Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Once in a while you hear such incredibly beautiful music for the first time that you just can’t understand why it has remained under wraps for so long. The Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 by the Italian-born composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco are a case in point. Originally championed in the 1920s and 30s by no less Read More …
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the piano music of Robert Schumann was under-appreciated—viewed as bitty, light and flighty, more like parlour music fare. But today it’s recognised as some of the most creative and original piano music ever composed. To Schumann, music represented a state of mind where mood, atmosphere, colour and Read More …
In this week’s podcast, Raymond Bisha introduces the 4-CD collection of the complete piano works of Mieczysław Weinberg—from teenage mazurkas written in his native Poland through to his last works for the instrument composed in Moscow. En route, Tashkent, Shostakovich and the Head of the post-Stalin KGB all play a part in the fascinating story of Read More …
In this week’s podcast, Raymond Bisha introduces a disc of Spanish guitar music that goes to the heart of that nation’s musical culture, presenting four works by the prolific Madrid-born composer Federico Moreno Torroba. This new release is the first of two volumes devoted to the composer’s complete works for guitar and orchestra. It features performances Read More …
This month’s new Naxos High Definition Audio Disc features the recently-restored Cavaillé-Coll organ which is now housed in the Lyon Auditorium. It’s played here by Vincent Warnier in an all-Saint-Saëns programme. Dating back to 1878, this huge instrument was relocated, re-built and then lovingly restored to its original glory in 2013. Saint-Saëns enjoyed a long Read More …
The music of the Spanish-American composer Leonardo Balada defies categorisation, switching between styles with an easy confidence that continually surprises and delights. Rick Phillips takes us on a tour of this latest Naxos disc of Balada’s music, which visits soldiers and steelworkers alike in their vivid sound worlds. View album details of Leonardo Balada’s Symphony Read More …
Raymond Bisha introduces the first instalment of the Naxos series of flute concertos by François Devienne, the 18th-century composer-performer who laid the foundations of the French school of flute playing. Performed and directed by fellow Frenchman Patrick Gallois, these two illustrious musicians hold hands across the centuries in a celebration of the true French spirit Read More …
This month’s release in the Naxos Canadian Classics series focuses on the string chamber music of Jacques Hétu (1938–2010). The theme of past and present links composer and performers, as Raymond Bisha surveys Hétu’s works dating from the 1960s (when the original Orford String Quartet was formed) to music written a few years before his Read More …
In this week’s podcast, Raymond Bisha explores works by the Italian musical adventurer Gian Francesco Malipiero, the fascinating 20th-century composer who trod his own prolific path, often defying tradition with his idiosyncratic flair. View album details of Gian Francesco Malipiero’s Fantasie di ogni giorno / Passacaglie / Concerti at naxos.com Catalogue No.: 8.573291
Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra bring their brilliant cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies to a stupendous conclusion with the release of the Thirteenth Symphony, Babi Yar. It’s a work the Russian conductor has inhabited since his teenage years, when he first recorded it as a member of the male chorus. In conversation Read More …