Music journalist Edward Seckerson reveals his must-have recording of Bernstein’s choral masterpiece, the Chichester Psalms. Leonard Bernstein’s exuberant Chichester Psalms was one of the composer’s many strong connections with the UK, commissioned for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals…
Out of the darkness, a voice (Géza Szilvay), a whispered invitation to enter the darkest recesses of Duke Bluebeard’s mind. That spoken introduction to Bartok’s operatic masterpiece – quiet and confidential – invokes solitude and nothing but…
You would expect a seasoned Mahlerian like Eliahu Inbal to offer an emotive response to this extraordinary symphony – but I really hadn’t anticipated quite how powerfully he and his young orchestra (the SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart is…
As Adam Fischer’s Dusseldorf Mahler cycle has evolved a clearer picture has emerged of his choices and priorities. He’s a very sympathetic and clear-headed Mahlerian whose nose for beauty and atmosphere (clearly led by very personal convictions)…
LSO Live have billed their new Simon Rattle recording of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony as ‘the complete version’. Doesn’t that go without saying these days? Surely no reputable conductor performing the piece now would countenance anything less? But…
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s new podcast on the music of Rodgers & Hammerstein‘s CAROUSEL with Edward Seckerson talking to our Musical Supervisor & Orchestrator Tom Deering is now live! They discuss the enduring legacy of this…
Listening to Bartók’s chilling ‘pantomime grotesque’ The Miraculous Mandarin – complete – in a performance as good as this one you do ask yourself why anyone would programme the Suite any more. There is the small matter…
The London Symphony Orchestra have a kind of ownership on this piece. The era of Andre Previn and his and their championship of it was one of the defining moments in a period of change – not…
Each Sunday morning whilst awaiting the BBC’s news round-up from Andrew Marr (an erstwhile editor of mine) I generally catch the end of Gary Lineker and his pundits reviewing the week’s football. Now I’m no expert on…
It has often been said that over the last half-century or so orchestras have begun to sound more and more alike. As the instruments themselves have grown in sophistication, evolved to be more flexible and capable of…
