Learning from Books

One of the major topics of the London Book Fair this year, as indeed in many previous years, concerns the digitisation of books and how tha...

A Slew of Strauss

Richard Strauss's 150th birthday has spurred a great slew of recordings, some new, some re-released. The trend reaches a particularly pr...

Back to Liederland

The world of Lieder is, to quote A.E. Housman, a 'land of lost content', full of 'happy highways' and not quite so happy hig...

Boreal Magic

In 2011 Hyperion Records released a disc of music by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds. It was something of a revelation  and alongside t...

Lobt den Herrn!

Municipal, maestoso Mendelssohn can be a little moribund in the wrong hands. That is often what happens in performances of the composer'...

One journey, two very different destinations...

This winter, as ever, we have been treated to yet more accounts of Schubert's Beckettian song-cycle Winterreise . And I have no doubt th...

Beyond the Mozartkugeln

At the beginning of January, I made a resolution to go beyond my usual musical diet and explore other genres, principally 'the music of...

In praise of Florian Boesch

Anyone interested in Lieder will not be surprised at this post. But anyone who has not yet bought Hyperion Records' new disc, Der Wander...

Glorious Bernard

Part two of my survey of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's Radio Legacy – a 152 boxed set released to celebrate the RCO's 125th bi...

False Spring

Yesterday, after lunch, I sat at the piano and played my favourite Schubert song, 'Frühlingsglaube'. As so often with Schubert, ther...

Wohin?

When listening to Hyperion Records' new disc of the music of Julius Isserlis, it proves impossible to separate what you hear from the ex...

Mengelberg's Mahler

The first part of my 'listening diary' which surveys the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's Radio Legacy boxed set, celebrating its...

Longing for Simplicity

Sitting on the banks of the Attersee, where Mahler composed many of his songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn , you could easily drift back to a ...

A Message for the New Year

Shortly before the Christmas break, Mike Breneis, the CEO of Vienna-based record label col legno wrote the following: The thing with record...

The Best of 2013... in Recorded Music

1. Mahler's Sixth Symphony by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Riccardo Chailly (Accentus Music) This film of Chailly's 2012 perf...

A Restrained Farewell

Recordings of Das Lied von der Erde are like buses... indeed, for all the many accounts of the Symphonies appearing on labels around the wor...

Auf der Alm(a)

Alma: what does it mean? The soul. It may also make you think of 'Alm', the German word for an alpine pasture or hut. And, of course...

The Eternal Objectivist

Berlin in the 1920s and 30s will never lose its lustre. Marlene Dietrich, Christopher Isherwood, Kurt Weill... all denizens of an endless pa...

The Eye of the Storm

Jonathan Nott and the Bamberger Symphoniker's Mahler comes to a close this Autumn with the release of the Sixth and Eight Symphonies. I ...

Honeyed Tones

One of the finest concerts I have ever attended was in 2007 at the Barbican, when Steven Isserlis, the OAE and Simon Rattle performed Dvořák...