GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – September 2018
Reflecting back over my years in journalism my thoughts turned recently to interviews (that key component of a journalist’s armoury) and the sheer volume of opportunities that had come my way over the years both in print…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 4 – Julia Kleitner, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Gatti
After his disappointingly urbane account of the Second Symphony “Resurrection” the twilit, child-like, world of the Fourth would, on paper, seem far better suited to the cultured Royal Concertgebouw sound as favoured and actively encouraged by Daniele…
GRAMOPHONE Review: A Certain Slant of Light – Lisa Delan, Marseille Philharmonic Orchestra/Foster
As this collection and its accompanying notes reminds us, the music came first and the poetry followed for Emily Dickinson. Like all respectable young American women of a certain social standing she studied piano and voice. And…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Elgar Symphony No. 2, Serenade For Strings – BBC Symphony Orchestra/Gardiner
The opening movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony has brought great diversity of approach over the decades. How to interpret that tempo marking “Allegro vivace e nobilmente”? Exuberance, pace, and nobility. Gardner steers the middle path between expansive…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – August 2018
They say we can’t get enough of our heroes – but I am seriously wondering if at this time next when someone mentions the name Leonard Bernstein my response might be: “Who?” I jest, of course. I…
GRAMOPHONE Feature: Bernstein The Composer
There wasn’t much that Leonard Bernstein didn’t try his hand at at least once – and wanting, needing, to experience it all applied as surely to the music he wrote as to the music he conducted. “Finding…
GRAMOPHONE: From Where I Sit – July 2018
It’s fun trawling for online definitions of PERCUSSION. Most are light years behind the curve in evaluating or even just attempting to describe music’s at once most basic and highly sophisticated family of instruments. A phrase like…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 5 – Düsseldorfer Symphoniker/Fischer
Adam Fischer’s kinship with this music seems to grow exponentially with each successive instalment of what is already proving an exceptional Mahler cycle. There’s a stylistic and emotional understanding which goes beyond the precisely annotated scores. It…
GRAMOPHONE Review: The Last Concert – Claudio Abbado/Berlin Philharmonic
Claudio Abbado stepped down from his post as Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2002 on the stage of the Musikverein, Vienna. 4000 roses rained down on his departure. Just over a decade later…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Bernstein Orchestral Works – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic/Lindberg
A compendium of popular and streetwise Lenny for Bernstein 100 – and the virtuosic trombonist in Christian Lindberg surely gives him a jazzer’s head-start on just how this music should go. It certainly feels that way. I…
