Like the Slavonic Dances before them Dvořák’s Legends sound and feel like they were born into an orchestra. Piano, four hands, seems like a distant memory though clearly the homespun ‘salon’ ethos will always be redolent of…

The real pleasure here lies with the Czech Philharmonic – something individual, characterful and homespun in a world dominated by the supersonic. The playing has a warmth and generosity – and brilliance, don’t get me wrong –…

I think it’s fair to say that I greeted the inaugural Ravel collection from this source with ‘modified rapture’. But reservations apart, it was self-evident to me (and I’m not being fanciful) that there was something deeply…

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…