Giacomo Puccini La Fanciulla del West Zubin Mehta, Placido Domingo, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden PENTATONE REMASTERED CLASSICS PTC 5186243 May 2017. Puccini’s late opera La fanciulla del West bristles with drama and intrigue in this newly remastered classic recording with Zubin Mehta conducting…
Category: Romantic
Press Releases: April 2017
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…
Press Releases: March 2017
Felix Mendelssohn Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 NDR Radiophilharmonie, Andrew Manze (conductor) PENTATONE PTC 5186595 Released on 01-03-2017 March 2017. Mendelssohn’s warmly lyrical and evocative Scottish symphony is paired with his confident and precocious first symphony for the first in a series of recordings in multi-channel surround sound for PENTATONE by the conductor Andrew Manze…
Van Cliburn: The Texan who Conquered Russia
Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Van Cliburn, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner Release date: 04 Nov 2016, G010003642898N Time magazine hailed him as “The Texan who conquered Russia” and “Horowitz, Liszt and Presley rolled into one”. Praise indeed for the tall, slim, mild mannered yet unknown Van Cliburn who, as an unwitting…
Press Releases: February 2017
(1) Elgar & Tchaikovsky. Johannes Moser, Andrew Manze, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; (2) On My Journey Now. Spirituals & Hymns. Lester Lynch, Baritone; (3) Brahms – Ballades & Fantasies. Denis Kozhukhin, piano
Wagner, Schopenhauer and The Will to Live
Richard Wagner first came across the works of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer while he was lying low in Switzerland following his participation in the 1848 Dresden uprising where he had manned the barricades and was even rumoured to have had set fire to the opera house where he was Kapellmeister.
Press releases: November 2016
(1) Rachmaninov & Prokofiev: Works for Cello and Piano (2) Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Ballet Suites for Piano Duo (3) Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben / Macbeth
Press releases: October 2016
(1) Antonín Dvořák: Slavonic Rhapsodies & Symphonic Variations (2) Beethoven & Bruch: Violin Concertos
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…