GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 – London Symphony Orchestra/Noseda
I always think that the opening bars of this war-torn essay suggest the flip side, the oppressively dark side, of the Fifth Symphony. No more ‘A Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism’, simply a Soviet artist’s outrage.…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – December 2018
The recent revival of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess at English National Opera and the prospect of comparing all its available recordings in BBC Radio 3’s Record Review early next year has prompted me to look a…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Stravinsky Petrushka/Jeu de Cartes – Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev
Bold local colours are pretty much a given for Petrushka with this orchestra and this conductor in this location. But the vividness and ‘authenticity’ (not a word I generally use) of the characterisation took even me a…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 6 – MusicAeterna/Currentzis
Anyone who thrilled (as I did) to Teodor Currentzis’ Tchaikovsky Pathetique will find distinct parallels here. The impulse, the imperative, of this Mahler 6 is extraordinary – a headlong ride to the abyss with every rhythm and…
GRAMOPHONE Review: There’s A Place For Us – Nadine Sierra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Spano
Why does everything nowadays have to be marketed with an angle, a message? There are no more recital discs, just albums. That’s a way of connecting the classical and pop worlds – I see that. But do…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 3 – Larsson, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker/Fischer
Eight unison horns dramatically announce Mahler’s pantheistic hymn to the natural world and if the opening bars of Adam Fischer’s refreshingly spontaneous account sounded a tad jaded to my ears it was almost certainly because I cannot…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – November 2018
It’s at this time of the year, with yet another Henry Wood Promenade season behind us, that the question perennially arises – where do those huge Proms audiences disappear to for the rest of the year? Do…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – October 2018
When you have been in the business for as long as I have it is especially gratifying to reacquaint oneself with an operatic work one has long admired but never seen staged. Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is such…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Into The Fire – Joyce Di Donato/Brentano String Quartet (Live at Wigmore Hall)
As if anyone needed reminding that Joyce DiDonato is nothing if not an intuitive stage animal, each of her recital projects are now carefully conceived as pieces of theatre in themselves, song choices shrewdly weighed and tested…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – Awards Issue 2018
I recently spent two blissful hours at my local Curzon cinema watching a brilliant documentary entitled The Opera House. No prizes for guessing which opera house might regard itself as indomitably singular or indeed which might have…
