Just Sibelius’ First Symphony? That is exceptionally short measure for a CD. The ratio of quality over quantity needed to be especially dramatic – not least because barely a couple of months back Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the…

Enter the extraordinary world of Federico Fellini – a world where childhood dreams strive to lose touch with reality, where playboys and clowns rub shoulders and pretty much all life is a three-ring circus. In Fellini’s Italy…

A number of things become clearer as Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto unfolds: first, that there’s a story to be told, an American story; second, that Charles Ives – musical America’s greatest pioneer – has not passed Marsalis…

In his liner note introduction to these stand-alone concert works Danny Elfman asks the question so often asked, namely why it is that audiences for movie music and classical music concerts are so markedly different when from…

Adam Fischer’s fascinating (if slightly eccentric) liner notes speak of the words of Das Lied von Der Erde being almost incidental to the mood, of the music being significantly more important than the texts that inspired it.…

As each instalment of John Wilson’s recorded tribute to his friend and mentor Richard Rodney Bennett is revealed the realisation (to those of us who didn’t already know) that this extraordinarily complete musician could do absolutely anything…

I honestly can’t remember hearing a performance of this extraordinary symphony which was so plainly in love with its ethos, its originality, its sonority. Ivan Fischer reads ‘the small print’ of the score with such thoroughness that…

We’ve come to expect a clear-sighted brilliance and technical excellence from this series. It’s become something of a benchmark in that respect. The Tenth Symphony arrived like a whirlwind to kick things off and there have been…