With last month’s focus on a new generation of pianists in mind I am prompted to think again about something that is not often discussed with regard to international concertising: namely, not just what these exceptional young…
I have often been asked if I listen to music differently when reviewing or not reviewing. It’s an interesting question. There is, you could say, a heightened level of awareness when ‘in working mode’. One listens in…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
After her previous forays into jazz and inde-pop to say nothing of her recent stint on Broadway as Nettie Fowler in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel it was almost inevitable that a Broadway album would be forthcoming from…
I’ve always been slightly puzzled as to why Simon Rattle (and subsequently Mark Elder) chose to anoint this particular show amongst Bernstein’s Broadway canon – not because I don’t love it as dearly as the others but…
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…
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…
