GRAMOPHONE Review: Respighi Roman Trilogy – Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI/Trevino
Respighi’s obsession with the ‘Eternal City’ is writ spectacularly large in his three symphonic evocations and maybe in some subliminal way an Italian orchestra like this one can identify better than most with the mythic elements, pictorial…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Santtu conducts Mahler Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ – Philharmonia Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Like so much of what I’ve heard of Santtu’s work of late this Mahler 2 is decidedly hit and miss – with the emphasis, I regret to say, very much on the latter. It’s strange how the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! – Soloists, Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
This is important. Oklahoma! was a big moment – perhaps the big moment – in musical theatre’s ‘coming of age’. Granted that sixteen years earlier Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern had already called time on the…
MUSICALS Podcast: Edward Seckerson meets OLIVER TOMPSETT
Edward Seckerson meets Oliver Tompsett at London’s Wonderville Bar & Café to chat over his ongoing journey from The Who’s Tommy (title role) at Arts Ed and a veritable portfolio of rock/pop shows – Our House, Rock of Ages, We…
LEONARD BERNSTEIN: Some Other Time
Jewish Literary Foundation presents Book Week 24, Kings Place Sunday 3 March 2024 A celebration in conversation and song of the legendary composer and conductor, with Edward Seckerson, Petroc Trelawny and West End stars Christina Bianco and Julian…
John Weidman on Pacific Overtures & collaborating with Stephen Sondheim
In the latest MUSICALS podcast EDWARD SECKERSON talks to playwright and book writer JOHN WEIDMAN who collaborated with the late, great Stephen Sondheim on three of his shows – Pacific Overtures, Assassins, and Road Show – and was in London for a long-awaited…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Price Piano Concerto/Symphony No 1/Ethiopia’s Shadow in America – His Resignation and Faith – Kanneh-Mason, Chineke!/Suganandarajah/Cox
It’s strange, but after decades of neglect the music of Florence Price seems uncannily familiar. The soulful themes with their American Deep South tinta, the trumpet-led brass chorales, the jazzy jubas – this is Price’s musical milieu…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphony No 14/Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva – BBC Philharmonic/ Storgards
With Shostakovich’s word-setting what happens between the words is, more than with any other composer I know (with the exception of Britten to whom the 14th Symphony is dedicated), reflected in what is happening between the notes.…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Walton Violin Concerto/Respighi Violin Sonata in B minor – RPO/Ward
What a shrewd coupling: seemingly unlikely bedfellows united not just by dint of having both been written in Italy (the Walton, of course, at his retreat in Ischia) but by a certain something in the water…the Mediterranean,…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Burnished Gold – Robyn Allegra Parton/Simon Lepper
It is refreshing to encounter a singer – Robyn Allegra Parton – whose gifts of curation are it would seem fully equal to her musicianship. You might argue that the album’s artwork is a sprinkling of gold-leaf…
