VOCAL HEROES: BARBRA STREISAND
In 1993 I wrote this piece on BARBRA STREISAND to launch a series called Vocal Heroes in THE INDEPENDENT newspaper. ‘I want it technical as hell and a good read’ said the then Arts Editor. Imagine that…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No 8 Minnesota Orchestra/Vänskä
The Eighth is often the Mahler symphony that seems to inspire conductors who fall short in the others. That’s a sweeping generalisation, of course, but look no further than a conductor like Solti whose Mahler always struck…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Brahms Double Concerto / Viotti Violin Concerto No 22 / Dvořák Silent Woods – Christian & Tanja Tetzlaff, Deutsches SO Berlin/Järvi
The dedication on this album reads ‘In Memoriam Lars Vogt’ – and that gives it a special resonance. Christian Tetzslaff and his sister Tanja Tetzslaff made music with him together and independently on many occasions and in…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Respighi Roman Trilogy – Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI/Trevino
Respighi’s obsession with the ‘Eternal City’ is writ spectacularly large in his three symphonic evocations and maybe in some subliminal way an Italian orchestra like this one can identify better than most with the mythic elements, pictorial…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Santtu conducts Mahler Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ – Philharmonia Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Like so much of what I’ve heard of Santtu’s work of late this Mahler 2 is decidedly hit and miss – with the emphasis, I regret to say, very much on the latter. It’s strange how the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! – Soloists, Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
This is important. Oklahoma! was a big moment – perhaps the big moment – in musical theatre’s ‘coming of age’. Granted that sixteen years earlier Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern had already called time on the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Price Piano Concerto/Symphony No 1/Ethiopia’s Shadow in America – His Resignation and Faith – Kanneh-Mason, Chineke!/Suganandarajah/Cox
It’s strange, but after decades of neglect the music of Florence Price seems uncannily familiar. The soulful themes with their American Deep South tinta, the trumpet-led brass chorales, the jazzy jubas – this is Price’s musical milieu…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphony No 14/Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva – BBC Philharmonic/ Storgards
With Shostakovich’s word-setting what happens between the words is, more than with any other composer I know (with the exception of Britten to whom the 14th Symphony is dedicated), reflected in what is happening between the notes.…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Walton Violin Concerto/Respighi Violin Sonata in B minor – RPO/Ward
What a shrewd coupling: seemingly unlikely bedfellows united not just by dint of having both been written in Italy (the Walton, of course, at his retreat in Ischia) but by a certain something in the water…the Mediterranean,…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Burnished Gold – Robyn Allegra Parton/Simon Lepper
It is refreshing to encounter a singer – Robyn Allegra Parton – whose gifts of curation are it would seem fully equal to her musicianship. You might argue that the album’s artwork is a sprinkling of gold-leaf…