The curtain-raiser somewhat eclipses the main event in this instance. Why we don’t hear more of Bartok’s Four Orchestral Pieces I cannot imagine – their relative compactness belies a breadth and depth and drama that calls to…

You can absolutely hear why Randall Goosby has been turning heads with his open-hearted and generous ‘school of Perlman’ delivery. There’s an honesty – and modesty – about his playing that stands him apart. It’s so refreshing…

The liner notes remind us that this was the exact pairing of works that Carl Nielsen chose for his one and only London concert appearance. The critic of the day was not impressed with the Violin Concerto…

In taking these momentous scores back to their Parisian roots Klaus Mäkelä, as expected, engages his keen ears and sense of orchestral drama to hear and to project their startling innovation. This Rite is all about inner…

The character of this reading – and it does not, alas, confound expectations – is clearly established at the outset: cellos and basses incisive but hardly seismic, the rhythms crisp, even clipped, the emerging funeral processional more…

Recorded during lockdown, this trio of Shostakovich symphonies chimes quite dramatically with the mood of that time and speaks volumes as to the composer’s shifting state of mind between the war years and the death of his…

I’ve yet to see a staged double-bill of Bartok’s symbolist ballet The Wooden Prince and his allegorical operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. A tall and very expensive order however one might approach the challenge. But that, it…

The final instalment in this marvellous cycle of the Carl Nielsen symphonies does not disappoint. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra serve their national hero with self-evident pride and big-heartedness and the Italian at the helm – Fabio…

Two accounts of this great symphony – some would argue (not me) Shostakovich’s greatest – neither about to shake up the top recommendations for the piece but one undoubtedly possessed of the will and temperament to do…

These are quite marvellous – and in the case of the Fourth Symphony, incendiary – performances. There’s something about the temperament of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra when they rejoice in the bracing and songful adventures of…