GRAMOPHONE Review: Copland: Quiet City / Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 ‘From The New World’ / Ives: ‘Holidays’ Symphony – Solistes Européens Luxembourg/König
It’s a neat idea framing Dvorak’s ubiquitous ‘New World’ with two miniatures of authentic Americana – one rural, one urban – from perhaps her most famous sons: Ives and Copland. But that’s about as far as my…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – September 2019
Movie music aficionados are a very particular breed – serious, knowledgeable, fanatical. Even the soft-core variety – as I once was – are fiercely defensive of their favourite practitioners. The music and the indelible images they amplify…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 9 – Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Blomstedt
School of Barbirolli. That was my first thought as the faltering pulse of the opening bars ushered in the warm and consoling first theme, first heard, of course, in the second not first violins. No hint so…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 4 – London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jurowski
A Mahler 4 as insightful and as individual as we have come to expect from this source. How rarely we hear the opening bars of the symphony delivered precisely as Mahler instructs: Bedächtig. Nicht eilen (Deliberate. Don’t…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Barber Vanessa (BluRay/DVD) – Glyndebourne Festival Opera, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Hrůša
Since it was unveiled at last year’s Glyndebourne Festival Keith Warner’s handsome and insightful staging of Barber’s Vanessa has probably done more to silence the work’s naysayers than any in recent memory. It’s a piece that has…
GRAMOPHONE Review: An American Song Album – Melody Moore/Bradley Moore
Melody Moore’s ‘An American Song Album’ feels personal and custom-made for her ample lyrico spinto instrument. And that’s always a good place to start. She can thunder darkly, she can float, she can spin – she has…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Sibelius Symphpony No. 1 – Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal /Nézet-Séguin
Just Sibelius’ First Symphony? That is exceptionally short measure for a CD. The ratio of quality over quantity needed to be especially dramatic – not least because barely a couple of months back Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: The Fellini Album – The Film Music of Nino Rota, Filarmonica Della Scala/Chailly
Enter the extraordinary world of Federico Fellini – a world where childhood dreams strive to lose touch with reality, where playboys and clowns rub shoulders and pretty much all life is a three-ring circus. In Fellini’s Italy…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Marsalis Violin Concerto/Fiddle Dance Suite – Nicola Benedetti, Philadelphia Orchestra/Măcelaru
A number of things become clearer as Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto unfolds: first, that there’s a story to be told, an American story; second, that Charles Ives – musical America’s greatest pioneer – has not passed Marsalis…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – August 2019
This month’s cover feature has prompted some age old cravings in me. I have travelled far and wide in the United States, I have repeatedly given my regards to Broadway, the American Songbook is as much a…
