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…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 6 – Minnesota Orchestra/Vanska
The distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is crucial in Mahler and it doesn’t take long to establish that Vanska’s bias is emphatically towards the former. The opening Allegro energico ma non troppo is very non troppo indeed…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Bernstein Mass – Philadephia Orchestra/Nézet-Séguin
The more live performances, the more live recordings, one experiences of this marvellous piece the more challenging it seems. No question that Bernstein’s inaugural recording – with an extraordinary cast that had been in intensive rehearsal for…
GRAMOPHONE Review: War Paint – Original Broadway Cast Recording/Frankel
The title, the concept, the casting would seem to have Broadway success written all over it. A musical about the bitter rivalry between two iconic cosmetic giants – Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden – who never met…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 – London Philharmonic Orchestra/Masur
The opening of this tremendous piece reveals so much about a performance. Before the invasion, before the siege of Leningrad, there is buoyancy and uplift and hopefulness in the confidant and forthright theme which begins and indeed…
