British Piano Concertos: Walton, Britten & Tippett Clare Hammond (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra/George Vass (BIS Records)I really liked this programme of neglected British piano concertos by the always excellent pianist Clare Hammond, accompanied by conductor George Vass, himself committed to the cause of promoting British music over many years. Britten’s one-handed Diversions, written for Paul Wittgenstein, and Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante are both full of youthful vivacity, although both have troubled histories.Best known by far is Michael Tippett’s Piano Concerto, a top-three Read more ...

 Corelli/Handel: Sonatas Michaela Koudelková (recorders), Monika Knoblochová (harpsichord), Libor Mašek (cello), Jan Krejča (theorbo) (Supraphon)This disc’s bright, piquant flavour makes it an irresistible acquisition. I dived into recorder player Michaela Koudelková’s new album after several days spent wallowing in Vaughan Williams orchestral music (see below), and it made for an invigorating palate-cleanser. Try the little “Furioso” from Handel’s Recorder Sonata in D minor, two minutes of exuberant froth, Koudelková’s dancing solo line having the upper hand (just) over a Read more ...

 Kabalevsky: Cello Concerto No. 2, Schumann: Cello Concerto Theodor Lyngstad (cello), Copenhagen Phil/Eva Ollikainen (OUR Recordings)This disc’s sleeve note suggests that Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 2 “owes an obvious debt to the composer’s colleague and one-time neighbour Dmitri Shostakovich”. It does indeed, several passages sounding like direct pastiche. That doesn’t make the work any less enjoyable and entertaining, the first movement’s “Allegro molto e energico” section very similar in tone to the opening movement of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Though Kabalevsky begins Read more ...

 Michael Tilson Thomas: The Complete Columbia, Sony and RCA Recordings (Sony)Big box sets continue to arrive. This one’s a whopper: 80 discs celebrating Michael Tilson Thomas’s 80th birthday. Artistic qualities aside, the production values here are superb, Sony’s 200-page hardback book accompanying individual discs replete with original sleeve art and spines that display each CD’s contents. This is a minor detail but a significant one, making it easy to find the performance you’re looking for. As with the recent Paavo Järvi set, it’s nice to see a celebration of a conductor who’s very Read more ...

As always, great concerts have outnumbered great opera productions over a year, and all of our national orchestras can be proud of their record. I’ve sometimes started by celebrating youth, and it’s good to be able to do that in the shape of two competition finales totally satisfying as programmes. The palm, though, goes to two veterans who made me wonder at their ease and natural communication.In the case of 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt conducting Mahler’s immensely taxing Ninth Symphony, it was the Philharmonia which did all the burning and intensity, while the conductor’s natural sense of Read more ...

 I’m a sucker for a well-produced box set, and some of this year’s choices examples included celebrations of conductors Paavo Berglund (Warner Classics), William Steinberg (DG) and Louis Lane (Sony). The Berglund box contains no fewer than three Sibelius cycles, my favourite being the earliest one, recorded while Berglund was Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s. Other highlights include his pungent, earthy Shostakovich (try his terrifying version 11th Symphony) and cogent performances of music by Bliss, Britten and Vaughan Williams.DG’s William Steinberg Read more ...

From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger brought into play, the left hand occasionally visible to me as he raised it at moments of high emotion. The Philharmonia simply burned for him, every phrase and dynamic brought into focus to heighten an already assured vision.Only absolute mastery will do for Mahler's Ninth, his deepest symphony, its first movement alone a monumental test of ebb and Read more ...

Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in execution, the richest in sound. Others may have wanted a faster, lighter Rite. But the two things that make every concert conducted by Klaus Mäkelä so extraordinary are that he inhabits the music to a visibly high level, and that he gets the fullest tone and urgent phrasing from every instrument.This was a love-in between players and conductor, and an exciting first for the London Symphony Orchestra. I remember former tuba-player Patrick Harrild saying of Read more ...

Somehow those of us required to translate the musical experience into words look for the moments which defeat us. One such was the extraordinary sound of muted first violins and cellos at the start of the second movement in Sibelius’s First Symphony last night. Pinpointing its essence feels impossible, but it could only have come from the London Symphony Orchestra’s special relationship with its new Chief Conductor Antonio Pappano.It can’t have been planned at the time of the commission, but an alliance was forged between the Sibelius symphony and the new work on the programme, James Read more ...

"The world meets in Pärnu", slogan for the 14th festival in Estonia's summer seaside capital, has held good ever since Paavo Järvi gathered native musicians and key players from the international teams he inspires to form what's now the Estonian Festival Orchestra. Buzz about the youngsters formerly serving just the conductors’ course is new; 2024's Järvi Academy Youth Symphony Orchestra embraces 30 countries.So it was that the youngest member, 11-year-old Armenian cellist Aren Toplaghaltsian, got to play his first Beethoven symphony under 87-year old Neeme Järvi, a living legend (young Aren Read more ...

 There’s still a market for classical music, whether you stream, download or get your fix from your local classical CD shop. Universal’s acquisition of the independent Hyperion label worried many listeners early in 2023, but the fact that Hyperion’s entire catalogue will be made available for streaming has to be a good thing. We’re also seeing more and more big boxes of reissued material, and I’ve chosen three of them as particular favourites. Two celebrate conductors: Warner Classics’ breezeblock-sized compendium of Otto Klemperer’s orchestral recordings contains some of the best Read more ...

The only seriously false note about Maestro is its title. Yes, Bernstein was masterly as a conductor, and Bradley Cooper gives it his best shot. But he was no master of his life as a whole. Maybe the title should have been something like Lenny and Felicia (you think of something better).Broadway actor Felicia Montealegre, the woman he married after an on-off four-year relationship, is depicted as the shrewdest, harshest critic of the man rather than the artist, and though the music is brilliantly handled, Carey Mulligan is the real heart and soul of what Cooper as director and co-writer (with Read more ...