The world’s most popular period-instrument soprano, Kirkby’s pure, crystalline sound defined how vocal music of the baroque and earlier eras should sound for a whole generation or more. A pioneer of the Early Music movement, Emma Kirkby presents an intimate concert of both familiar and rare Purcell songs. Lindsay Kemp writes: ‘Even today, nearly half […]

It was common from medieval times to think of the Arts as female; in most European languages the words for them are feminine, and in pictures too they were represented as heavenly ladies, each carrying some appropriate object, and often attended by the male figures of her most famous earthly servants. The frontispiece chosen by […]

The Boston Symphony Chamber Players made a few critically-acclaimed recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in the 1970s, among them the Second Viennese School’s reworkings of Strauss waltzes. Drawn from players of the Boston Symphony, with Michael Tilson Thomas as pianist (here in the two string sonatas) the playing is febrile, alert and atmospheric. This collection brings […]

Mozart was brought up at the court of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and the music of the Roman Catholic liturgy was central to his early experience. Salzburg had its own ecclesiastical musical traditions, dating back well into the seventeenth century with such men as Andreas Hofer, Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat; more immediately relevant to […]

As a pendant to his legendary cycle of the Haydn symphonies with the Philharmonia Hungarica, Antal Dorati also recorded supplementary symphonies and the Sinfonia Concertante, all of which made their way into the highly-regarded boxed set of these works. He also recorded these gorgeous 24 Minuets as a pendant – then, as now, a comparative […]

As one of music’s greatest recyclers, Handel would have earned untold respect in our time. That he managed (largely) to achieve this so felicitously, so that whether you were listening to an aria in the context of an English oratorio or an Italian cantata it seemed intuitively ‘right’, is tribute to his skill. This collection […]

Gervase de Peyer was one of the leading clarinet players in the 1960s, making several recordings as both soloist and chamber-music player for L’Oiseau-Lyre. Three of his most critically-acclaimed recordings – concertos by Mozart, Weber and Spohr – are offered here, all performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 was one of the most notorious disasters in classical music. The composer, sensing that misfortune was about to befall him and his newest creation, sat not in the audience but backstage (‘squirming,’ according to his cousin Lyudmila Skalon) in what is now the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. […]

Rachmaninov was so horrified by the disastrous 1897 premiere of his First Symphony that he became ‘a changed man,’ to use his own words. For two years after that fateful evening, he composed almost nothing, and occupied himself by conducting operas in Moscow and by concertising at home and abroad. The trauma caused Rachmaninov to […]

Sergei Rachmaninov began his Third Symphony in August 1935 at Senar, his Swiss villa, while riding a final wave of popular success. His ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ had enjoyed a successful premiere the year before, and subsequent performances had gone far to mute criticism that the composer’s well of inspiration had dried up. […]

It is commonplace to observe how little separates the cradle from the grave. For some, the words ‘womb’, ‘room’, ‘doom’ and ‘tomb’ have sufficed to encapsulate the human experience. When infant mortality rates in the developed countries were higher than they are today, families could hardly help being reminded that last night’s lullaby might be […]

Receiving its first ever release on CD, this legendary performance of Rachmaninov’s super-romantic Second Symphony conducted by Paul Kletzki will be seized up by collectors and bargain hunters alike. From Ashkenazy’s remarkable survey of the Rachmaninov orchestral works comes ‘The Isle of the Dead’. Reviewing it, Gramophone magazine writes: ‘a searingly powerful reading of ‘The […]