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…

As if anyone needed reminding that Joyce DiDonato is nothing if not an intuitive stage animal, each of her recital projects are now carefully conceived as pieces of theatre in themselves, song choices shrewdly weighed and tested…

A few words of introduction from the man himself (Bernstein in conversation with Humphrey Burton) preface this performance of perhaps his finest concert work – and in case we were in any doubt of the inspiration behind…

This Nelsons cycle started with a bang – namely the most electrifying recording of the Tenth Symphony we’ve had in almost half a century. The excellence continues. In dramatic contrast to Mikhail Pletnev’s intriguing but decidedly odd…

Volume Two of John Wilson’s “celebration” (for that’s what this series surely is) of Richard Rodney Bennett’s manifold gifts as a composer – and once more the choices rejoice in his creative shape shifting. The accomplished jazzer…

After his disappointingly urbane account of the Second Symphony “Resurrection” the twilit, child-like, world of the Fourth would, on paper, seem far better suited to the cultured Royal Concertgebouw sound as favoured and actively encouraged by Daniele…

As this collection and its accompanying notes reminds us, the music came first and the poetry followed for Emily Dickinson. Like all respectable young American women of a certain social standing she studied piano and voice. And…

The opening movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony has brought great diversity of approach over the decades. How to interpret that tempo marking “Allegro vivace e nobilmente”? Exuberance, pace, and nobility. Gardner steers the middle path between expansive…