Gramophone has already singled out this young man as one to watch and from the shaping of his solo entrance in the Tchaikovsky alone there’s a ‘presence’ about Johan Dalene’s playing that announces a musician of special…
This is one of those discs which commands respect (this conductor is pretty much always a safe investment) without setting the world on fire. I kept waiting for, anticipating, moments in all of these pieces when Petrenko…
A treasure, to be sure. Four years before Bruno Walter’s celebrated, indeed classic, Vienna recording (1952) with Kathleen Ferrier, the man who conducted the world premiere of Mahler’s pantheistic symphony with voices takes his newest discovery from…
After so many years of concert-going – including a time when writing for The Guardian and The Independent newspapers that I was averaging three concerts a week minimum – it’s good to be reminded that I can…
The shocking pink packaging says it all. If Offenbach had a colour then this might be it. Then there’s the quirky illustration of besuited animals relating, of course, to the Six Fables of De La Fontaine –…
As a new year and a new decade beckon we continue to live in uncertain times for print journalism. The digital world has opened up new and exciting frontiers for sure; it has sharpened communication and promoted…
Rather as he did for his controversial (and somewhat disappointing) account of Das Lied von Der Erde Adam Fischer offers a kind of apologia in the liner note as to the particular challenges of the Eighth Symphony…
It’s the symphony that might or might not have recalibrated Shostakovich’s future and it’s still one of the trickiest to pull off in performance. Noseda meets it halfway – which makes for plusses and minuses. His LSO…
One of these days a Mariss Jansons recording will arrive that will confound my expectations. This, alas, is not it. You can tell at once from the cultured, well-rounded, Bavarian sound that the very notion of something…
If you’re watching the calories, stop reading now. This evocative collection of Viennese sweetmeats, of wine, women, song and Sachertorte, does not countenance the notion of abstinence. Kaufmann’s love affair with Vienna – City of Dreams –…
