Updates from the world's leading classical music label
I’ve just finished reading Dan Brown’s novel Inferno. It’s another gripper from the American author, involving ancient symbology revolving around Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy. The last word of that title signals that it ends happily, not tragically; there’s nothing comedic about the work. It describes Dante’s tripartite journey across the nine Read More …
Being a contemporary of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven was both a blessing and a curse for Simon Mayr: while he was able to deftly assimilate and rival the triumvirate’s output, he became overshadowed by them in posterity. Raymond Bisha presents the world première recording of Mayr’s Requiem in G minor, a stunning blend of Germanic Read More …
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 …
Raymond Bisha’s latest podcast focuses on two works by William Bolcom that have been recently recorded for the Naxos American Classics Series. The emotional spectrum of his “Canciones de Lorca” and “Prometheus” is reflected in colourful orchestrations and a mix of musical styles that swing between intense drama and surreal humour. View album details of 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 …
Known principally for his prodigious output of concertos, Antonio Vivaldi was also a prolific composer of operas, so it’s perhaps no surprise that an engaging and demanding operatic vocal style also permeates Vivaldi’s sacred music. Raymond Bisha introduces both the music and the performers on this fourth volume of Naxos’ survey of Vivaldi’s catalogue of Read More …
Fantasy, fairy tales and Maurice Ravel’s flair for orchestral colour are all to the fore in this new release of two examples of the composer’s music for the stage—the scores for his opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges and his ballet Ma mère l’Oye. This highly imaginative music, projected through a childlike lens, is instantly attractive 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 …
It was the great virtuoso Wanda Landowska who spearheaded a revival of interest in the dormant harpsichord at the turn of the 20th century. Working closely with Pleyel of Paris, the instrument manufacturer, she helped develop and promote a sturdier and more sonorous instrument than was hitherto the case. Composers of the time weren’t slow Read More …