Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Although they have their detractors, national and international music competitions continue to stand the test of time. The process of, and progress through the various qualifying stages, together with the recording and performance opportunities that often prostrate themselves before the ultimate winners, clearly represent an attractive mix. Despite moments of controversy in its history, the Read More …
Here are the final bars of 15 well-known works. Can you name the composer and the title of the work? Scroll down the page to check your answers. Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Read More …
For some woodwind instruments, their close cousins sound markedly different. Take the closing bars of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, for example. When the shrill piccolo slices through the texture, there’s no way you would mistake it for the sound of an homogenous flute. And when the bulky contrabassoon enters in Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, it’s a Read More …
Naxos releases a significant number of new recordings each month that represent a spectrum of styles, historical periods and instrumental and vocal combinations. We’re presenting a quick sampler of the releases for this month, April 2019, which we’ll present in the order of their date of composition so you can get a feel for the Read More …
Berlioz left us a number of Shakespeare-inspired works, chief among them his masterpiece Roméo et Juliette. The work took a decade to complete and is cast in an innovative form, a kind of ‘super-symphony’ that incorporates elements of symphony, opera and oratorio. Raymond Bisha introduces this new recording by Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestre National Read More …
Well, I think I might be if I knew that the three obelisks generally referred to as Cleopatra’s Needles, sited in London, Paris and New York, had nothing to do with me, perhaps the most famous queen of all time. Constructed a thousand years before Cleopatra’s lifetime, they at least stand as a popular memento Read More …
An article in The Independent caught my eye a couple of months ago; maybe yours, too. A ghostly, unfinished, non-miniature portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots had been discovered layered beneath a later painting. The article about this colourfully tragic monarch gave a detailed account of both the queen and her unfinished likeness. I then Read More …
