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.
The US jazz pianist Keith Jarrett does not play by the normal rules of engagement but this, even by his standards, is off the scale.
The works on Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz’s album “Miklos Rozsa: Orchestral Works” are unfailingly agreeable, if not uniformly top-drawer.
German violinist Frank Peter Zimmerman realigns Stravinsky’s violin concerto in D wistfully as a late-romantic work, full of yearning for lost youth, homeland and confidence.
Few pianists have given me greater pleasure over the years than the Polish-Hungarian lone wolf Piotr Anderszewski.
In an hour-long work, the first two movements of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony take up forty minutes and can appear top-heavy. Haitink avoids the pitfall with a steady beat that is mitigated by lightness and touches of wit.
This performance of Lutoslawski’s 1954 Concerto by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra is the most gripping in years.
Album of the Year? There’s quite a few, from Vikingur Olaffson’s Goldberg Variations to Yuja Wang’s Rachmaninov concertos, to Semyon Bychkov Resurrection Symphony.
