An urban myth tells of how, one evening, Stalin made a surprise phone call to Radio Moscow demanding the urgent delivery of a record: a Mozart piano concerto played by Maria Yudina. Unfortunately, radio companies […]
Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley – Charlotte Badham – New Sussex Opera (Photo: Robert Knights) Lampe & Carey: The Dragon of Wantley; Ana Beard Fernandez, Charlotte Badham, Magnus Walker, Robert Gildon, director: Paul Higgins, conductor: […]
Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Hensel, 1847 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 2 ‘Lobesgesang’; Lucy Crowe, Hilary Cronin, Nick Pritchard, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Choir of the Enlightenment, Sir Andras Schiff; Queen Elizabeth […]
I recently wrote about Klaus Makela’s slick Debussy/Stravinsky Decca recording with the Orchestre de Paris, finding it superficial, completely devoid of character and interminably boring. And then there’s this – whatever it is John Wilson is […]
A ‘bourgeois comedy’ is how Strauss described his autobiographical opera (1924), based on a real incident in which a misdirected letter (owing to the confusion of Strauss’s name with a similar one) was wrongly interpreted […]
Following on from Brett Dean’s Wigmore Concert (we published my report just two days ago) here we have Dean’s take on Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat, Op. 73, the so-called “Emperor,” A […]
Brindley Sherratt (Photo: Gerard Collett) I first chatted with bass Brindley Sherratt in early 2020 about a fundraising gala he was organising. Much happened afterwards, and the interview did not appear on the blog until […]
Everyday Non-sense; works by Shiomi, Schmit, Higgins, Mozart, Kurtág, Cage, PatKop, Françaix and Ligei Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin/voice/vacuum cleaner); members of Aurora Orchestra. Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, 24.04.2024 The force of […]
So, the BBC Proms are on us again. The 2024 festival runs from 19 July to 14 September 2024 with 73 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and 17 around the UK, with short seasons […]
As with the first two volumes of this series, these CDs mainly capture the celebrated Romanian pianist in his early years. Lupu’s Mozart is urban, elegant and rhythmically sprung with occasional ritenuti and pedal use […]
