I am a lucky boy – my two favourite Richard Strauss pieces on the same disc as Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic continue their Strauss series for Lawo. Preferring to die before climbing a mountain (a resurrection) I started with the placed-last Death &...

Violin Sonatas these may be, but the piano is equally important – “and piano” – and so it is that York Bowen (a pianist) opens his E-minor Sonata (Opus 112, 1945) with the piano in full cry until the violin takes up its passionate entreaties. Tasmin Little & Piers...

First heard in July 2018, Richard Danielpour’s long-gestated The Passion of Yeshua (“A Dramatic Oratorio ... telling of the final hours of Christ on Earth”) has about it a direct and universal appeal that can be deeply affecting and spiritually rewarding. JoAnn...

I started with the Eroica, a fleet reading, all over in forty-five minutes (including first-movement repeat; without the latter, echoes of Scherchen’s 1958 account for Westminster) but, in the first movement anyway, the music-making is poised, dug into and propulsive...

From the pen of Philip Sawyers (a Londoner born in 1951), these are quite the best two pieces this composer has yet given us, in my opinion, and of those I have heard. Symphony No.4 (2018) opens in arresting style, a bold summons that bids our involvement in some very...