Classical

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/article/gramophone-curates-the-beethoven-effect-this-month-on-apple-music

A beginner’s guide to the 50 greatest Mahler recordings, featuring extracts from the original Gramophone reviews and an Apple Music playlist https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/the-50-greatest-mahler-recordings

Violinist Alina Ibragimova, has a wonderfully full, malleable tone, sinewy agility and deft expressiveness on this recording Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos, writes Geoffrey Norris. MORE

These performances of Brahms’s Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 capture the music’s melodic and harmonic richness, says Geoffrey Norris. Paul Watkins and Ian Brown here give well-modulated performances of the two Brahms cello sonatas. Cello and piano are finely balanced in timbre, spontaneously complementary in their reactions to the music and effective in combining intricacy […]

Alondra de la Parra, keen to raise money to support charities in Mexico working to help women and children suffering abuse and violence during the pandemic, has created The Impossible Orchestra. With musicians from 14 different countries and recorded for video as well as audio, the orchestra is a ….. https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/alondra-de-la-parra-on-the-impossible-orchestra

C. Davis Remignanti writes: During the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, there were any number of notable figures who parlayed early success outside the film industry into curious careers as movie stars. Sonja Henie comes to mind. Carmen Miranda. Johnny Weissmuller, Esther Williams and others. All names we’re familiar with. They all made (and […]

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He may have been less adventurous than Brahms but Bruch had a remarkable ear for melody, and in his late works he captured a profound level of expression, writes Andrew Mellor as we approach the centenary of the composer’s death https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/max-bruch-touching-the-divine

Pianist Murray Perahia tells Ivan Hewett about his belief in improvising and the greats who shaped his career. MORE

Franz Schubert’s songs sometimes found their way into his instrumental works, perhaps most famously in the fourth movement of the Piano Quintet in A major, D667, “Trout,” which was based on Die Forelle, D550; the Wanderer Fantasy in C major, D760, which was inspired by Der Wanderer, D489; and the second movement of the String […]

Joy emanates from Angela Hewett’s piano playing on this Schumann CD, writes Geoffrey Norris. Angela Hewitt (piano), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, cond Hannu Lintu Hyperion CDA67885, £12.99 The sense of joy that infallibly emanates from Angela Hewitt’s piano playing is fully evident here in three works by Schumann – the A minor Concerto, the Introduction and […]

Robin Ticciati, Principal Conductor of the DSO Berlin, has just released an album that couples two tone-poems, Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung, with the six songs, Op 68, often called the Brentano songs, sung by Louise Alder. As Ticciati rehearsed at Glyndebourne for the much reduced 2020 season, James Jolly caught up with him […]

https://www.liveabout.com/top-yo-yo-ma-albums-723864

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/contemporary-composer-charles-wuorinen

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/lang-lang-s-new-album-to-feature-two-different-versions-of-bach-s-goldberg-variations

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-50-greatest-mahler-recordings

The perfect introduction to Brahms’s music, featuring recordings by Nelson Freire, Riccardo Chailly, Marin Alsop, Grigory Sokolov, Artemis Quartet, Emil Gilels, Julia Fischer, Itzhak Perlman, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and many more https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/the-50-greatest-brahms-recordings

To see so many organisations, new and old, recognising realities and yet seizing opportunities is heartening Every year, around this time, I report back from the annual gathering of the classical industry at the Classical:NEXT conference. Bringing labels, distributors, innovators and artists together always breeds good ideas, goodwill and a better, shared understanding of where, […]

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/blogs/article/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-conductor

The broadcaster, critic, composer and author Stephen Johnson has recently published a new study of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 – The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910. James Jolly spoke to him about the book: why Mahler’s Eighth and the extraordinary story of its 1910 Munich premiere. https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/stephen-johnson-discusses-mahler-s-eighth-symphony

This is a thrillingly fresh and vibrant version of Carmen, conducted by Simon Rattle, writes Rupert Christiansen. Read more by clicking HERE