classical cds

What joy this disc brings! We previously met Neeme Järvi and his Estonian orchestra here; when it comes to Lalo, they are on top form, and supported by one of Chandos’ best recordings. I vaguely […]

In a joint enterprise between writer and musician Hana Gubenko and myself, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge’s short-lived political journal The Watchman returns in a new guise, as an internet magazine designed to stimulate and inform. Here, in […]

Welcome to the first podcast by The Watchman, available on Spotify. A full internet magazine will follow shortly, but until then here’s a brief explanation of what The Watchman is, taken from the first issue: […]

The recent Göttedämmung at the Royal Festival Hall was due to feature Brindley Sherratt as Hagen. It was not to be (although there was a luxury stand-in); in compensation, we have this remarkable disc for […]

Every Parsifal conductor must do more than simply guide the performance, he must also allow certain aspects to run their own course if he is to do justice to a work of such monumental proportions. […]

What a difference a performance makes! Bruckner’s First Symphony was not, of course his first. Bruckner is “that” composer who wrote a Symphony No. 00 (Double Zero). But even his ‘real fist symphony went through […]

Thaxted Festival: Purcell The Fairy Queen, Z 629. Oz Clarke (narrator); Eloise Irving, Hannah Fraser Mackenzie, Laura Moretto (sopranos); William Towers (alto); Matthew Pochin (tenor); Robert Davies (bass); Armonico Consert & Baroque Players / Chrisopher […]

Previous instalments of Robert Levin’s Mozart cycle on Classical Explorer include the Concertos for Multiple Instruments, and the penultimate instalment, Concertos Nos. 6-8. And here we are at the 13th and final release in a […]

Back in 2022, I reported from a concert in Strasbourg’s Palais de la Musique et des Congrès that included the pieces here, plus on that occasion Shoskakovich’s First Violin Concerto with Simone Lamsma (stepping in […]

Puccini Edgar (1905 version, semi-staged, orchestral reduction Toby Burke). Cast; Children from Pimlico Musical Foundation and Tiffin School; Opera Holland Park Chorus; City of London Sinfonia / Naomi Woo. Opera Holland Park, Kensington, London, 02.07.2024 […]