classical cds

Are we a land without music? Julian Leeks asks that very question in his new podcast of that name from Sound World. There are, at the time of writing, six episodes covering a wide variety […]

Pierre Boulez – Éclat George Benjamin – Interludes and Aria from ‘Lessons in Love and Violence’ (World Premiere) Brahms – Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 Boulez 100, Rattle 70: both nice and […]

I was privileged to hear Fuget rehearse Lully in the Versalles Chapel. It really is a phenomenal experience, and all credit for the label engineers here for capturing the famous acoustic so well for this […]

  It is great to see attention falling on Welsh composer Grace Williams (1906-77). She was a pupil of Egon Wellesz and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The ever-enterprising Lyrita label released a fabulous compact disc of […]

This is a tremendous coupling. We have been looking at quite a lot of Respighi of late (orchestral works from Wuppertal; orchestral transcriptions of Bach and Rachmaninnov from Liège; his operas Maria Egiziaca and La […]

In his role as Artist-in-Residence at the Dresdner Philharmonie, I heard Gautier Capuçon in the Kupturpalast in Dresden in September 2023. The orchestra was conducted by Kahchun Wong, the Principal Guest Conductor there and now […]

A real reminder of Massenet’s operatic genius here. This is the story of Salomé, later injected into operatic history books by Richard Strauss, but here set by Jules Massenet in a four-act opera with a […]

It seems amazing to me that I have not yet featured any music by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (born 1949). These three quartets date from 1967, 1970 and 1971; Aho’s First Symphony was born […]

Firstly, what a beautiful disc this is, from each and every angle: the performer, one of the most experienced tenors active today, James Gilchist, with a superb pianist, Anna Tilbrook, captured in Chandos’ trademark excellence […]

Recorded on the Aix-en-Provence based label Rocamadour, this is an eclectic disc divided Ito four parts: “Réjooussez-vous”; “Un Enfant nous et né”; :Dans une Nuit silencieuse”‘; “Soyez Joyeux”. The label is new to me, but […]