GRAMOPHONE Review: Bennett & Duke Violin Concertos – Chloë Hanslip, Singapore Symphony Orchestra/Litton
The great practitioners of Broadway and Hollywood – composers, arrangers, orchestrators – spawned catalogues of what might be considered more ‘legitimate’ music that the world rarely saw or heard. Broadway’s ‘Music Man’ Meredith Wilson’s symphonies, Hitchcock’s Bernard…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Floyd Collins – Original Broadway Cast Recording
It’s been a staggering 30 years since I reviewed the original Nonesuch recording of this masterwork right here in Gramophone. This true story of the cave explorer Floyd Collins whose quest for the ultimate sand cavern –…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Beethoven Symphony No.9 – Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine/Swensen
You might say that Joseph Swenson comes at this piece from the perspective of the start of the romantic era as opposed to the summation of the classical. The dynamic range is immediately wide, the hushed questioning…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Elgar & Walton Cello Concertos – Gautier Capuçon, London Symphony Orchestra/Pappano
A dream team in the making, I suspect. Capucon and Pappano may be collaborating here for the first time but it’s a meeting of musical minds and sensibilities for sure. The coupling of these concertos is nothing…
GRAMOPHONE Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Original West End Cast Recording
I’ve followed this beautiful uplifting show from its inception at the postage stamp Southwark Playhouse to its arrival in the West End and a well deserved Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Its scale is small, its…
CAROLE KING: In Words & Music – Jewish Literary Foundation Book Week
55 years after Tapestry transformed popular music, selling 30 million copies, we celebrate one of its greatest icons. Edward Seckerson, host of our recent tributes to Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein, talks to former The Forward editor Jane Eisner about her Jewish Lives biography Carole…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Next To Normal – Original London Cast Recording
It took 15 years for Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer Prize winning musical to make it to London’s West End from Broadway – a staggering statistic in itself though its topicality with regard to mental health…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Sibelius Symphony No.5 etc. – Christian Tetzlaff, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Collon
This is outstanding. The longest sunrise in music emerges through crisp clean air in Nicholas Collon’s wonderfully lucid account of the Fifth Symphony. Woodwinds are keenly profiled, rhythm and dynamics immediately a priority. Even in stasis there’s…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No.5 – Tonhaller-Orchester Zürich/Järvi
Should the opening trumpet solo be more ‘Last Post’ than ‘Reveille’? I am never entirely sure – it is decidedly low-key here. But what I am sure about is that the ensuing funeral march should feel more…
RICHARD RODGERS: SOMETHING WONDERFUL – Jewish Literary Foundation Book Week 2025
For our grand finale, join us for an enchanting celebration of Richard Rodgers, hailed as one of the greatest popular melodists of all time. Writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson teams up with Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny to explore Rodgers’ iconic collaborations…
