I was never a fan of viola jokes. Just because the instrument is neither one thing nor the other doesn’t make it any funnier than a mezzo-soprano or a bass-baritone. It is what it is, with benefits. The viola spares you squeaky irritations of a violin and lugubrious growls of a mishandled cello. I like the viola. There, I’ve said it. What’s special about this release is the eclectic menu assembled by a young Jamaican-American, Jordan Bak, who is clearly going places. Bak opens with a three-minute Chant by Jonathan Harvey, dinking back and forth between tonal and post-tonal contemplation.…
Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly
If you’ve never heard of the composer Walter Kaufmann, you are not alone. A Czech Jew in Hitler’s Germany, Kaufmann was hired as a composer by an Indian friend who was founding a film company in Bombay. He was soon promoted to head of music at All India Radio, co-founded (with Meli Mehta) Bombay’s Chamber Music Society and lectured at the University. As political winds shifted, he migrated in 1946 to London, where he composed for Arthur Rank Films. He moved on again to become the first music director in Winnipeg, Canada, and again in 1957 to teach at Bloomington,…
Over forty years and in an impressive number of recordings, Peter Donohoe has never failed to challenge and surprise the listening public.
The Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, just 28 years old, is the hottest property on the circuit though still unrecognised beyond the orchestra fishbowl. Mäkelä is presently music director in Oslo, Paris and Amsterdam. He is also (I hear) about to be named chief conductor in Chicago. How he balances all those jobs is anyone’s guess. Off stage, he has just ended a six-month relationship with the pianist Yuja Wang. The pair have concert bookings together for the next three years. That could be tricky when it comes to eye contact. Forget what they burble on the radio: classical music and…
The flawless Skride is joined by violist Ivan Vukcevic and the orchestra of Vienna Radio, conducted by Marin Alsop.
The flawless Skride is joined by violist Ivan Vukcevic and the orchestra of Vienna Radio, conducted by Marin Alsop.
In the more sentimental pieces of the Prokofiev set on this new album, Bezhod Abduraimov melts the listener’s heart like spring snows.
Spin this record of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony played at a 1971 live concert at the Royal Albert Hall by the Leningrad Symphony and you will see what we are missing.
In half a century of making records, Songs of Fate is Kremer’s most personal release – an austere and uplifting record imbued with humanity and idealism.
I can’t listen to Francis Poulenc for long without imagining a Gitane between my lips and smoke curling out of the corners.