Updates from the world's leading classical music label
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 Day after Christmas Day, Boxing Day, St Stephen’s Day, the Day of the Wren. Wherever you are, and whatever event you may yourself celebrate on 26 December each year, I personally always try to spare a thought for the discarded and dispossessed. I’m thinking, for a change, not of the unfortunate condition of swathes Read More …
For many people, the week running up to Christmas Day is a frenzy of last-minute shopping, gift wrapping and chestnut peeling, not forgetting rehearsals for Carol Services and Midnight Masses. This week’s blog post, however, skirts the tinsel and mistletoe to look back at some of the more sober events that took place in this 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 …
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the planet’s greatest beauties, stretches for some 2,900 kilometres off the Queensland coast and provides the habitat for a cornucopia of corals, fish and sea mammals. Yet we read how swathes are being slowly decimated by climate change and pollution and, in this particular case, what the eye doesn’t 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 …
Remember, remember, the fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot. Bonfires feature in a number of different traditions around the world, but perhaps the largest celebrations are held in Britain every 5 November. On this day, the above rhyme is traditionally 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 …
One of the side discussions during the Scottish independence referendum held last month focused on what that country’s national anthem might be, should the majority vote to separate from the United Kingdom. Following the outcome of the referendum, the question became redundant. It got me thinking, however, about the anthems of three European nations in Read More …