I don’t think anybody would deny that there were times when Gennady Rozhdestvensky wore his craft so lightly, so casually, that the impression he was ‘coasting’ on his laurels did neither himself nor his orchestras any favours.…

Shostakovich’s Sixth and Ninth symphonies clearly belong together – flip sides of the same coin, the composer wrong-footing the Soviet establishment with an irony bordering on insanity. The opening Largo of the Sixth is one of his…

There’s something intensely evocative about the solo trumpet – a plaintive, plangent, melancholic sound which speaks just as eloquently of the great outdoors as it does of the inner city. Of course, the jazz connotations are inescapable…

The early evolution of Stravinsky from fledgling to Firebird feels like the most natural thing in the world as one listens to this the first in a three-volume series from Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic tracing…

No one ever needs to convince me of Kurt Weill’s importance in the great scheme of music. Not just in the world of musical theatre where I have long been an advocate of his American work –…

What a delicious surprise this has turned out to be. I’ll wager only a tiny minority of true Ravel aficionados will know only one or two if any of these early opuses – all of them written…

Sonically speaking, this streamed offering from San Diego is right up there with the best we have – yes, even the much-lauded Chandos/Storgards account which was my Critics Choice a couple of years back. The young Venezuelan…

There’s a great deal to admire here. Some individual new thinking, too. In some ways the Tenth is the most classically cast of all Shostakovich’s symphonies – and to honour that it must feel organic. Sokhiev’s opening…