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…

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…

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.…

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,…

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…

Vanska’s Mahler 9 arrives in the wake of Rattle’s recent Bayrischen Rundfunk recording – his third of the piece – and perhaps the quality most found wanting by comparison with Rattle is warmth. It’s true that this…

As with the first instalment of Nézet-Séguin’s symphonic Rachmaninov there’s a very real sense here of this music coming home, of a sound, a style, an ethos, in playing it that somehow – subliminally – gets passed…

Kerson Leong’s splendid account of the Bruch comes hot on the heals of Ryan Goosby’s no less committed reading with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But there are notable differences in tone which might loosely be…

The curtain-raiser somewhat eclipses the main event in this instance. Why we don’t hear more of Bartok’s Four Orchestral Pieces I cannot imagine – their relative compactness belies a breadth and depth and drama that calls to…

You can absolutely hear why Randall Goosby has been turning heads with his open-hearted and generous ‘school of Perlman’ delivery. There’s an honesty – and modesty – about his playing that stands him apart. It’s so refreshing…