This is a performance of such distinction that regardless of one’s personal view of the piece – that is, exactly how objective or subjective you want or need your Mahler to be and whether you favour an…

It’s always interesting getting feedback on reviews published within these pages whether there is agreement or a difference of opinion – these things are so subjective. It’s been a while, though, since a review of mine prompted…

In June I reviewed – none too favourably – an account of Mahler’s tragic and prophetic Sixth Symphony from the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra under their General Music Director Tomáš Netopil which was the third recording in recent…

If there’s one factor above all that sets these performances apart it’s the osmosis between soloist and conductor. There’s a musical and intellectual friction going on here and it has to do with the balance between head…

I love the analogy Richard Rodney Bennett made when describing his multi-faceted career as ‘Different rooms, albeit in the same house’ – adding almost as a throw-away that he might have (unceremoniously) knocked down some of the…

Written from lockdown (I never thought I’d write those words) where I am putting the finishing touches to a survey of Decca’s bumper box of Karajan remasterings for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Record Review’. It will be a…

Each time I hear the opening of this symphony – in filmic terms a long slow pan across the frozen forecourt of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg – I immediately think of countless grainy black and…

Here’s a Mahler 6 that comes with its own historical context. Unlikely as it may now seem, Essen was where Mahler first performed the harrowing Sixth in 1906 and the Essener Philharmoniker is the orchestra that can…