Mar 29, 2023 | Concert Reviews, Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Videos
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland Sakari Oramo has already distinguished himself as an interpreter of Ravel’s music,...
Mar 26, 2023 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
The disc opens with Rachmaninov’s C-sharp minor Prelude as orchestrated by Stokowski, a huge workout for Jonathan Cooper’s microphones, a test easily passed in St Augustine’s (January last year, Brian Pidgeon producing), orchestral extremes paraded...
Mar 24, 2023 | Concert Reviews, Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Videos
Friday, March 24, 2023 Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland Kazuki Yamada (Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s successor at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) opened with Toru Takemitsu’s Aboriginal- and...
Mar 24, 2023 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Originally published on March 17 Anyone for philosophical tennis? The opening of Richard Strauss’s Nietzsche-inspired Also sprach Zarathustra from the LSO and François-Xavier Roth is spectacularly cinematic (I am trying hard to not mention Kubrick and 2001) and...
Mar 23, 2023 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
There’s a majesty and unselfishness to these performances that finds Elisabeth Leonskaja true to her words: “When I play, I am not presenting myself on the stage, but the music I am playing. It is the music that matters.” In the Fourth Concerto she distils...
Mar 21, 2023 | Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews
Kurt Sanderling’s conducting of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony (recorded May 15, 1973, the composer still alive) is a profoundly revealing affair, maybe not to put into words, but you know the recreator has a hot-line to the composer in terms of the...