The beauty of this coupling lies with the way in which two such highly distinctive works impact upon each other. The Brahms feels more radical for the proximity of the Schoenberg; the Schoenberg feels more romantic for…

Andrew Haveron joins very select, indeed mighty, company – from Heifetz to Mutter and beyond – in the Korngold Concerto. But his collaboration with John Wilson in the nursing and shaping of strings lines from the concert…

The word ‘chivalrous’ invariably comes to mind with the opening measures of Bruckner Sixth. Knights errant galloping towards new adventures, colourful pennants flying with that first brassy tutti. There’s also more than a hint of Wagner’s Die…

A brand new label showcasing both the National Symphony Orchestra and their home – the Kennedy Center – in Washington DC offers two familiar postcards ‘From the New World’ in performances that should but don’t stand out…

Let me say straight away that Vanska is temperamentally far better suited to the pristine, child-like world of the Fourth Symphony than he was to the epic Second. There are many aspects of this excellent performance (and…

A great deal has already been written about Beethoven this year. There will be more. Allow me to add to it. I have a vivid memory – a particular concert that took place on 9 June 1981…

Gramophone has already singled out this young man as one to watch and from the shaping of his solo entrance in the Tchaikovsky alone there’s a ‘presence’ about Johan Dalene’s playing that announces a musician of special…

This is one of those discs which commands respect (this conductor is pretty much always a safe investment) without setting the world on fire. I kept waiting for, anticipating, moments in all of these pieces when Petrenko…

A treasure, to be sure. Four years before Bruno Walter’s celebrated, indeed classic, Vienna recording (1952) with Kathleen Ferrier, the man who conducted the world premiere of Mahler’s pantheistic symphony with voices takes his newest discovery from…