Norman Lebrecht is a prolific writer on music and cultural affairs. His blog, Slipped Disc, is one of the most popular sites for cultural news. He presents The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 and is a contributor to several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and The Standpoint. Visit every Friday for his weekly CD review // Norman Lebrecht est un rédacteur prolifique couvrant les événements musicaux et Slipped Disc, est un des plus populaires sites de nouvelles culturelles. Il anime The Lebrecht Interview sur la BBC Radio 3 et collabore à plusieurs publications, dont The Wall Street Journal et The Standpoint. Vous pouvez lire ses critiques de disques chaque vendredi.
Klaus Tennstedt fled East Germany in his mid-40s in 1971 and hung around for half a decade before anyone noticed he was a truly remarkable conductor – ‘last of the old Kapellmeisters,’ as Herbert von Karajan drily put it.
In the early days of long-playing records, a man in a suit at EMI realised that the Grieg and Schumann concertos were half an hour long, in the same key of A minor and would fit on either side of a plate of shellac without requiring fillers.
Unlike elements in Beijing who had him arrested on phony morals charges, I have never wavered in my belief that Yundi Li is the most interesting and original pianist to emerge from China.
Composers have learned not to mess with Beethoven. Fewer variations have been written on themes by Beethoven than on any other master’s work.
What small labels do best is backing the owner’s hunches. BIS in Stockholm produced symphonies by Alfred Schnittke when he was unheard outside Russia. Hyperion…
I have no problems with impressionism. It’s what French artists do off the cuff when they can’t be bothered with sketches, what French composers do…
Lukas Foss was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein’s at the Curtis Institute and a lifelong friend, though never an equal. While Bernstein blazed to national…
Ries and Clement were the musicians closest to Beethoven. Ries, who knew Beethoven from Bonn, acted as his secretary before moving to London where he was active in the Philharmonic Society that commissioned Beethoven’s ninth symphony.
When Janine Jansen is on song, no living violinist comes close.
The first we heard of Magdalena Kozena was a mid-1990s album of Bach arias, recorded when she was 22.
