GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 6 – MusicAeterna/Currentzis
Anyone who thrilled (as I did) to Teodor Currentzis’ Tchaikovsky Pathetique will find distinct parallels here. The impulse, the imperative, of this Mahler 6 is extraordinary – a headlong ride to the abyss with every rhythm and…
GRAMOPHONE Review: There’s A Place For Us – Nadine Sierra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Spano
Why does everything nowadays have to be marketed with an angle, a message? There are no more recital discs, just albums. That’s a way of connecting the classical and pop worlds – I see that. But do…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 3 – Larsson, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker/Fischer
Eight unison horns dramatically announce Mahler’s pantheistic hymn to the natural world and if the opening bars of Adam Fischer’s refreshingly spontaneous account sounded a tad jaded to my ears it was almost certainly because I cannot…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – November 2018
It’s at this time of the year, with yet another Henry Wood Promenade season behind us, that the question perennially arises – where do those huge Proms audiences disappear to for the rest of the year? Do…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – October 2018
When you have been in the business for as long as I have it is especially gratifying to reacquaint oneself with an operatic work one has long admired but never seen staged. Samuel Barber’s Vanessa is such…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Into The Fire – Joyce Di Donato/Brentano String Quartet (Live at Wigmore Hall)
As if anyone needed reminding that Joyce DiDonato is nothing if not an intuitive stage animal, each of her recital projects are now carefully conceived as pieces of theatre in themselves, song choices shrewdly weighed and tested…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – Awards Issue 2018
I recently spent two blissful hours at my local Curzon cinema watching a brilliant documentary entitled The Opera House. No prizes for guessing which opera house might regard itself as indomitably singular or indeed which might have…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Bernstein Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety – Berlin Philharmonic/Zimerman Rattle
A few words of introduction from the man himself (Bernstein in conversation with Humphrey Burton) preface this performance of perhaps his finest concert work – and in case we were in any doubt of the inspiration behind…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphonies 4 & 11 – Boston Symphony Orchestra/Nelsons
This Nelsons cycle started with a bang – namely the most electrifying recording of the Tenth Symphony we’ve had in almost half a century. The excellence continues. In dramatic contrast to Mikhail Pletnev’s intriguing but decidedly odd…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Richard Rodney Bennett Orchestral Works Vol. 2 – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Wilson
Volume Two of John Wilson’s “celebration” (for that’s what this series surely is) of Richard Rodney Bennett’s manifold gifts as a composer – and once more the choices rejoice in his creative shape shifting. The accomplished jazzer…
