Updates from the world's leading classical music label
I had supper recently in a restaurant named after the American novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). His life was every bit as colourful as his literary works, as were the restaurant’s table mats. They carried a collection of his quotations. My dining companion and I happened to get the same one: “I didn’t want to kiss Read More …
In 1951, Arnold Schoenberg died. And I was born. Which hardly constituted a fair exchange on the Muses’ creativity balance sheet. But the year itself has always intrigued me by its habit of popping up in history’s list of milestones, as it did recently, when I tuned into a BBC World documentary. It took as Read More …
Imagine a bygone era when an existence without religion and superstition would be unthinkable, in which the souls of the departed were believed to exist among the living as a matter of course. In our lives today, surrounded by technology and cosseted by commerce, such powerfully held beliefs exist only in barely acknowledged vestiges of Read More …
Icelandic composer Jón Leifs (1899–1968) made a big noise, literally, at one of this year’s BBC Promenade Concerts. How so? With a rare performance of his Organ Concerto Op. 7. Completed in 1930 after a 13-year gestation, the work was premièred in Germany in 1941 by the Berlin Philharmonic with Leifs himself as the soloist. Read More …
October features in a number of classical works, and not only in response to its seasonal characteristics. To take an example, it’s nearly a hundred years since that seismic event known as the Russian October Revolution took place, one which was to receive significant attention from the pen of Dimitry Shostakovich. But we’ll come to Read More …
2015 marks milestone anniversaries for a number of significant classical composers, including Sibelius, Bartók, Glazunov, Franck and Arvo Pärt. Today, however, we consider a trio of other composers who were born on today’s date: 25 September. If you’re an organist, the name of the first composer will be well-known to you, even if only by Read More …
Our 17 July blog made connections between some of the composers featured in the first four weeks of this year’s BBC Promenade Concerts. Almost two months on, and the world’s largest music festival is only now drawing to a close. The celebrated Last Night of the Proms will be held tomorrow, Saturday 12 August, with Read More …
Anyone who was born in a church tower, squandered opportunities for music education as a naughty teenager, lived through two world wars, rose to be one of his country’s greatest composers, and left footprints either side of the Atlantic gets my attention. I was reminded that today marks the death, on 28 August 1959, of Read More …
The year under the spotlight is 1888. The date, the same as the publication of this blog: 14 August. The featured inventor is Thomas Edison, to whom companies like Naxos owe their very existence. The new technology: the phonograph. Not brand spanking new, though. Edison had got his ground-breaking invention out of the blocks eleven Read More …
As July turns to August many of us will be enjoying the sunshine and thinking of vacations past and present. For music lovers, few melodies conjure the languid spirit of the season as effectively as Summertime by George Gershwin, from his 1934 opera Porgy and Bess (8.110287-88) which is, paradoxically, a tale of hardship and Read More …