The stakes are always higher when a piece is as over-exposed, as much a part of popular culture, as this one. Carl Orff’s ribald romp has kept amateur (and professional) choral societies super-busy over many decades and…

This is shaping up to be an extraordinary Mahler cycle with an extraordinary orchestra. Their possibilities are seemingly limitless – no ceiling – and all the wonderful detailing that Rattle has uncovered over the decades in exhaustive…

So impressive. Janine Jansen essentially strips these pieces of all the years of what one might call ‘performance adornment’ and takes them back to their elemental roots. From Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic the shimmer at the start…

There is liberation in the timelessness of these songs and settings, be they old or brand new. And timelessness is what makes this quirky and haunting collection – a tapestry, if you like, of protest – memorable.…

Elfman’s Concerto for Orchestra Wunderkammer was written for the National Youth Orchestra and clearly designed to stretch and stimulate young imaginations – to say nothing of techniques. It’s a kind of Rubik Cube of orchestral possibilities. The…

A near perfect combo of works spanning the length and breadth of Carl Nielsen’s life’s work. The tone poem Pan and Syrinx should rightly come between the two big works but it makes for an impressionable curtain…

I’ve always admired the modesty and truthfulness of James Ehnes as a player – and you can hear that modesty at work in Phaedrus’ opening address from the Bernstein Serenade. There’s an unfussy directness about it that…

Bartok was never fully content with The Wooden Prince and this final revision marks an end to his tinkering. It is significant, I think, that all his trimming has to do with music explicitly related to stage…

The concept behind Mathieu Herzog’s Appassionato would seem to me to be one of chamber music (and the mindset implicit in that) transcending the number of players involved – a free and flexible approach with infinite possibilities.…