […]
Usually we mentioned like best #1 Clifford Curzon-George Szells performance, and like best#2 Sviatoslav Richter-Erich Leinsdorf version, a recording that curiosly Richter in his own words hated! But times have changed and at this time there are 100 or more new recordings of this marvelluos works, and because of that the competition is very fierce […]
When it comes to violin concertos, concert programme content is pretty predictable. Jeremy Nicholas throws down the gauntlet to those responsible with a selection of lesser-known works showcased on disc Continues HERE
Patrick Latimer writes: JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are some of the most recorded classical works in existence and there is a crowded field of competing versions still available. These include the Busch Chamber Orchestra recorded at Abbey Road Studio in 1935 to the Dunedin Consort on the Linn label last year. This collection of the […]
Sir Simon Rattle has done nothing to scotch rumours that he is to take the top job with the London Symphony Orchestra when Valery Gergiev steps down in 2017, possibly leaving the Berlin Philharmonic earlier than planned: he went to Berlin in 1999 and was due to stay until 2018. (Years go by like bar-lines […]
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These are powerful, intuitive performances from Boris Giltburg playing Prokofiev: War Sonatas, writes Geoffrey Norris. MORE