classical cds

To my count, this is the eighth post on Classical Explorer featuring playing by Emanuel Despax: he is worth the focus, for sure, a rare meeting of musical sensitivity and high technique. ThePiano Quintet in […]

After Pappano’s Tristan, Jessye’s Isolde: as part of Decca’s “The Unreleased Masters,” a selection of excerpts which “for various reasons, was never published”. Masur’s way with the Prelude is mobile, and climax-focused, the Leipzig Gewandhaus […]

After an all-Czech Wimbledon Ladies’ Final, a very much all-Czech symphonic release: Ondřej, Jiří, Jakub and Tomáš conspire to give is a very special disc of live performances. Ondřej Kukal (born 1964) is a graduate […]

“Fine old days”: Boerio (probably)’s 1673 comic intermezzo We are in the world of the commedia dell’arte here. In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures […]

The Leeds International Piano Competition  launches a bold new chapter with the appointment of one of the world’s most esteemed artists, British pianist Sir Stephen Hough, as Artistic Director and Chair of the Jury for 2027 […]

Music by François Couperin today, a perfect complement to a previous post on the harpsichord music of Louis Couperin at Wigmore Hall by Jean Rondeau (linked in to his monumental box of Louis’ keyboard works […]

You think you know Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin? Wait until you hear this! John Wilson and Sinfonia of London illuminate every bar of the score afresh. In a score I’ve heard a kazillion times, […]

This is surely Sir Antonio Pappano’s “Wagner period”: his recent Siegfried, the latest instrument of an ongoing Ring at RBO revealed, to my ears at least, his finest Wanger to date. He has, of course, […]

This is not he first specifically Haitink Bruckner 7 on Classical Explorer: we did a short post on a DVD of a Vienna performance here. There is something about the gorgeous warmth of found of […]