BBC Music Magazine

9 min read

Symphony No. 4 (1878-81) – plus alternative Allegro moderato (1878); Andante quasi Allegretto (1878); Scherzo (1874, rev 1876); Finale (1881 unabridged) London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle LSO Live LSO 0875 126:37 mins (2 discs) Bruckner has now b

BBC Music Magazine

9 min read

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin plays with clarity and sophistication, says Sarah Urwin Jones Symphonies Nos 31 (‘Paris’) and 35 (‘Haffner’); Oboe Concerto* *Xenia Löffler (oboe); Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/Bernhard Forck Pentatone PTC 5187 05

BBC Music Magazine

5 min read

Emerge from Leicester Square Tube Station in the centre of London, and you will see rising above you at one of the four corners of the crossroads a substantial building, on top of which stands an enormous iron statue depicting a Roman charioteer, swo

The Oldie

3 min read

This year provided as fine a start to the summer season of privately funded ‘country-house’ opera as any I can remember. Glyndebourne’s artistically adventurous and theatrically thrilling revival of Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers launched the season. The

BBC Music Magazine

3 min read

‘They are the real masters. Before I die, I shall write a bird symphony.’ So promised Antonín Dvorák, ardent nationalist, pigeon-fancier, train-spotter, devoted family man and, following the recent death of Bedrich Smetana, Bohemia’s foremost living

BBC Music Magazine

8 min read

Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral); Knecht: Le Portrait musical de la Nature ou Grande Symphonie Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/ Bernhard Forck Harmonia Mundi HMM 902425 66:14 mins Justin Heinrich Knecht (1752-1817) is a name that means nothing

BBC Music Magazine

6 min read

Amadigi di Gaula Tim Mead, Mary Bevan, Anna Dennis, Hilary Summers, Patrick Terry; Early Opera Company/Christian Curnyn Chandos CHSA 0406(2) (CD/SACD) 157:16 mins (2 discs) Handel took a less-is-more approach to his Amadigi di Gaula. Christian Curnyn

Opera Canada

2 min read

A new production of Handel’s Ariodante by Canadian director and set/lighting designer Robert Carsen opened in Paris on April 20 and runs until May 20. Canadian mezzo soprano Emily D’Angelo stars in the title role. The show is a coproduction with The

BBC Music Magazine

6 min read

Between 2001 and ’22, I was tasked with finding a ‘rarely performed’ opera on an annual basis for University College Opera’s yearly production in March. The invitation to take down a piece from the shelf that few, if any, had ever seen, then putting

BBC Music Magazine

8 min read

Konu Kim, Florian Sempey, Roberto Lorenzi, Lidia Fridman, Federico Benetti; Donizetti Opera Orchestra & Chorus/Jean-Luc Tingaud; dir. Francesco Micheli (Bergamo, 2019) Dynamic DVD: 37848; Blu-ray: 57848 174 mins It’s not often that you get to wat

BBC Music Magazine

9 min read

Debussy: Jeux; Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune; Dukas: Fanfare pour précéder La Péri; La Péri; Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane – Suite No. 2 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Domingo Hindoyan Onyx ONYX 4224 68:15 mins In general these are honest, r

BBC Music Magazine

10 min read

Berta Joncus enjoys Alfredo Bernardini’s slimmed-down La Corona d’Arianna La Corona d’Arianna Carlotta Colombo; Marianne Beate Kielland et al; Arnold Schoenberg Choir; Zefiro/Alfredo Bernardini Arcana A548 68:15 mins Johann Joseph Fux’s La Corona d’A

BBC Music Magazine

5 min read

Tosca Melody Moore, Ştefan Pop, Lester Lynch; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Carlo Montanaro Pentatone PTC 5187 055 (CD/SACD) 109:48 mins (2 discs) Pentatone has been on a roll lately with Puccini. In recent years it has given us a Fanciulla, a Bu

The Oldie

3 min read

Nowhere in music is the art of civilised discourse better exemplified than in the string quartets of Joseph Haydn, musical conversation pieces that, like the writings of Jane Austen, are thoughtful, witty, endlessly entertaining and, on occasion, dow

