Five years on, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall now with its new Chief Conductor. In line with the ‘Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice’, the concert opened with […]
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 […]
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 […]
John Frederick Lampe’s opera The Dragon of Wantley (1737) is based on a Yorkshire legend about a ferocious dragon who terrorises the area of Wharncliffe Crags that was made better known in a ballad. The opera served […]
In these revelatory performances from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Sir András Schiff, no one could possibly doubt his passion for Mendelssohn who Hans von Bulow once waspishly declared “began life as […]
Through their work with the Hungaraton, Decca and Hyperion labels the Takács Quartet are very much associated with the core repertoire, so this release featuring five contemporary composers, bandoneón (a cross between a concertina and […]
In a program showcasing music by the Mahlers, Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the former’s Seventh Symphony, preceded by four elusive songs by his wife (née Alma Schindler) in skillfully crafted 1995 arrangements […]
Edward Gardner fashioned a clear-sighted account of the Tippett, controlling the first movement’s gnarly energy and gentle sonorities with ease and allowed a natural unfolding of the music’s tension and release. If its contrapuntal busyness […]
Although The Rake’s Progress is ultimately a moral fable, Polly Graham’s production doesn’t take it with too much po-faced seriousness. Rather it plays up its mordant humour by presenting it as like a cabaret, with a quirky […]
Alongside considerable colour and exuberance, Jude Christian’s production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut for English Touring Opera poignantly, even sardonically, contrasts the life of luxury which the eponymous character could have had with Geronte in Paris with the […]
