I had the honour of writing booklet notes for this very first complete cycle in multichannel surround sound.
Category: Romantic
Review: I Heard You Singing – English Songs
Riveting performances by the English tenor Ben Johnson, winner of the Audience prize in the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, make this album of little-known English songs a delight.
Review: Bizet – Arlésienne Suites, Symphony in C Major
Once described as “the best conductor of French music the French never had”, Sir Thomas Beecham’s talents are on full display with these superb benchmark performances of Bizet’s irresistible works.
Review: Incandescent Piano Recital – Catherine Lan
This debut album by the pianist Catherine Lan contains warm, sympathetic and measured performances in an appealing programme.
Review: Pauline Viardot – Songs
This delightful album brings together original songs and arrangements by the unjustly neglected Spanish composer Pauline Viardot (1840 – 1910). For those unfamiliar with her music, this album is the perfect introduction with winning performances by the Bulgarian soprano Ina Kancheva, ably accompanied on the piano by Ludmil Angelov.
The Wit and Wisdom of Sir Thomas Beecham
It was the sort of gaffe that only Sir Thomas Beecham could get away with. As part of a tour of Germany in 1936 with his newly-formed London Philharmonic Orchestra, he gave a live broadcast concert in Berlin. Noticing Adolf Hitler in the audience applauding after the first piece, he turned to the orchestra and,…
Judgement Day
The great jazz composer, bandleader and notorious procrastinator, Duke Ellington once said “I don’t need time, I need a deadline”.
Lisztomania – a film review
This year sees the fortieth anniversary of the film Lisztomania, an outrageous fantasy biopic on the life of Franz Liszt, written and directed by the unashamed bad boy of British cinema, Ken Russell (1927-2011).
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!”
A Bohemian in New York
Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904) was a genial, unassuming man for whom life was “a very wonderful, uncomplicated thing”. Arriving in New York in 1892, his patron handed him over to the music critic James Huneker for the day’s excursion. This started innocently enough with Mass at a Bohemian church, but it soon degenerated into…