Black Renaissance Woman
Samantha Edge has, from her base in Oxford, been doing superb work recently in championing the music of Florence Price and here she extends her reach to a further group of black women composers of the last century…
Rhapsody – Rachmaninov & Gershwin
The one thing I expected from this young team of soloist and conductor was a load of romantic passion but that doesn’t seem to be their thing at all…
Shostakovich – Symphony No. 7
It is salutary to listen now to this symphony, written at the height of WW II as the appalling toll of the Nazi siege of Leningrad became clear; salutary because the recording appears as Stalin’s successor psychopath, Putin, is unleashing similar barbaric horrors on the cities of Ukraine…
Madame Théobon’s Manuscript
Who would have thought it but ebay has come to the rescue of 17th century French harpsichord music! By sheer luck Christophe Rousset, one of the finest contemporary exponents of the genre, saw an advert for a manuscript volume and snapped it up in 2004…
Mozart – Piano Sonatas
We are lucky to have an extraordinary array of mature interpretors of Mozart (we’ll each have our own list) around at the moment and Leonskaja is as accomplished as any. There are some recordings which one knows from the first few phrases are going to be just right…