Lebrecht Weekly – Shostakovich plays Shostakovich (Praga Digitals)
If the print on this review goes blurry on your screen it’s because I’m still rubbing my eyes at the cast list on this astonishing…
Browsing: Norman Lebrecht
Lebrecht Weekly – Schoenberg and Shostakovich (CSO.Resound)
Two composers in despair, reaching deep into their souls. Arnold Schoenberg, a penniless refugee in Los Angeles in 1938, was commissioned by a liberal temple…
Lebrecht Weekly – György Kurtág: Complete string quartets (ATMA Classique)
Some of my least endurable musical moments have been spent trapped in a small hall listening to a new piece by Kurtág, the venerable, post-tonal…
Lebrecht Weekly – Tchaikovsky: 6th symphony, Romeo & Juliet overture (Decca)
For a troubled London teenager in the 1960s there were three available sources of relief. One was illegal, one was immoral and the third was…
Lebrecht Weekly – J S Bach: The French Suites (DG)
What a difference a label can make. All his adult life, ever since he won the 1972 Leeds Piano Competition, Murray Perahia has recorded exclusively…
Lebrecht Weekly – Arnold Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder (Chandos)
It is so rare to hear the Gurre Lieder live that most of us are acquainted with it only on record – in memorable interpretations…
Lebrecht Weekly – Pretty Yende: A Journey (Sony Classical)
The classical music industry does not so much promote talent as postpone it. Faced with a gleaming young star, the male curators of fame (all…
Lebrecht Weekly – Lang Lang: New York Rhapsody (Sony Classical)
I am not the right person to be reviewing this album, but then I’m not sure the right person actually exists. This is a Sony…
Lebrecht Weekly – Prokofiev: Violin concertos (BIS)
Two albums of Prokofiev concertos arrive in the same delivery, one piano, the other violin. Both are from pedigree artists, pedigree labels. Which one do…
Lebrecht Weekly – Michael Nyman: The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Naxos)
In the spring of 1985 I saw three opera world premieres in London in as many weeks. There was Busoni’s Doctor Faust in the restored…
