GRAMOPHONE Review: Sounds of America – Jon Manasse, Park Avenue Chamber Orchestra/Bernard
I am not familiar with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony or indeed their conductor David Bernard but there are many issues here that make me wonder why they might have chosen such hotly contested repertoire for a…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Bernstein Candide – Soloists, London Symphony Orchestra/Alsop
Absence doesn’t make the heart grow any fonder of this performance. I heard (and saw) it live back in 2018 and it was in so many ways a mirror image of what the composer himself tried to…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – November 2021
We all love a drama, most especially one that stems from an unforeseen crisis. During this year’s foreshortened Prom season tenor Simon O’Neill, the eponymous hero of Glyndebourne’s Tristan und Isolde realised after act two that his…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Rachmaninov Symphony No.2 – Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Ticciati
This is very much in keeping with the impression I have always had of Robin Ticciati’s work: exhaustively prepared, immaculately turned, eminently musical. The sense of unfolding over the many, many pages of the introduction, a flower…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – Awards Issue 2021
Richard Bratby’s affectionate tribute to glorious Malcolm Arnold on the 100th anniversary of his birth (September issue) has prompted a few reflections of my own. Not least among them was the weekend I included the slow movement…
STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: WICKED at 15
Wicked UK’s new podcast with composer / lyricist Stephen Schwartz and Edward Seckerson, to mark the 15th anniversary of the show in London’s West End. They discuss the enduring popularity of this musical theatre phenomenon, as well…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – October 2021
As I contemplate the return of public events and the unimaginable joy of hearing a real orchestra live for the first time in 18 months – that would be at the Proms, I fancy – I am…
COMPARING NOTES with LUCY SCHAUFER
Sunday 28th November 2021 3.00pm Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel Comparing Notes brings stars of the West End and Broadway to Crazy Coqs. In a lively and informal mix of performance and conversation host Edward Seckerson will be getting…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Barber A Hand of Bridge, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Medea – Soloists, Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Rose
A monodrama, a ballet and a mini-opera. Three faces of Samuel Barber ‘in camera’. One might expect a unique offering from a source committed to that cause – namely the Boston Modern Orchestra Project – but I…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – September 2021
Re-hearing Andris Nelsons’ splendid account of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony has left me as ever haunted by the skeletal ‘ticking’ of side drum, castanet and woodblock in the final moments of this the composer’s last symphonic utterance. Of…