BBC Music Magazine

7 min read

Symphonies Nos 5 & 7 NDR Radio Philharmonic/ Andrew Manze Pentatone PTC 5186 814 (hybrid CD/ SACD) 74:12 mins A classics graduate and sometime virtuoso violinist, Andrew Manze started conducting as an early music specialist before moving into sym

BBC Music Magazine

8 min read

Coriolan Overture; Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ Ensemble Cristofori/Arthur Schoonderwoerd CAvi-music AVI 8553487 59:42 mins Between 2004 and 2008, the fortepiano specialist and conductor Arthur Schoonderwoerd recorded a set of Beethoven piano concertos va

BBC Music Magazine

4 min read

Margarita Höhenrieder (piano); Orchestra La Scintilla/Riccardo Minasi Solo Musica SM 400 69:29 mins Chopin’s E minor Piano Concerto predates his departure from Warsaw in 1830, yet shows his early maturity as a composer. A fine performance on period i

Opera Canada

5 min read

A VAST EXHIBITION, “Opera: Passion, Power and Politics,” the first in the new Sainsbury Gallery of London’s Victoria and Albert museum, retraces 400 years of opera history in the context of European culture and politics. Mounted in collaboration with

The Oldie

3 min read

Calmette, the controversial editor of Le Figaro. The choice of music, from a pièce de clavecin by Couperin to Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan, provides a remarkable insight in the mind of this most fastidious, yet at the

Los Angeles Times

5 min read

Summer, when it comes to the performing arts in America, was already over by mid-spring. All major festivals and nearly all events had been canceled. Last week brought depressing daily reports of fall closures. In New York, there will be no business

BBC Music Magazine

3 min read

It is often said that Mozart disliked the flute intensely. Perhaps the rumour was put about by mischievous clarinet players, who have to make do with just the one (albeit glorious) concerto to the flautists’ two. The claim is attributed to a letter t

BBC Music Magazine

8 min read

Cello Sonatas Nos 1-5; Variations – on ‘See the conquering hero comes’, WoO 45; on ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen; on ‘Bei Mannern, weiche Liebe fühlen’, WoO 46 Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Alexander Lonquich (piano) Alpha Classics ALPHA 577 143:05 mins

Tatler Hong Kong

3 min read

What is the best way to get into classical music? Start with a platform like YouTube: you can just click and start listening. Classical music isn’t just symphonic works with an orchestra—it can also be a piano solo or a Gregorian chant. The best wa

Opera Canada

10 min read

By BILL RANKIN Irving Guttman’s seminal effort to bring professional-quality opera beyond its central Canadian preserve in the mid-20th century has earned him the honorific “father of opera in Western Canada.” Guttman left Montréal in 1960 to direct

BBC Music Magazine

8 min read

Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op. 60; Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda National Symphony Orchestra NSO 0009 61:03 mins Gianandrea Noseda’s Beethoven 5 doesn’t hang around. No portentous pauses interrupt its

BBC Music Magazine

4 min read

Piano Concertos Nos 1-5 Stewart Goodyear (piano); BBC National Orchestra of Wales/ Andrew Constantine Orchid Classics ORC 100127 172:24 mins (3 discs) Beethoven’s piano concertos are so different from each other that only the rarest of artists i

BBC Music Magazine

5 min read

Current social distancing measures are inspiring a new wave of music-making, from violinist Nicola Benedetti’s Zoom-based string workshops to English National Opera’s drive-in performance of Puccini’s La bohème, set in the modern-day UK, with a cast

BBC Music Magazine

10 min read

Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1; Romance in F, Op. 36; Fauré: Elegie in C minor, Op. 24; Honegger: Cello Concerto; Lalo: Cello Concerto Daniel Müller-Schott (cello); Deutsche Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin/Alexandre Bloch Orfeo C988211 67:08 mins ‘Four

Los Angeles Times

3 min read

The note from British art-rock band Radiohead was pretty straightforward: "We've been hacked," wrote singer Thom Yorke on the band's Bandcamp page. Acknowledging that a hacker had stolen nearly 16 hours of Thom Yorke's rehearsal recordings and songwr

Pianist

3 min read

Natural Connection: Piano music inspired by the natural world Somm SOMMCD 0680 Leon McCawley’s latest recital offers pieces inspired by the natural world. He makes some delightful connections in his choices of repertoire. We go straight from a thunde