Franz Joseph Haydn Symphonies Nos. 53, 64 & 96 Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Carlos Kalmar (conductor) PENTATONE PTC 5186612 Released on 01-04-2017 April 2017 – Whether it’s a confident swagger or a balletic grace, a beguiling folk-melody or a quicksilver rondo, there is always something new to discover in the endlessly inventive symphonies of Haydn, especially…
Tag: Brahms
The Performance of a Lifetime: Sviatoslav Richter Plays Brahms
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83 Beethoven Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 “Appassionata” Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf (conductor) Sviatoslav Richter (piano) Sony G010001718537R
In Praise of Drinking
1815 was an extraordinarily creative year for Franz Schubert. Aged 18, working as a schoolteacher and receiving composition lessons from Antonio Salieri, in the same year he composed four operas, two symphonies, 150 songs (nine in one day!), liturgical music (including two masses), one string quartet and several piano pieces.
Composers and the Demon Drink
Theirs was not an auspicious first meeting. The young Johannes Brahms was on a walking holiday en route to visiting Robert and Clara Schumann, when he stopped at Weimar in June 1853 to hear Franz Liszt give a private performance of his magisterial Piano Sonata in B minor, a work now regarded as one of…
Back in the USSR: Going Viral with Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Richter was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most influential pianists of the 20th century. He came to epitomise everything that people expected from a Russian virtuoso: a stern, penetrating intellect, breathtaking skill, demonic powers and magical, tantalising performances. But he was no flamboyant showman. Complex, intensely private and sometimes eccentric, reports of his…
Review: Incandescent Piano Recital – Catherine Lan
This debut album by the pianist Catherine Lan contains warm, sympathetic and measured performances in an appealing programme.
Brahms Goes to Academia
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) once wrote “I am only too often reminded that I am a difficult person to get along with. I am growing accustomed to bearing the consequences of this”. Famously bad-tempered, tactless and cynical, he is once said to have left a party saying “if there is anyone in here I…
Liszt in Weimar
“Do I care how fast you can play your octaves?”, Liszt remarked to a pupil in a master class, clearly unimpressed with the playing “what I wish to hear is the canter of the horses of the Polish cavalry before they gather force and destroy the enemy!”