GRAMOPHONE Review: Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet – Los Angeles Philharmonic/Dudamel
This wonderful score is such a good fit for Dudamel’s sleek Los Angeleans. There is what I would call a tinge of Americana about Prokofiev’s big lyric melodies in this of all his pieces and within a…
SOME OTHER TIME: Leonard Bernstein – In Words & Music with Kim Criswell and Edward Seckerson
Writer, Broadcaster and Presenter EDWARD SECKERSON was one of the last journalists to interview the legendary Leonard Bernstein less than a year before he died in 1990. A passionate, some might say fanatical, advocate of Bernstein’s exceptional talents as…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 7 – Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/Järvi
There have been a couple of stand-out recordings of Mahler’s ‘rogue’ Seventh in recent times – none more illuminating or hard to beat than Rattle’s Bavarian RSO account – but after Paavo Järvi’s brilliant rendering of the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Cello Concertos 1 & 2 – Alexander Kniazev, Yokohama Sinfonietta/Yamada
Shostakovich’s two cello concertos plainly share the same musical DNA – but it’s almost as if the Second (which I am delighted to see becoming more and more core repertoire and a work of choice among leading…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 1 – Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich/Järvi
I do believe this is one of the best – perhaps even the best – account of Mahler’s precocious First Symphony that I’ve heard on disc since the celebrated Bernstein/Concertgebouw version. Paavo Järvi and his Zurich orchestra…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Walton Cello Concerto, Symphony No. 1, Scarpino – Jonathan Aasgaard, Sinfonia of London/Wilson
A whiplash Scapino, ducking and diving with impunity, sets the tone of this marvellous disc. As so often with John Wilson’s work it’s the precision, the clarity, and the keenest articulation that defines it. The level of…
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: 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: 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…