Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Raymond Bisha dips into the latest Naxos recording of works by Jean Sibelius that have been obscured by the popularity of his symphonies and the violin concerto, including many pieces he wrote to complement stage works. Although these might be termed incidental and occasional, they belie such labels by constituting an extraordinary treasure house of 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 …
Franz Ignaz Beck (1734–1809) was a member of the Mannheim school of composers, based at the court of Mannheim in the mid-18th century. The Mannheim orchestra was one of the largest and finest in Europe, and the Mannheim school’s spearheading of developments in orchestral style, technique and expression influenced symphonic composers during the rest of the Read More …
The 2015 BBC Promenade Concerts, the world’s largest music festival based at London’s Royal Albert Hall, kick off this week and run for the next two months. The first four weeks of performances sport a wealth of exciting music, opening on July 17 with Walton’s big-boned Belshazzar’s Feast (8.555869) and closing with Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony Read More …
From composer to transcriber to performer—less instantaneous than modern transmissions, but it’s how many works first came to be known by music lovers before the dawn of the age of technology. Around half of Liszt’s 800 compositions were transcriptions of other composers’ works. In this week’s podcast Raymond Bisha introduces pianist Sergio Gallo breezing through virtuoso transcriptions by Read More …
Canada’s Gryphon Trio was established in 1993 and its founding members remain the same to this day. Indefatigable as performers, teachers and administrators at institutions around Canada, the trio has commissioned over 75 new works since its inception. Raymond Bisha explores their latest recording of works by four distinguished Canadian composers: Brian Current, Andrew Staniland, Read More …
I was eleven years old when I paid my first visit to a Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. Lookalike film stars and world leaders held some interest for a youngster, but the much anticipated highlight was a visit to the Chamber of Horrors. The display of instruments of torture had the desired effect on the visitor as Read More …
Contemporary American composer Richard Danielpour calls them ‘siblings’: two discrete yet connected works that ponder the current endless cycle of brutalization and despair in the Middle East. Raymond Bisha introduces ‘Darkness in the Ancient Valley’ and ‘Toward a Season of Peace’, perfectly channeled subject areas for a composer who describes himself as “a 21st-century American Read More …
The ease of global communication nowadays brings home the frequency of natural disasters and their tragic consequences. The only positive offshoot of such terrible occurrences seems to lie in the artistic reflections that composers have made in trying to capture these events, born of the less comforting side of Mother Nature. Picking through the catalogue Read More …
Violinist, violist, pianist, conductor, composer, teacher, concert presenter and author—the impact of Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) on twentieth-century music is vast. Critic Paul Bekker said of him: “He doesn’t just compose—he musics!” Hindemith composed seven string quartets between World Wars I and II, and they have all been recorded and released on a highly-acclaimed cycle with Read More …